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Would it be possible for a sacred beast to have pure madra? And if so, can it happen naturally, or does someone have to purposefully nurture a sacred beast to have pure madra?
It is not possible for a sacred beast to have pure madra. Pure madra is uniquely produced by humans (and named by humans, otherwise it would be called “human madra”).
Are remnants capable of having a society? Is there anywhere with particularly intelligent remnants and what do they do on a daily basis
Some of them are intelligent enough and capable of forming a society, yes. However, they're still Remnants: they're bound by the nature of their madra and the impulses that drove them when they were formed. So they don't interact as naturally as people do, no matter how intelligent they are.On a daily basis, they pursue "food," or compatible madra suitable to maintain their form and advance them. Some of the more intelligent Remnants have renewable sources of madra--which means human communities--where they can get their power, either from stealing scales or from making deals with humans.
If the world is so large.... does gravity not work the same way in this universe?
The planet may be hollow or it may be made of less dense matter or the gravitational constant could be significantly lower in the universe or yeah it could be magic. Though if humans exist it must have some relation to the basic model or they wouldn't be human.
Daniel's right.Part of the answer is "magic," and part of it is how this world developed differently because of magic.
Two users now argue at length about the subject of the physics of such a large world.... we skip to Will's next comment.
Since it looks like this has become a real discussion, I'll give a real answer!
I made Cradle very big. Why? A few reasons.
First, a lot of wuxia and xianxia stories do it so they can scale up to ridiculous numbers. Where first the character thinks a huge city has ten thousand people, later a huge city has ten BILLION people.
Also, they're so special they're not just one in a million, they're one in a TRILLION! And they go from crossing a thousand miles in a single step to a hundred thousand miles!
So in part, it's an homage to the genre.
In part, it's so that I can set other stories in the same world and they've never even heard of the people, places, or events in Lindon's story.
And inpart it's to illustrate that this isn't Earth. The Iterations are Narnia-style "worlds," not different planets, but since it's a whole new universe each time, they are ALSO different planets.
I wanted a way to show that without putting a second moon in the sky, so "greater surface area and population" it is.
***
As for the mechanics of it: I said "Magic" earlier, but that basically boils down to "This is how vital aura works."
Vital aura is the power of the world that sacred artists harvest and use to strengthen their madra. It's the spirit of the world, basically. It makes what would otherwise be an uninhabitable planet, habitable.
The planet IS less dense than earth, but because of its huge volume, it's more massive. Gravity is much greater. Humans are supported by madra from birth in part because otherwise they wouldn't be able to adapt to the gravity.
You have other problems too: does this less-dense core spin fast enough to create a magnetosphere? Wouldn't continents bigger than Earth's just be massive deserts everywhere except immediately along the coast? Wouldn't the surface of such a planet be wracked by storms?
Vital aura!
I'll get into it later in the books, but for me building this world, aura served a couple of functions. First, it allows people to adapt to what would otherwise be very harsh natural conditions (Sacred Valley and the immediate surrounding areas have, so far, been very mild. Conditions will accelerate as we get deeper into Cradle). Second, vital aura is generated by natural forces AND it changes natural forces.
I'll continue showing how it works in future books, but the bottom line is that aura allows me to have thriving ecosystems where everything is fire-aspect: trees with burning fruit pollinated by insects with wings of flame, and so on and so forth. Same in the depths of the ocean and on the tops of clouds.
It's magic. But it DOES work consistently according to a set of rules, and it DOES interact with physics.
However, I'm not as attached to real-world physics as Brandon Sanderson is. He enjoys figuring out the physical implications of every nuance in his magic systems. I do not enjoy that, so I will not be doing it.
If there's a gap between real physics and magic, I'll be filling in that gap with magic. Not physics. Just a personal preference.
You may not enjoy figuring out how magic interacts with and is subject to physics, but I would feel sure you wouold enjoy the fact that Sanderson has done so.
Jeremiah, what I like and appreciate is all the thought and planning that Sanderson puts into developing his magic system, and how clear the rules usually are. AND what an impact they always have on the surrounding society.That's cool, and I know from experience that it's very hard to do.But as for him figuring out all the details of how his magic interacts with physics...no, I don't really care.Harry Potter magic doesn't interact with physics, and yet each individual book in the series has a very tight magic system (the series as a WHOLE doesn't, because some magic introduced in a later book could have solved problems in an earlier book, but each book on its own is very consistent).As long as the rules and abilities are clear to me, great! I don't care if they're consistent with known physics or not. Where does the extra mass go when Professor McGonnagall turns into a cat? Magic.
I may be weird, but yes, things like that bug me. Less in fantasy as the author can say "because magic" and it works (though some take that to an extreme, which usually is enough to turn me off from a book) but in sci-fi that is a definite deal-breaker)
Apparently that's a pretty common view, April, and that's fine!
I'm just saying that MY tolerance for physics-defying shenanigans is pretty high, as long as it's consistent within the work. If a character survives getting hit by a tactical missile and then is threatened by a knife, Will is not happy.
But if we're getting into the realm of "Dragons could never grow that large because their bones couldn't support their own body weight," or "A conjuration spell could never work because it adds mass to the universe," then I don't care.
It's fantasy. Magic > Physics.
Can new types of madra be made artificially? Like if somebody invented the computer on Cradle would it collect computer madra?
All aspects of madra are essentially human interpretations of aura. You might notice a unique blend of aura around a computer, and you could break it down into storm aura and dream aura or what have you, or perhaps you could find a way to cycle it into your own madra and create what you called a "computer Path." What would you be able to do? I'm not sure. That sounds like a confusing blend of madra.
If humans are born with pure cores, what are sacred beasts born with?
If you're born a sacred beast, you are born with whatever madra your species has. You just have that naturally. So you're always born with aspected madra. So it depends on what you are. If you're not born a sacred beast, if you're just born a regular animal, you absorb ambient aura over time and slowly develop aspected madra. But since of course there is no pure aura, you can never develop pure madra.
Can new types of madra be made artificially? Like if somebody invented the computer on cradle, would it collect computer madra?
All aspects of madra are essentially human interpretations of aura. You might notice a unique blend of aura around a computer, and you could break it down into storm aura and dream aura or what have you, or perhaps you could find a way to cycle it into your own madra and create what you called a "computer Path."
The Blackflame Empire
The Blackflame Empire was founded by dragons.
In Cradle, dragons are a race of sacred beasts that can...well, they're dragons. You know what they can do. Like all sacred beasts and Remnants, their intelligence is based largely on their age and advancement levels, so many of them have human-level intelligence or better.
A family of black dragons once conquered and ruled half a continent, which is a truly massive amount of territory in a world the size of Cradle. They held their empire against all rivals for centuries.
Until a mysterious disaster killed most of the dragons, crippling their ability to continue the bloodline. As you know, no one in a fantasy novel ever discovers the truth behind ancient disasters, so I'm sure it will remain a mystery forever.
With their rulers dead or dying, a clan of humans stumbled upon a method of harnessing the dragons' power. They abandoned their old Path, instead choosing to develop the same sacred arts used by the dragons.
The Blackflame Empire shrunk in size, the humans lacking the ability to control quite as much territory as the dragons could, though it was still home to over a billion people.*
This clan started calling their main branch the Blackflame family, for obvious reasons, and they stayed in control for almost five hundred years.
But human bodies were not well-suited to the power of dragons. Slowly, the family declined, until even those who lived in the heart of the empire thought of them more as symbols and legends than actual individuals.
More and more of the day-to-day workings of the Empire were left to the Blackflames' traditional servants, the Naru clan. They became the face of the Blackflame empire, with their loyal reputation and shining emerald wings, and the people grew to know and trust them.
Fifty years ago, they quietly ascended the throne.
The first Naru clan Empress has since moved into private seclusion, and her son now rules the Empire. As for the Blackflame family themselves, they died out decades ago, gradually eaten from the inside out by their own madra.
That's the story, anyway.
*(A truly ridiculous number of people live in Cradle. The main planet of Iteration 110 is quite a bit bigger than Earth.)
Last question for now. Would a powerful enough remnant be able to operate like a human since it would retain most of its memories? Or asked another way, will we ever just see a remnant wandering around just minding its own business and interacting with other humans like it was still alive?(albite less powerful)
Yes, to both.
Remnants can cultivate, and as they do, they become more intelligent...and also more human.
That's why they crave human madra just as much as they do vital aura.
Sufficiently advanced Remnants are effectively weird-looking people. However, they are DIFFERENT people than the ones who died and left them behind.
We'll get into it.
Do cores convert a Sacred Artist's physical mass into madra, to create more madra?
Pure madra is actually generated by the way the human body processes life aura and blood aura. It really is the interaction of body, mind, and spirit, in a sense.
So a sacred artist's body is naturally consuming blood, dream, and life aura?
Basically, yeah.
What kind of benefits do Cradlites get for doing that?
The ability to use madra.
Can you create a new madra type by mixing two others together?
Yes, and in fact that's how most Paths work.
The classification of madra into aspects is purely a human invention to help them understand the properties of different Paths. You could combine water and fire madra into a burning, fluid, liquid power...if you figured out a way to do it.
Hey Will is there ultimately a finite number of souls in your universe that are just constantly reincarnated or do new souls pop out of somewhere over time ? Or maybe old souls kinda split and become new souls somehow?
Oh, this is kind of cool!The ancient Abidan who discovered the connection between human souls* and the Way did a lot of experiments to figure out what qualified someone as human.
A lot of the experiments were horrible. They would do things like burn away sections of the brain to see how small a brain could be before it no longer had a connection to the Way.
They learned a lot this way, but the bottom line is that each soul is new. An infant starts developing a connection to the Way that gets stronger as it grows and becomes more aware, and when you die, the soul vanishes. The connection is severed.
So obviously the Abidan did experiments with resurrection; if you do what Suriel did, reverting them to their previous condition, the connection is reestablished. If you go with a more medical style of resurrection, for instance stopping and re-starting a heart, it also works...up to a point. Your body can only remain dead a certain amount of time before repairs are useless and the soul has departed.
(These parts were fun for me to write because I got to play with the science of a different universe. What tests would we try if we could measure the effect and presence of a soul?)
So...is the soul consciousness itself? Is it a mystical force that ceases to exist when you die? Does it go somewhere else?
There are theories, but even the Abidan don't know.
*(Cradle and the Abidan have two different definitions of what a soul is. The Abidan say it's the undefined property or force that connects a human's will to the Way, while the Cradle "soul" is what they would call a madra network.)
Hey will, those experiments sound disturbingly similar yo how we learned about the physiology and anatomy of the brain in today's world. As a medical student you're always a little uncomfortable with some of the knowledge you have because of the way it was found. Is there a similar feeling among some of the Abidan? Like the information is useful, but they're a little guilty about how it was gained.
You've actually touched on something I'm a little nervous about, Rhys.Because the Abidan are all people who shoulder cosmic levels of responsibility, and who often ascended from positions of great power and influence. They'll be hard people who understand how life works, and accept dark truths without blinking. However, they'll also be people with strong moral convictions and opinions.So here's why I'm nervous: I hope I'm up to the task of conveying all that. Your question SHOULD have a wide variety of different answers, depending on the individual Abidan.Some of them would torture mortals for answers even now, because these are critical questions that affect the structure of existence, so they're far more important than individual lives. Others would never use the information at all, because of how it was obtained, and feel very strongly that it should be redacted.Everything is a complex situation among the Abidan, because they're all strong-willed, accomplished, intelligent individuals. With very different ideas on what is moral, immoral, or justified.I'll need to push myself to convey that effectively.
If the world is so large.... does gravity not work the same way in this universe?
Part of the answer is "magic," and part of it is how this world developed differently because of magic.I made Cradle very big. Why? A few reasons.First, a lot of wuxia and xianxia stories do it so they can scale up to ridiculous numbers. Where first the character thinks a huge city has ten thousand people, later a huge city has ten BILLION people.Also, they're so special they're not just one in a million, they're one in a TRILLION! And they go from crossing a thousand miles in a single step to a hundred thousand miles!
So in part, it's an homage to the genre.In part, it's so that I can set other stories in the same world and they've never even heard of the people, places, or events in Lindon's story.And in part it's to illustrate that this isn't Earth. The Iterations are Narnia-style "worlds," not different planets, but since it's a whole new universe each time, they are ALSO different planets. I wanted a way to show that without putting a second moon in the sky, so "greater surface area and population" it is.
***As for the mechanics of it: I said "Magic" earlier, but that basically boils down to "This is how vital aura works."Vital aura is the power of the world that sacred artists harvest and use to strengthen their madra. It's the spirit of the world, basically. It makes what would otherwise be an uninhabitable planet, habitable.The planet IS less dense than earth, but because of its huge volume, it's more massive. Gravity is much greater. Humans are supported by madra from birth in part because otherwise they wouldn't be able to adapt to the gravity.You have other problems too: does this less-dense core spin fast enough to create a magnetosphere? Wouldn't continents bigger than Earth's just be massive deserts everywhere except immediately along the coast? Wouldn't the surface of such a planet be wracked by storms? Vital aura!
I'll get into it later in the books, but for me building this world, aura served a couple of functions. First, it allows people to adapt to what would otherwise be very harsh natural conditions (Sacred Valley and the immediate surrounding areas have, so far, been very mild. Conditions will accelerate as we get deeper into Cradle). Second, vital aura is generated by natural forces AND it changes natural forces.
I'll continue showing how it works in future books, but the bottom line is that aura allows me to have thriving ecosystems where everything is fire-aspect: trees with burning fruit pollinated by insects with wings of flame, and so on and so forth. Same in the depths of the ocean and on the tops of clouds.
It's magic. But it DOES work consistently according to a set of rules, and it DOES interact with physics.However, I'm not as attached to real-world physics as Brandon Sanderson is. He enjoys figuring out the physical implications of every nuance in his magic systems. I do not enjoy that, so I will not be doing it.If there's a gap between real physics and magic, I'll be filling in that gap with magic. Not physics. Just a personal preference.
It has many times more surface area than Earth.Also, as B pointed out, we haven't seen any REALLY civilized places yet. We'll see a city in Blackflame, but even that will be a relatively small, isolated city.Thanks to vital aura and the power of madra, there are lots of inhabited places in Cradle that would be uninhabitable on Earth. For instance, there are cities on the bottom of the ocean. And on the surface of the ocean. And on the clouds.
How does madra regenerate? How does a technique that would increase regeneration work?
It's the interaction between life aura, blood aura, and dream aura in humans. It's really like human aura. Humans have a unique relationship to it, so it comes back as they exist and live and are healthy and alive. It comes from your body and mind. A regenerative cycling technique would improve the efficiency of that process or increase the speed of that process.
Qirani shifted her goggles from her eyes to her forehead and leaned back from the engine. Fire aspect Remnants burned inside the metallic chamber that was bigger than her entire house. She could see the spirits through the viewpoints pursuing their strange Remnant tasks. Even with heat and dampening scripts it was a sauna in here. Though not nearly as relaxing as the actual saunas she visited on her occasional holidays. Without her goggles she could get unfiltered looks at the engine’s control panel. It seemed fine. She'd welded two metal plates together and the control script was whole again. She gave it long eye making sure the light stayed steady.
When she was certain that the script was functional she sighed in relief and gathered up her tools. Her personal bound spirit was contained in a tank on her back. Burning Swan was a natural fire spirit she’d raised for years. And she could channel his energies for welding or, theoretically for combat. She hadn’t seen any duels since graduating the Academy and she didn’t expect she ever would again. Her grades in the arena had been adequate at best.
Her supervisor, a pudgy woman named Torkle, slammed the door open in an enthusiastic burst and practically danced down the stairs. She had a massive cloud of gray hair and a pair of smaller spirit tanks strapped to her forearms instead of a large one on her back.
“Oh my darling, my favorite how are you doing this fine evening?" Torkle sang. She did a pirouette and finished her spin with a flourish as she reached Qirani. Qirani smiled in spite of herself. Today she had planned to duck her supervisor and get home on time for once but Torkle’s enthusiasm was infectious.
“Not so bad” Qirani admitted “Finished sooner than I thought and we didn’t have any further breaches.” Torkle gasped in amazement, raising her hands to her lips. “You’re a genius and a savant! Without you we would be ashes in a crater.”
If Torkle saw someone lace up their boots she would exclaim that no one had ever tied such a perfect knot. When Qirani had finished her hundredth job with the company Torkle had commissioned a light sculpture of the triumphant moment. The job had been the inspection of rivets in a sewer runoff pipe and it had taken fifteen minutes. Still Qirani’s cynicism melted before Torkle’s positivity like ice under the sun “Nothing that bad, maybe a few burns.”
“Burns!” Torkle fluddered her collar as though overcome by the heat though she had only been in the engine room for a few seconds. “Theres nothing worse than the heat. To me you stave off doom. You’ll have dinner with our family tonight won’t you? I’ll take no for an answer but I won’t be happy about it.”
Qirani considered the offer instead of rejecting it out of hand like she usually did. A little money saved was a little closer to the vacation of her dreams. A local travel agency had been promoting a tour of the exotic Ashwind continent home of the dragons. She’d always wanted to see the place and since the tour made use of existing portal networks they could keep travel times down to only a month’s journey either way. Any use of portals skyrocketed the price since those were the workings of a Sage. Of course there was the cost of missing several months of work. But steadily she inched toward her dream.
She was about to accept Torkle’s offer when Burning Swan whispered in her mind. "Enemy" the spirit whispered. Burning Swan didn’t speak in actual words but in complex impressions passed through their bond. Suddenly the familiar clanks and hisses of the engine room sounded ominous and the shadows in the corners deepened. Qirani extended her spiritual sense but felt no one other than herself and Torkle. The supervisor frowned noticing her distress.
“Oh my, what’s wrong? You didn’t forget something did you? I left my spare wrist strap here last week and wouldn’t you know it that was the very day that my first one broke. I had just bought it too and it was a nicer one than I usually
She continued prattling but Qirani was paying more attention to her bond spirit. "Enemy?" she asked. The simpler the message the more clearly the spirit would understand. Burning Swan’s mental impression was firm."Enemy." His thoughts focused on Torkle. Qirani wondered if she should take Swan to a Soulsmith. Maybe a drudge could figure out where his senses had gone wrong. Torkle was harmless in every sense of the word. Not only had she once wept when she accidentally shut the door on a lizard’s tail but even if she did go mad and suddenly attack she wouldn’t be much of an opponent. Qirani wasn’t a fighter but she had still been forged through years of hard work. Torkle was soft and frail and much older.
The supervisor had one bond spirit of life and one of dreams which she used to monitor and coordinate her workers. Qirani was in more danger from burning her skin on an overheated bolt. Even so she decided to play it cautious. Just in case. “Torkle? You haven’t had any strange dreams have you?” Only days ago after the sky had turned black and the world had panicked one eyed leaves had drifted throughout the city and whispered reassurance. The voice of Emriss Silentborn the Monarch, spoke to the citizens directly and told them they were safe, protected.
Everyone Qirani knew had gotten the same message. Probably everyone on the continent had. But the Monarch had left a warning as well to remain on guard in their dreams. If they met a stranger there who asked to enter their minds they should deny him. That had been strange, of course but it was the warning of a Monarch. Torkle gasped when Qirani asked about her dreams. “Oh I almost forgot to tell you, I have had the best sleep of my life lately. I have this tea that you drink before bed and Emriss stake my lips now if I know what they put into it but the second I close my eyes I drift right off.
She kept chittering but she didn’t say anything about meeting a stranger in her sleep, Qirani didn’t hear anything wrong. A wary voice came to her again. "Look!" Burning Swan commanded. Qirani’s senses shifted somehow in a strange direction that she didn’t have the words for. She opened her Copper's sight and looked at the world but only a little. She extended her perceptions halfway too. This felt like Burning Swan had forcibly made her open an eye in her spirit halfway. The sensation was hazy and frustrating even uncomfortable but after only a moment Qirani saw something. A glimmer of white light hovering behind Torkle’s head. like a halo or perhaps a crown.
Qirani’s breath died and for a moment she couldn’t even speak. Then she bolted for the exit. She took the metal stairs two at a time leaving Torkle sputtering in confusion behind her. Qirani dashed down the metal catwalk reaching out her perception for a script on the wall ahead of her, the emergency alarm. Qirani triggered it with a flow of madra as she flew out of the room slamming the heavy door after her. She panted as she leaned against it. Through the thick glass of the round porthole at the center she saw Torkle heaving her way up the stairs. The enthusiastic energy that had filled the supervisor earlier had wiltered leaving a heavy weight of disappointment that hung visibly on her.
Her muffled voice came through the door. “Qirani why, this isn’t funny!?”
Tears filled Qirani’s eyes. She didn’t quite know what to do. She had heard the rumors of what happened to people wearing that crown, the legends really. But Torkle seemed fine. She didn’t know what to do but that was all right. She didn’t have to know. Security arrived a moment later, wearing thick tanks on their back and their limbs covered by the energy of their bound spirits. They strode up to Qirani as she stammered out her story.
“Torkle! She! My supervisor! Crown! I saw it! My spirit warned me!” Enemies, Burning Swan said. And this time Qirani heard the distinct tones of despair. Dreading what she would see she once again half opened her spiritual senses as Swan had shown her. Both guards had a faint white ring floating behind their heads. She backed up against the wall as the alarm died and the door slid open. A panting Torkle made it through turning to glare at Qirani.
“What has gotten into you? If you don’t want to have dinner with us I’m not going to force you. Is it my cooking?” Torkle still seemed normal but disturbingly so. Qirani glanced down the hallway toward the exit. She would never make it not with security here. You didnt get to be a company guard by only getting mediocre grades in your arena classes. Torkle knelt at her side and gave her a kindly smile. “Poor thing you're so frightened? What do you think is going to happen to you?”
Qirani shivered and didn’t answer. “Come on then, shoo boys and leave her alone. Let’s talk in my office my sweet girl.”
Torkle led Qirani down the hallway but at the first corner they rounded Qirani shrieked. There was a body lying in blood soaked carpet. He wore a tank on his back and a security uniform. But without seeing his face she didn’t recognize him. The first guard strode over the body the second stopped at the sound of her shriek and Torkle turned with a frown. She was standing with one foot casually braced on the mans skull. Are you still scared? You’re safe with me Qirani I swear.
“Did you kill him?” Qiranis accusatory finger trembled. Torkle looked around blankly. “Who?” “Him right there! You’re standing on his head!” Torkle looked all the way around the hallway until her expression softened. “Oh dear. Oh dear. You need that vacation more than I realized. Stress can get to all of us sweet girl.” With a dawning horror, Qirani realized that this wasn’t an act. Torkle really couldn’t see the man’s body "enemy" Burning Swan insisted.
Qirani followed Torkle to her office and sat on a plush chair. The place was so ordinary and familiar that it was easy to forget anything was wrong. Torkle chattered as she brewed tea while Qirani remained silent. The supervisor poured two cups and slid one over on a saucer. "Take a drink and relax you poor thing. I didn’t mean to work you so hard.”
Qirani took it on reflex. She had tea with Torkle hundreds of times. Before she thought about it she had already taken her first sip. Someone hammered on the office door. Torkle didn’t seem surprised. “Could you get that for me, dear?”
Qirani had her hand on the door, but Burning Swan was vibrating in its case trying to extend fiery wings. "Danger!" She removed her hand. “Why don’t you get it?” “It has to be you.” Torkle sipped from her own tea and smiled. “Go on my girl." A man’s voice came from outside, regal and assured. “Let me in Qirani and I will explain everything.”
She stumbled back from the door and looked from her tea to her supervisor. “You brought me into a dream” The steel container strapped to Torkle’s left wrist was open and there was no shimmering purple light coming from inside. Her Dream Remnant was missing. She had used a technique or an elixir in the tea, or both. Qirani looked at the window which was made of the same thick barely transparent glass as most in this place. She wasn’t strong enough to break her way through.
But she could melt it. "Swan, please?" With a quick flick of madra she released a panel on the side of her spirit tank. A wing of flame madra emerged and plunged into the glass which began to glow red hot. Torkle leaned back so fast she spilled her tea. “Really now, you’re going to dry out my skin” Qirani’s own skin was singed by the time she melted enough glass and she wasn’t even sure that going out a different way would help her escape. How much of this was a dream and how much was real?
She had to try something. She almost leaped through but the red hot glass around the hole made her hesitate. As did the voice from the door. “There’s no risk to you,” the stranger said. “Life is far safer for my friends than my enemies.” If Qirani hadn’t been warned she might have opened the door already. But she knew who the voice belonged to, the Silent King..
She gritted her teeth and prepared to plunge through the hole in the glass to the desolate and metal and concrete streets outside. It was late enough that no one was nearby and she wasn’t sure if that was a curse or a blessing. The burning glass was a threat one she could risk. She snapped her goggles over her eyes and pulled up the collar of her thick fire resistant work uniform. Then she screamed as a face floated out of the shadows from the window a face but not a human one.
It was like a floating head with pebbly flesh such a dark purple as to be almost black. One giant eye took up most of its face and its mouth was stretched into a strange almost smile with an expression she couldn’t read. It had two boneless arms that undulated slowly. "I have come to pull you from the abyss of silence" the spirit whispered "To free you from the chains that bind your mind and restore you to the waking world."
Then as though if it had suddenly remembered something it added "And don’t be afraid" Qirani commanded Burning Swan to attack but its fiery wing shivered and retreated. "Not enemy", the spirit told her, "and strong"
There came a crash from behind Torkle’s desk. The supervisor had hurled her teacup, part of a set she’d inherited from her mother to the ground. Where it shattered. She glared furiously at the one eye spirit with teeth bared.
“Get out” Torkle shrieked “I’ll claw out your soul!” The dark, floating spirit giggled. "That would be impressive." The Silent King’s voice from the door was amused. “Intruders? How bold.”
A force slammed into the door shaking the room. Qirani hesitated only another instant before she reached out to the strange spirit tendril. If this was an elaborate trick by the Dreadgod to get her to walk outside it was working. The spirit pulled her out through the glass coming within an inch of searing her flesh off. But Qirani didn’t land on the street outside Torkle’s office. She was back in the engine room standing before a welded steel panel. Had she fallen asleep after finishing her job? How would that be possible? The dark spirit still floated before her, chuckling in an unnerving voice.
"Walk with me, unless you wish to see the void of death." “Who are you?” she demanded “What’s going on?” "You’ll see "it said "And you can call me Dross."
On the topic of the planet Cradle and vital aura. Is the planet called Cradle because it's great for cultivation? OR is there another reason like some awesome being in the center who is not yet hatched / or is being suppressed? Such an incredible entity might be the source of the vital aura that makes Cradle such an great place to cultivate.
Also, will Lindons double cores allow to for things like ascending to gold with black dragon madra and then raising the second cool to iron thus adapting Lindons blood forged body in a way the original human dragon path cultivators could not?
Also, is the Black dragon path madra another way to consume and process the madra other paths?
1.) It's called Cradle because it's great for cultivation, but there are often double meanings in Abidan designations. The Elder Empire world is called Asylum, which means protection, but it is also has...other implications.
2.) No, that specific chain of events will not happen.
3.) No.
If a grown human, from another iteration, travelled to Cradle will they naturally develop madra channels and a core, and if so how long would it take?
A baby from another Iteration would develop a madra system normally, if perhaps weakly. An adult would gradually develop one, but it would take years and would probably be weak or even deformed without the equivalent of spiritual surgery. ...and you have no idea how tempting it was to use that answer to imply that Lindon was from another world. “A baby from another Iteration would develop a madra system normally, if perhaps weakly. Maybe they would be considered weaker than their fellows, even...Unsouled.” But he’s not, so no shenanigans.
Are there any cool places/creatures/magic systems you've thought of that you haven't had a chance to share with us in the books, but can talk about here?
Yes there are cool places/creatures/magic systems.
In Cradle, one on the things that I was originally intending, was I wanted ziel to have another sacred beast contract. Just like Lindon does, because we don't see a lot of that, mainly because I don't want to introduce two characters, so it's not something you see anybody but lindon do very much. There are other sacred artists out there that work with sacred beasts. What I really wanted to do was show off somebody else that did that.
Now what his original design called for, instead of a giant hammer and a script based path, he had a void key and he kept creatures in it, and he was kinda like a Pokemon trainer if I'm being honest. So he had a core that allowed him to share and connect with madra from a bunch of different creatures, but he formed a contract in a different way. What he would do, is he would then release these less advanced Sacred Beasts that he had a bond with, and use them according to the situation.
To be honest it was too complex of a power set, it's more suited to a protagonists than a secondary character. Mainly because you have to introduce every single little creature he's fighting with, and you have to describe it, and you have to name it, and because they're sacred beasts they're mostly intelligent, so you have to give them a personality, so instead of creating one character you're creating half a dozen characters.
So I had a mantis that used sword madra, but he didn't grow any bigger, so was literally like the size of a mantis, so he would like go and attack....there was some cool stuff that I did with him, that was neat. Then I could have him really understand Sacred Beasts and talk about the difference between sacred beasts and humans, and how they viewed the world, and there's just a lot of things I wanted to do with that, and that was a cool thing that never made it into the books.
One of the things I developed recently, I spent some time just going through making up some magic systems for fun. One of the ones I worked on was the idea that spells, it's a world I'm envisioning kinda wizards, casting spells, so of course when you think of the traditional fantasy setting, wizards casting spells, it's a very intellectual thing, but there becomes kind of a problem where the spread of information, like so if you have wizards that work like they do in D&D, where its all knowledge and education, and then you have the internet, every wizard is gonna have access to every spell. Not that I was intending to give the internet, but there's a perfectly efficient was to learn these spells.
So therefore I thought, okay what is a way to keep the intellectual nerdy side of it but also it'd be a very personal thing that you really do have to explore in kind of an arcane way. So I thought of, each spell you have to really describe in a personal, interactive way, and by describe I mean write down in a book, or you could do sculptures, you can do songs, you could do poems. What you're doing is you're describing a concept, and this whole whatever, alter or whatever you're building that becomes the structure of the spell, it suggest the nature of what the spell does, so if you're sculpting a really big buff dude, and then you're writing all this poetry about how strength was the most important value, and then you wrote a thesis in your own blood on how only strength matters, maybe you'd get a strength buff, maybe you wouldn't anything because you didn't put enough passion into it. You're subjectively describing the effect you want, rather than objectively describing it like a programmer would to a computer, because its not literally interpreting your commands, its is interpretively and artistically manifesting your ideas.
That feels more magical to me, instead of a scientific mathematical sort of magic system, is more of an artistic, expressive magic system. I thought that would be a cool way of doing it, and it could take years to craft the perfect spell for you, but then once you do, the spells are very flexible and they have a lot of power to them, its not just a spell that sets things on fire, its a spell that is fire, is a living flame or is a spirit of fire or creates a fiery house I don't know, I didn't flesh it out too far. That's something that I really liked, that concept, and that's something I might work on further developing some day.
How did the Blood line powers originate and how come the Jae Clan don't have any? Are they not one the "Great Families?"
Not everyone inherits a bloodline legacy. Higher-level sacred beasts can take human form, so some people have sacred beast lineage that gives them certain innate supernatural abilities. That includes the Arelius family, but not the Jai clan.
In most cases, a bloodline legacy means that you're naturally inclined more toward one Path than another, though. Your madra might not be entirely pure, even at birth.
The Arelius are an exception to that.
How do the people on Cradle age? Is it similar to many other Xianxia's, where the lifespan increases with every new cultivation rank? If yes, how old could a person approx. get?
Regardless of whether or not their lifespan is increased via ranking up, they will live longer on average. Their immune systems and internal organs appear to become far better at combating pathogens and toxins. As they human body ages, its immune system weakens, but who knows if that is the case with an iron body?
Furthermore, the elderly do seem to cling to life rather tightly, as evidenced by the jai clan. Not to mention that they would be well along their paths, and very hard to kill in combat.
As is usually the case with raccoons, Family of Raccoons is correct. Below roughly Underlord, it's just that their spirits compensate for age really well. Living over 100 isn't too uncommon.
At Underlord, you actually start to age slower. It partially depends on your madra, but Underlords can live to be 200+.
More advanced sacred artists can live even longer.
So the reason that Blackflame is corrosive to madra channels is because the fire part slighty damages them, and the destruction part speeds that up?
That, and because their cycling techniques emphasize output over safety. The original version of this Path was developed by pure-blooded black dragons for use by other pure-blooded black dragons, so they weren’t concerned about the fragility of humans.
