When Lindon first sees Fisher Gesha he is appalled because he thinks she has melded a construct to her body, but later in the series he doesn't seem to have any problem (his own remnant arm, seeing others with prosthetics). Is this a retcon or a Sacred Valley mindset he grows out of?
It is a first impression that he later thinks differently about.
Why has the fact that Lindon's new arm has six fingers never been brought up since he got it put on?
Because it doesn't anymore. If I recall correctly, during the scene where they're altering the arm, he said he tweaks it to make it more like a human hand. I didn't specifically mention that he meant a five-fingered human hand, but I should have.
Will's forte is not with numbers or statistics, and I highly recommend to anyone trying to reconcile the mathematics of population distributions or the like in Cradle to not dwell on the subject, and rather focus on the spirit of the explanations instead of the letter. That way lies madness.
This is absolutely the correct advice, and I encourage everyone to adopt this attitude because I am not a numbermatician, but I’m going to hijack your comment to address these specific numbers.In the Wei clan, they celebrate every Iron like we celebrate everyone graduating from high school. The one example we see (Wei Shi Kelsa’s advancement) is a bigger deal because she’s younger than average, talented, and there’s a competition coming up in which she might actually stand out.As for Lindon’s rank among Lowgolds, he’s ranked so high in the combat rankings because (despite the impression you get from reading the series) most Lowgolds are not really fighters. They CAN fight in the same way that any big guy COULD throw a heavy punch, but they won’t rank high in terms of combat anymore than that random big dude would perform well in a professional boxing tournament.Also, those rankings reflect the perception of what he’s accomplished more than anything. They rank him so high both because on paper he’s doing things that Lowgolds shouldn’t do (in this case, acquitting himself well and surviving the fight with Jai Long) and because he’s a Blackflame. In the Blackflame Empire, which has long records about what that Path is capable of at low levels, that gets you extra points in calculating your ability to fight compared to your peers.
Why do you not like character development?
Yesterday, I saw a comment wherein a reader wondered why I didn't give character development the same attention as the plot, action, and magic scenes. "It would only benefit the story," this person said, and "I can't understand why he doesn't give this aspect of storytelling the same attention as the others." (Paraphrased, because I can't be bothered to look up the actual comment, but it's pretty close.)The thing is, he's not wrong. And neither are you, to suggest that the world-building is shallow. It is shallow. I have all this stuff charted out in my notes, but much of what I imagine about the world is only skated across or touched upon before we've left the area and moved on to the next.However, there's no such thing as a fast-paced, action-focused, character-focused, plot-focused, worldbuilding-focused fantasy novel. There are series that do all of those things well, but they tend to be much longer and they don't come out twice a year. And even they have priorities, because you cannot have every aspect of story-crafting as your highest priority.I have a limited amount of time to produce these novels if I want to keep releasing them regularly. Therefore, I have to choose what is most important to me.I think will is putting too much stock in keeping books close to the same length.There are two reasons why I put a high priority on keeping the books close to the same length. First is story consistency. It's very easy to let each book in a long series balloon longer and longer as the series progresses, because you're always adding new characters and new places and new aspects of the world to explore.Plus, you hear most of your feedback from your hardcore fans (because they tend to care the most and therefore talk the most), so they're always clamoring for more. However, a 120k book is structurally different from a 90k word book. It's not just "the same story, but more of it." You don't want people to sign on for one type of story and end up getting another.That said, I could see a Cradle book stretching up to 120k without it changing too much, and we might end up there. Which brings me back to the other point: release rate. It takes me longer to write a longer book.If I didn't give myself a cap, I would always write longer and longer books, because there are more cool things I want to cram in there. But I have to limit myself, or the stories will stretch and change and the release rate will slow down."Ah, but Will, you snide devil," I hear you say, "why don't you just take more time to write each book?"Two reasons: first, I don't believe most people want that. I believe most readers value consistent releases more highly than you might expect. I am firm in this belief, but I know everybody doesn't think that way, so in comes my second reason: it just doesn't work.If I took as long as I wanted for each book, and they each took more than a year to write and were as long as I wanted, they might individually become more highly rated. But the series as a whole would be less popular. My sales growth comes almost entirely from quick releases and ratings spikes on Amazon, and the way the Kindle store works means frequent releases are far better than infrequent releases, even if the infrequent releases have individually higher sales. My sales charts make it staggeringly obvious. Sales trend way down, and then a new release spikes the sales for all my books (especially books in that series) back up.If I were to take so long between books, I would fall below my minimum monthly income in about eight months. Which means that for the remaining 6-12 months it could take me to write this book, I'd be running off my savings.That is not a viable business model.Even beyond a business perspective and back to the artistic: the same thing happens to fans. Readers forget about me if they aren't reminded every few months. People stop talking about my books. Word of mouth slows down. People don't care as much. Fans are happier, more engaged, and more interested with more frequent releases.This might not be true if I had one Harry Potter mega-hit that sold a million copies and spawned a perpetual motion machine of fan engagement. Then I could take 2+ years for each book and really knock your socks off every time. But since I have not done that, I have to bow to reality.Bottom line: having established that I have to produce books in a finite amount of time, I therefore have a finite amount of space, and I have to choose carefully what I spend that space on.However, that doesn't mean I've given up on improving my world-building!Specifically in the areas of world-building and character development, I know that I can do more in the same amount of space and with the same amount of time. I am trying, and I push myself in these areas every book. There is a way to write an action scene that gives you deeper insight into the characters involved and demonstrates unique aspects of the world without taking up any more page space or sacrificing pacing, but it's hard to do.I am working on it, though! The issues you've brought up are valid, and I'm aware of them, and I'm working to improve, even within the constraints under which I now operate.Thanks! I don’t want to be one of THOSE writers who lets time stretch on forever between books...although Elder Empire fans might say I’m getting there.By the way, part of the “unanswered question” problem is that, when I set out to write this series, I knew a lot of the upcoming plot points but I did not know how long the series would be. So I wasn’t sure when I would reach the right place for those answers.Now, I have a much better idea of where we are and where we’re going.
Adriel is gone, almost a myth
Nonsense! He’s been a myth for millennia. He’s probably dead, like Ozriel totally is.
Dross has nearly infinite knowledge.
He doesn’t! Let me nip that in the bud right now. To borrow the catch phrase from a certain fictional class rep, he doesn’t know everything, he only knows what he knows. That’s what I was illustrating when they leave GW and he doesn’t know what the sun is.He might know how to recreate the wells. That could be within the scope of his knowledge, because it happened within Ghostwater and under the supervision of people and constructs whose knowledge rested in Northstrider’s oracle tree, but Dross only got pieces of that.This will be explained relatively early in Underlord, but I thought I’d jump out in front of it now. Rebuilding the Wells is certainly a possibility, depending on what Dross knows, but infinitely knowledgeable he is not.
How do Remnants cycle?
They feed on other Remnants and similar sources of compatible madra, which is how they stay cohesive enough to avoid dispersing. As long as they do that, they passively absorb vital aura.
Suriel mentions Li Markuth as Gold whereas we know he is greater than that and possibly an archlord so is this a mistake ?
That was me looking for an imperfect solution to a problem.I never intended Li Markuth to merely be Gold, which is why he says as much when he shows up, and of course Suriel knows exactly what his power level is. However, I didn’t want to throw new terms at the reader in book one, so I had her refer to him in the same way everyone else was.Of course, now it’s confusing. In hindsight, I should have said something like “The stronger practitioner’s core.”
At what point in its advancement could one of the dragons in Ghostwater have a child with a human?
It’s different on an individual basis, but potentially Underlord.
Who would win: one Orthos-sized Little Blue or 5 Little Blue-sizes Orthoses?
Orthos wins that regardless of size, now that his spirit is stable. He might not win forever, though.
Yes, and I designed it forever ago, I’m just hoping to fit it in sometime.
Can magnets draw/repel sword aura?
No.
Say if Lindon touches the Way can he also touch the Void? And if so, can he harvest madra from the Void?
Yes.“Can he draw madra from the Void?” Probably he wouldn’t be drawing madra.
Does the collective will of Cradle inhabitants affect the power of the Monarchs?
Not directly, no.
Are there any "hidden elders" of the Cradle world, i.e. powerful experts who have secluded themselves , whether it be for cultivation or otherwise? Who is the most interesting of them?
There are hidden elders! The most interesting of them, in my opinion, is a Monarch whose power and crimes were so great that they justified the building of a one-man Monarch prison. It still exists in Cradle, but is it still occupied? Who knows?
Hey Will, is there going to be emotional engagement/resolution for the starting scene in ghostwater? (A yes/no answer would be fine). It was a pretty big, character building event for Lindon—the first time he had a large group of innocents/regular strangers depending on him and he failed them, resulting in many of their deaths. Burning horribly before his very eyes as he tried to subdue their killer in time. We don't get an internal monologue on his impressions and thoughts, whether it be self recrimination, anger at the skysworn for mishandling the situation, sheer horror, anger at the phoenix, whatever it may be. All it says afterwards when it switches back to his perspective is that he's 'numb'. Which is unsatisfying, and really leaves a big mystery hole in his characterization. But it's understandable if he's repressing what happened (as has been implied by the numbness and him single mindedly throwing himself into advancement), only to have to confront it later.
At a previous point in the book's development, most of Lindon's actions stemmed from his emotional reaction to that scene. Which is why it's the prologue.That's still happening, but I pushed it to the background a bit. Basically, the reason why he confronts Ekeri directly instead of looking for a way out is because of his emotional response to the town at the beginning. He realizes that he could have won if he had just stood up and fought from the very beginning, but because he thought of himself as weak, other people died. In an earlier draft, that all boiled out in the scene at the end with Orthos, where he erupts in grief and trauma and frustration, but I ended up feeling like it worked better if these were emotional forces that Lindon himself wasn't entirely aware of. Orthos' statement that Lindon is still haunted by the Remnant of his weak self is his response to Lindon's problem illustrated in the prologue. Lindon wasn't too weak to deal with the problem, but he thought he was.So thematically, it resonates in all of Lindon's journey throughout Ghostwater, though Lindon doesn't (and probably won't) confront those emotions directly in a scene.
How would someone go about creating a Cradle version of Tony Stark’s power armor from Infinity War?
It might be a spoiler even to say this, but I'm going to do it anyway: this might be too spoiler-y to answer.
Could Lindon create a technique based off of his explosive failures with the Dragon’s Breath Striker technique that allows him to fly around like a Blackflame Iron Man?
Not Blackflame, no. Blackflame doesn't produce enough thrust. Maybe with a Ruler technique, but that still wouldn't be ideal with Blackflame.
Is there an audiobook for Cradle in the works?
Yes! In fact, we posted an audition on ACX looking for narrators just this past week!
In that they are both tournaments, yes! In layout and scale, no.
>What are the participating levels going to be?
RAFO!
