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Questioner

What path do professional sex workers follow? Are they in a house and ranked like the janitors?

Will Wight

Prostitutes often follow dream Paths, because dream madra can be used to alter appearances, induce emotions, and even find potential customers. In the Blackflame Empire, they are of course ranked. Everything is ranked. The top brothel is The Court of Roses, which caters to members of the royal family and influential clan leaders. The number one courtesan in the Court of Roses is Haru Mei, a woman on the Path of Twining Vines. She cycles aura of life and dreams, in a strange combination that helps her sense what others are feeling and manipulate those sensations.

Tievel

This would be a longer one, but any chance we could (someday) get a primer on how and why "internal" vital aura aspects operate differently than others? Such as blood and dream aura, which non-blood/dream madra shouldn't be able to affect, but the spirit somehow defends against Ruler techniques of them since Blood artists can't go around giving Lords heart attacks willy nilly.

Will Wight

Maybe someday?

Questioner

What other stories and monsters are the cradle kaiju inspired by?

Will Wight

So obviously they are modeled off the sacred guardian beasts of Chinese and east Asian mythology however those are benevolent divine creatures and obviously the Dreadgods are not; they are quite malevolent. So they are also modeled off of any big kaiju, you got it right, they are just big monsters.  So I picked them, I didn't model their power off the actual mythological versions, that would have been difficult to do.  So I kinda just picked their powers based on, like, I had their names kinda tied to what they were and then I (annoying subnautica notification).  So I came up with their appearances while coming up with their names and based on that I kind of had their powers developed and then I kind of just themed them as big kaiju around that.  So the bleeding phoenix of course, ok, so I'm going blood and rebirth, that makes sense and that's where that power came from. And the Silent King was I was like ok, white tiger with a cool halo, that sounds kind of mental to me so that's dream madra.  So then I had the Silent King mind controlling people.  Then there's the Wandering Titan who is big and made of stone, big crushy, smashy guy.

CaptnThumbs

Mercy's path seems to be a mixture of madras. Is the book in her soulspace a requirement to her path?

Will Wight

Yes, the book is, in a sense, her Path.

Questioner

Eithan vs. Hellsing: I think Hellsing would lose, but how would the fight go?

Eithan vs. Queen Mab from the Dresden Files

Eithan vs. Thor

Yerin vs. the Juggernaut (from x-men)

Lindon vs. the Wolverine

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR BLACKFLAME**

Eithan vs. the turtle in Blackflame: We know already that the turtle will win the awesomeness fight, but in a death match, which would walk out? (The turtle was mentioned in the previous blog)

Will Wight

1.) Eithan vs. Alucard

I'm assuming you mean Alucard as an individual and not the Hellsing Organization as a whole. Eithan would win because, as overwhelming as Alucard looks, he has a number of exploitable weaknesses.

One-on-one, Eithan would just keep cutting him up until he fully released his powers or ran out of regeneration. If he fully released his powers, then his original body is vulnerable, and since Eithan can instantly sense everything around him in a fairly broad space, he would know that and kill the original.

Even in the situation where he had to go around killing all the individuals, an army isn't really much threat to an Underlord.

2.) Eithan vs. Queen Mab

I...am going to skip over this one for spoiler reasons.

There's a subplot in Blackflame that revolves around what Path Eithan is on, and I can't answer this question without affecting your interpretation of the Path.

3.) Eithan vs. Thor

If you mean the Marvel comics Thor, that would be a good fight. Thor can fly and summon lightning, which would be difficult to deal with, but in the end if Eithan was really motivated to kill him, he could.

No specifics, again, because I don't want to influence your reading of Eithan's Path.

4.) Yerin vs. the Juggernaut

I'm not sure...this is a cool matchup to consider. I'm playing this fight out in my head, and I think it would come down to how long it took Yerin to figure out that she needed to get his helmet off.

She couldn't break the armor, but at the same time he'd be too slow to hit her. I'd think she'd probably kill him through gaps in the armor, cutting him slowly with sword madra. Death by a thousand cuts.

5.) Lindon vs. Wolverine

Wolverine tears him apart. No contest.

Now, if you mean Lindon versus A wolverine, I think he could probably handle that.

6.) SPOILER ALERT

Eithan vs. The Turtle

NONE CAN STAND AGAINST THE MIGHT OF THE TURTLE!

(...but not really, Eithan would win.)

Hammy

This may be spoiler or RAFO but, Are there still Blackflame Dragons hiding in the world? If they are hiding i assume it is because other dragons hunt them down.

Will Wight

There are some individuals out there with Blackflame madra besides Lindon and Orthos, yes.

Conzerban

How do you get inspiration for characters? 

Will Wight

I described my outline process earlier, so when I go through the book, I realize kind of what people are, what roles they're going to play, so I then label them kind of that way. So somebody like Harmony I put as like "Akura young heir" kinda thing, and that's how I refer to him in my notes. Ziel was a specific character I was trying to develop so I called him Ziel, and then the other two were kind of "rival 1" and "rival 2" or whatever. So then I go through and I go "Okay, so now I know what their role is in the plot, and how they have to relate to Lindon". Then I go what would be a cool personality and arc and background to give them, and so I do that a number of ways. First of all I kinda know the sorta person they have to be because I know what sort of role they have to perform. So I know that Ekeri in Ghostwater had to be standing outside, had to really want to get to Lindon, and there's a few motivations she could have for that; she could really hate Lindon, she could be very curious, she could have been scorned by him in some way, or she could just be really greedy and want the treasure, and so I when I thought greedy treasure I thought dragons, and the dragons are one of the factions on the island, I already knew that. So I was like oh great they had gold dragons that makes sense, dragon greed, that all fits, and so I alter it from there, so that's where that comes from.

So that's how I do it, I do role and then I do sort of now I know kinda their traits, now I can build a personality around that, and then I can figure out based on the other people in the world, kinda what a cool other thing would be to do, like cool power sets to give them, and that kind of thing.

Somebody asked if I could talk about how I come up with names of the characters. Every way. All the ways. I spend so much freaking time naming characters....so much....its hurts....deep inside....I cry.....  No it really is one of the most difficult things for me, I don't know why that's the hardest thing for me, because I kinda just do baby name books, I do random names, I pick a word that kinda has a sort of feeling that I want for a character and a tweak it until it looks like a name. I try to give the the different clans and factions their own naming conventions, both for cohesion and to kinda build the world around them and just to give me a shortcut with the name, cos like I gotta give them a dragon type name, or an Akura type name. You like the Ziel name? I'm very glad, because Ziel was one of the few names where I was like, i really like this name, Ziel spelled this way, and then so I was just looking for a character to attach it to, so I was like I'm definitely using this freakin' character name because I don't want to make up another one.

So whenever I do think of a name, I have a name document on my phone, its one of the ones I use the most, so I hear a unique name or I think of a variation of another name, I write it down in my notes and come back to it later when I'm looking for a name.

Jamos

Regardless of if he would, could Orthos transform into a more human form like the gold dragons?

Will Wight

Yes, absolutely he could.

Ray745

 I saw this sentence in the same chapter we first see "web of madra" used and it caught my eye

"Well this is a lucky daym" he said, hopping down from the wall. His blond hair flowed behind him like a banner, and a simple Endorcer technique made him drift slowly to the muddy ground.

I know of no Enforcer technique that would be able to slow someone falling. In fact, the only way Eithan, specifically, could slow himself would be with soulfire controlling aura. Either Will made a typo there or just hadn't fully mapped out the sacred arts system in his head yet, this is Chapter 5 of Soulsmith, our first meeting with Eithan, so I can't say for sure which it might be, I'd be interested to hear /u/Will_Wight 's answer to it.

Will Wight

It’s a construct that makes him lighter.

Middle of chapter eight (Soulsmith):

Eithan skipped along behind, touching down with one foot and using an Enforcer binding to launch himself far enough that he almost appeared to be drifting through the air.

In my original character sheet for him, he used the construct all the time, and we were going to explore it in Blackflame. But he didn’t really need it, so I just didn’t go into it.

SqrlyGrly

So when Charity is talking to Lindon, she tells him that Mercy isn't an option for marriage because Mercy needs to get to peak archlord and then she can do what she wants.

But Mercy was engaged to Harmony while gold.

So what changed? Or did Charity lie? And why?

Will Wight

Mercy can’t do what she wants before peak Archlord. She has to listen to the family, like when the family engaged her to Harmony.

Questioner

I'm still turning over the line the Beast King had about "two golds he put to a task (mercy and Yerin)." Not sure if I missed something, Will missed something, or it's actually a secret and we didn't notice him influence them. Aside from that, it was the best book in the series for me.

Will Wight

It was meant to imply that the beasts they kept having to run around were in fact meant to steer their path and guide the conflict, but I recognize that was too vague. I cut some of the scenes that would have clarified that.I might just change his line in future editions.

Questioner

Would the top damage weapons from our world stack against Cradle?

Will Wight

They don't. At the level at which you are still affected by purely physical attacks, so Lords and below. Even Archlords would be affected by the artillery or military weapons to a degree. But they can react so quickly, and then they can throw missiles from their hands, a feasibly unlimited number of times, so they can break our stuff we can't break them. It would still be very difficult to beat an army led by lords, but you could. You could fight them. That's something where superior technology could even the odds to a degree. But once you get beyond Lord, to Sages, Heralds, and Monarchs, any one of them just wins. No interaction, Sages teleport you into space, what are you gonna do?

Will Wight

You shouldn't be looking for the “right” names for your progression tiers. The ones that fit your world perfectly and really click for you.

The truth is, literally anything works.

You don’t need to look for the terms that fit your world now, just pick names you like and then change your world to make them fit.

Cradle has Copper through Gold for the first advancement levels, but precious materials have absolutely nothing to do with the sacred arts. That was just an easy way for me to visually show progression, so I picked valuable materials and then changed the setting to support that choice.

You can pick any labeled sequence. Materials that increase in value or hardness. Luminosity; maybe someone starting out is Dull and a master is Radiant (or a Windrunner ayooo). Someone mentioned colors, which would absolutely work because a rainbow is a labeled sequence.

You could still DO colors that don’t progress in order of the rainbow, but it’s less intuitive.

There’s increasing physical scope: he’s a room-scale mage because his spells can only affect anything in the same room he’s in, but this archmage over here is a national-scale mage who’s shaping the weather and sending his eye familiars all over the sky to watch you.

Increasing size: Tiny, Medium, Large, Massive. Sounds stupid? Sure it does, so tweak it: “His brontosaurus shook the earth with its steps, so its body contained enough mana to bury their entire camp. She hid inside the doorway, closing her eyes, clutching her shivering baby velociraptor to her chest.”

In that case, you don’t need official categories. Big, Bigger, Biggest. You just need to know that the bigger your dinosaur is physically, the more magic power it can hold.

In that way, a progression system doesn’t need discrete tiers. If your magic capacity is measured in balloons, and you have fifteen balloons of magic but the enemy has figured out how to get one massive hot air balloon, who has the advantage? How does that affect what spells you can both cast?

That’s something where the comparison isn’t as clear-cut as it is in Cradle (a Jade beats an Iron every time), but there are still crystal-clear methods of progress (increase the size of your balloons or the number).

I say all this not to give you more ideas, but to encourage you to stop spending time trying to think of the one that fits your setting BEST. Any of them work.

The one that fits your setting best is the one that you make fit your setting. So spend an hour brainstorming, pick the idea you think sounds the coolest, then work it into your setting.

If you finish your first book and your readers tell you that your tiers of progression are dumb (which I can’t imagine unless they’re intentionally ridiculous, like you measure power output in Spirit Clowns), THEN you go back and change it. It’s no big deal to change it later.

Any tips on how to overcome this hump?

Yes, pick literally any progressive sequence, attach it to your setting, and move on.

Questioner

What inspired the liquid madra test in Sacred Valley?

Will Wight

What inspired it?  Like for me writing it?  Or for the people in universe who came up with it?  For me writing it, I don't know, I want to say it was the water glass test from Hunter Hunter.  Which is, as I mentioned earlier, just a really cool magic system.

(Bedrock!  But no appearance from the Flintstones.  Sad times.)

So, I want to say it was the water glass test, but it actually wasn't.  So that's how you test your nan in Hunter Hunter.  So people always assume that is the inspiration, and I wish I could say that it was, because that's a really cool device, but it actually wasn't it.  I was just like, OK, what's a thing that they could do to test this belief that they have?  And s therefore, it had to be formless. then it had to take a certain form.  So I was just like, yeah it would be cool, but I also wanted it to be simple, strait forward, digestible.  The kind of thing you would make up when you didn't really know what you were talking about.  And I was like, yeah.  Water in a bowl.

Questioner

If Lindon had consumed part of Eithan would the Dreadgod arm have broken?

Will Wight

That was honestly one of the scenes I really liked because that was a moment I didn't think of until I was writing it. Like I wanted Lindon to have one goodbye gesture and I realized oh man he can shake his hand and tried to drain power from him. But it doesn't work because it's blocked by Ozriel's armor. So that does not work. That is not a way that Eithan sneakily left Lindon power. I've seen people speculating that maybe he did get something and that Eithan allowed it. No, the armor blocked it and he couldn't allow Lindon that power now without violating the Eledari Pact which he is now bound by once again. The only reason he was out of it is the same reason why, well this is an interesting thing, let me go into this for a second while I'm sitting here at the bottom of the ocean.

My initial mechanism, my initial plan, for having Eithan hide was that I was going to have Suriel do research into how Abidan retire and what retired Abidan do, how that mechanism works because that's clearly a mechanism by which he could have been hiding, right? When Judges retire, or when powerful Abidan are allowed to retire they can get out of Eledari Pact by reintroducing themselves into the Iteration in which they were born or certain other Iterations that will allow them like Sanctum, you can just live there if you want. So they give up their extra powers that are beyond the world but are still very powerful and knowledgeable and have a lot of Authority and so on and so forth. So they don't give up their full power, they are still extremely powerful. Usually what they do is they go into hiding and just kind of live like normal people.

But they know Ozriel couldn't have done that on Cradle because he would be immediately found out because their Presence would have found him, they would have scanned him, and found out who he was. However, the Presences have a sort of a shared memory and a way that they check facts against the Way. Like against pure order and truth. And that is fundamentally incorruptible except for the fact that Ozriel found a way to do it. So the idea was that he broke into the records, the metaphysical record storage system, and changed his origin so nobody recognizes it and just retires normally to Cradle.

So one of the reasons she's sure he can't be on Cradle in book one is that he can't be because we would see him and notice him and, as soon as I saw, would recognize him. Except that he just basically persuaded reality that he was a different person than he was. So I really wanted to do that because it would have first of all allowed for her to explore some interesting mechanisms of the system and the way it works. But that was a casualty of me not knowing how many books were going to be in the series. So I didn't know how to pace out the Abidan story line correctly because I didn't know how many parcels I was going to be allowed. And when I finally got there I was like okay so do I need, do I want Suriel doing research into background information on the world and the metaphysics of this system that we're not even really involved in yet or do I want her doing cool things like fighting? And, I eventually decided that it was more fun to have her intervene in worlds and fight Vroshir and all that kind of stuff than do researching behind the scenes.

I liked that better because it wasn't a single artifact that a bunch of transcendent craftsmen created together. It was a scheme that Ozriel cooked up and one that only he could have executed because the reason why other people can't do that is because you would have to be skilled in almost every other discipline and he is. So he can do things other people can't do. So, anyway, that would have been fun.

Questioner

it's mentioned there is only one underlord in the desolate wilds, and only a handful in the blackflame empire, so who is the underlord in the wilds? Assuming someone from the cloud hammers or the 5th unmentioned sect, or another unmentioned sect?

Will Wight

The Cloud Hammers are a relatively small sect, but they produced an Underlord and have a pretty good chance at a second one, so their influence is growing in the Blackflame Empire. And the Arelius family is far bigger and more important than the Jai clan branch from the Desolate Wilds. I should have explained that better in the book, using clearer terminology, and I apologize for that. The Jai in the Wilds are the unimportant. The cast-offs. The only reason the main branch of the clan got involved with them at all was because of Eithan's actions, as well as Cassias' and Jai Long's. Otherwise, the main branch would have let them die alone and never noticed or cared. EDIT: And the Cloud Hammer Underlord stayed out of the events of Soulsmith because he considered squabbling for prizes with Golds beneath him. If Eithan had stayed longer (cough cough if the books were longer cough cough), then the CH Underlord would have made an appearance.

Terrible

What is the history of the Broken Star path (its techniques and their function, madra composition, formation of the Jai clan, etc)

Will Wight

I'm not going to answer that here, mainly because it would be too much effort right now, and I need some time off. But there's been enough interest in the Broken Star that I'll probably do a proper exploration of the Path at some point.

Tim

Will, what does the Eight-Man-Empire, when they have conquered a country. Do they just take a of food and gold and move on, therefore simply going through the effort simply to show that they CAN conquer a whole country.OR, do they take as much as they can manage to carry?

Will Wight

I hope to show them in action at some point, Tim, so I don't want to give too much away about how they operate.

I will say that they almost always have a specific target. They're going after a person, place, or thing that they want.

Questioner

Eithan mentions to Cassias that the Naru clan ran their own students through the trials. But how did they activite them when each trial requires a Blackflame technique to be used on the crystals?

Will Wight

That's just the traditional way to activate it; there are other ways, like the ward key someone else in this thread mentioned.Besides which, the Naru clan has an extensive collection of Blackflame treasures and artifacts. If they needed to produce Blackflame madra to activate the course, they could.

Cash4Golda

Are any there any characters whose personality is based off of a real person, in your life or otherwise?

Will Wight

Cash for Gold now! So, I don't really do that. That's a common question I get and I understand why, but I actually don't really base characters off of the personalities of people I know. I don't find that to be helpful. For one thing, and I know this sounds bad, I find it difficult to reduce people I know's personality to a character that I am comfortable working with. So, it would be a caricature of them and I don't feel very comfortable...I know a lot of people get a lot of inspiration from that and they are cool with that. Also, all of my friends and family reads my books, so they would immediately know who this was. So, I guess I can take mannerisms from people sometimes, I can take character details and cool names from people, but I don't really do that.