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Questioner

Is everyone a Sacred Artist on Cradle, or does every community practice Sacred Arts in some way, for example, is it possible on some remote island there would be people not practising Sacred Arts?

Will Wight

When people in Cradle call themselves sacred artists, what they're really saying is that they're actively pursuing advancement. They cycle aura every day, they practice their techniques, they hone their craft, and so on.

So while madra would be a part of everyone's everyday life, and while everyone has technically attained some advancement level in the sacred arts, not everyone is a sacred artist.

Questioner

Would Wind and Destruction cause damage like Blackflame does? Or is that only the combination of Fire and Destruction?

Will Wight

Sure. Blackflame is a good combination because fire naturally releases destruction aura as it burns fuel, which wind doesn’t normally do. But yeah, you could have other combinations that could conceivably work just as well.Blackflame has also had generations of work refining their techniques, so that’s another reason why it’s effective. Other fire/destruction Paths might not be as efficient or complete.

ryan

Do any iterations not have a way of ascending?

Will Wight

Asylum does not. It’s locked.

Reddan

On a bit of a Suriel kick here with these questions:

How many years has the current Suriel been alive?

Is she as strong/skillful as her predecessor? (Is that a useful distinction or are all the judges really close together)

How well did she know her predecessor?

What other court roles could Suriel have filled if she wanted?

Was/is Suriel a "wild" Abidan, or did she come from Sanctum (or another place like Sanctum)?

Will Wight

1.) Age:

...I won't lie to you, I don't know. I haven't invented that answer yet.

2.) Skill:

She's more temperamentally suited to the role of the Phoenix than her predecessor was, but they both had different strengths and weaknesses. All in all, they were basically on the same tier.

3.) Familiarity:

She worked alongside him for many years. They were very familiar.

4.) Roles:

She has skill in almost all the other roles, but she's only Judge-level as a Phoenix. That's pretty common.

Most of the Judges excel in one area, though they're skilled in several others. The only exceptions are Gadrael, Makiel, and Ozriel: Gadrael because he's useless in every area but one, Makiel because he has the skills of a Judge in two areas, and Ozriel because he's good at everything. Except healing.

5.) Wild or not?

She did ascend from an Iteration on her own; she's not from Cradle, but she's not from Sanctum either. She mastered her original magic system before rising into the Abidan and eventually making her way onto the Court.

Before she was a Judge, she was personally acquainted with both Ozriel and the previous Suriel.

MountainKing

Will Wight

Yes, used soulfire decays very quickly.

Questioner

Which sacred beast produces the best bristle material for the Aurelias Clans brooms?

Will Wight

There's a species of eagle whose tail-feathers have a unique relationship with wind aura. When you sweep such a feathered broom, the wind actually gathers up all the dust and loose debris in a small area and piles it neatly up. Scholars believe that the patterns in the feathers act as a script to produce such a unique effect, but no one really knows for sure. In battle, the Broom Sage used bristles from the tail of the Thorn Mountain Boar, a fifteen-story-tall boar that ate forests. The wood for his broom was taken from a branch of the Underworld Herald, a self-aware ancestral tree that once grew upside-down in an underground kingdom of blood and darkness.

Questioner

Will we ever get to see the Iteration with the strongest power level?

Will Wight

I don't know. Good question.

Will Wight

Suriel, the Phoenix

The power of the Phoenix is the power of restoration. An Abidan of the Phoenix Division can use the Way to return order to a system, restoring it to prime condition. Phoenixes are used as mechanics and engineers as often as healers, and are prized on any battlefield.

Though skilled Phoenix Abidan are rare, and their division small, they are also very durable. A Phoenix is said to be the second-most difficult of the Abidan to destroy (after a Titan), since powerful Phoenixes can regenerate even from total destruction.

The Phoenix herself, Suriel, is the only entity capable of restoring the condition of an entire Iteration at once. This can cause irregularities for both the Spiders and the Hounds, so she is required to notify Sector Control prior to temporal reversion.

Ozriel is well-known as the most powerful Judge since the first generation of the Abidan Court, and possibly of all time. However, he has no ability as a Phoenix. He has made it a point to befriend both the previous Suriel and this one, holding their talents in high esteem.

TransEmo

is balance generally an important mechanic in cradle magic systems?

Will Wight

I’m not sure how to respond to the balance question, because I don’t know what you mean by balance. Me balancing the Paths so they’re all roughly on the same level? The Paths keeping their madra in balance? Balancing different factions?

TransEmo

more like a general yin yang type deal. like destruction aura but no creation, is that a oddity and most things have an opposite to compliment?

Will Wight

I had a balance element to Cradle for a while, but I ditched it for (meta answer incoming) being more philosophical than fun.

Questioner

Is the a cycling technique that aids digestion?

Will Wight

The Path of the Crimson Furnace has developed a cycling technique that they use in conjunction with their Iron bodies to eat as many spirit-fruits and sacred elixirs and pills as possible. They gorge themselves on sacred beast meat and sacred herbs, and then digest as quickly as possible. Their Iron body involves stuffing yourself to bursting and then using life madra to accelerate your body so that you digest it quickly. After about two weeks of this, combined with some pills they have developed for the purpose, your body becomes able to do it naturally. It's a great all-purpose Iron body; they are able to receive further benefits from elixirs that improve the body, and much of what they eat strengthens them and makes them tougher. The only downside is an accelerated metabolism: now they HAVE to eat all the time. At Jade, they have a cycling technique to go along with it. It allows them to milk further benefits out of restorative pills and elixirs, and extracts aura from the things they eat, improving advancement.

Sancus

Did Suriel know that Makiel's plan to 'fix' fate on Cradle (e.g. deal with Lindon/Eithan) was to wake the Bleeding Phoenix Early, potentially killing them? Was Makiel's plan actually to kill them, or was he being honest in terms of just trying to get them to advance off iteration faster?

Will Wight

Makiel was being honest, but he was also working on many levels at once. Either they die, or they get forced off Cradle, or they get pushed into a situation from which they can’t affect fate anymore. Win-win for him.

Questioner

Why aren’t Monarchs more liberal with their ability to bring back the dead? Is it a specific skill of Northstrider, too much of a resource drain, or was there something special about the Uncrowned King Tournament to give all the fighters infinite lives?

Will Wight

It is the sort of thing where... if you're not Suriel, you can't reverse time for an entire Iteration. You can't just effortlessly bring people back to life. It is something you can do if you're right there, if you have authority over them, and if they're not that powerful. So, the more powerful somebody is, the more authority it would take to bring them back. [clearing 20 squares in stardew] 

So that's the reason why they don't constantly bring everybody back from the dead. It is impossible to do if it's been too long. One of the issues with that is- we have really seen like Suriel-scale resurrection but not most lower-scale resurrection, and then we've seen what Northstrider did at the Uncrowned King tournament. Well, what he did at the Uncrowned King tournament was a lot easier than just bringing some random person back from the dead. For one thing, relative to him they're not that powerful. For another thing, he is given- lent special authority over this event by the rest of the Monarchs. And, for another thing, he sets that rule at the beginning, and then he's always right there.

So all of that makes it a little easier to do, so it was pretty simple for him to [bap bap bap] resurrect everybody, relatively speaking. Now, Suriel can do almost whatever she wants, so that's- relative to the Monarchs.

Kuram

Why did the dragons want the Blackflame Empire? The aura is known to be pretty weak.

Will Wight

I mean... why does anybody want to control any amount of territory? It's just kind of a place they wanted.

Questioner

Are you something about the Pioneer iteration concept for a series or story? 

Will Wight

One of the ideas I mentioned before that still I think is a really fun idea is the idea of like, a generational ship. a generation ship. So like a colony ship that's going to another Galaxy or another world or something that's multiple generations. 

So it's meant to sail for 10,000 years and it doesn't have any sort of faster than light travel or anything and I think would be fun because you could do things like bloodline powers or different species, you could have elves and dwarves and whatever on this generation ship, and then over the years they could blend into one species which would be I think it would be cool, just a custom sentient species and well, how would this culture look and what would the magic be like and what fragments were used to make this kinda stuff? I just think that’d be fun. 

Questioner

Who is your favorite Judge or Abidan member and why?

Will Wight

Hm. Favorite Judge or Abidan member? Just for pure fun either the Ghost or the Fox. They're just fun characters to mess with, to think about. They kind of have fun personalities and they both are... so the Ghost and the Fox both have a tendency of popping up on people and, as you know, I really like characters who just pop up unexpectedly on people. So because of that they are probably my favorites. More fun to write. I obviously have a soft spot for Suriel but I kind of like them all.

I had a, I answered this earlier today, but I had a whole story line planned as like a heavenly/Abidan story line and it was about a person who was a new recruit to the Abidan and he was going to end up using both the power of the Void and the Way. And he had a dragon companion, a black dragon companion, that gave him destructive powers aligned with Void and he had a little tiny blue sort of river fairy spirit who gave him water aura powers. So you can kind of see where this is going.

And he was going to end up being a new Judge. He was going to replace one of the Judges but that was a long time before Cradle. So what happened was I was writing a cultivation knockoff, I knew I needed a heavenly realm, I needed a kind of a pantheon and a heavenly realm story line. So I went back to that book and I repurposed the Abidan from there pretty much wholesale. So, yeah. At that point, by the way, Mercy was the Ghost. So there you go.

Questioner

What are the mechanics of a soul oath? Does the oath need to be made with equal consideration on each side? What happens if you break an oath? Can an oath be annulled by mutual agreement?

Will Wight

A soul oath is your spirit holding you to an agreement. When two people’s spirits are holding them to the same agreement, they resonate, and it creates a sort of subtle link.

Therefore, both people have to recognize that they have made an oath. Forcing someone to swear an oath under duress works, but is much weaker, because both participants know the oath is unfair. However, making a false oath isn’t really possible, because your spirit and the other person’s would recognize that you had made an oath.

Yes, you can annul an oath under mutual agreement.

If you break one, your spirit suffers the consequences. So you can have your madra channels or core injured, your madra can become more difficult to control, etc.

In the worst case, you can die, though those risks are exaggerated in rumor. Usually, if you do die from breaking an oath, it’s because your powers screwed up.

Some people with more powerful souls even influence the aura around them to hold them to their oath, meaning the natural world would curse them with consequences for oath-breaking.

Tim

Will, are the seven Judges and the various members of the Divisions bound by Fate as well.

If that is the case, doesn't that mean that Makiel has power over all of them.

Or, does one, by joining the Abidan, get the keys(figuratively speaking) to free oneself of the Shackles (Fate)?

Will Wight

Fate guides the actions of the Abidan as well!

This was actually something of a revelation to them, as they thought they had moved beyond Fate's reach when they left their Iterations. However, even the Abidan have a Fate.

Makiel doesn't have power over them, exactly. He doesn't control Fate; that would be like trying to manually control gravity.

He and his teams *manage* Fate, making sure people don't screw it up. If humans didn't have free will, there would be no need for the Hounds. But because they do, they can act in ways that might (generations down the road) send Fate spinning out of control.

Hounds look into the past and the future to determine the chain of events that might lead to this sort of thing happening, then they take action to prevent it.

Illar

What would a "screw up" be? Wouldn't anything that someone did be part of that world's natural evolution?

Will Wight

No. That's effectively the premise of this whole concept: that Fate can be defied, eluded, slipped.

Now, waking up and ordering a sandwich for lunch is never going to send your world into a downward spiral because you were destined to eat pasta and you have confounded the powers that be.

Resurrecting a certain dead person, trying to invent time travel, drilling a hole in the universe, looking into the future and working very hard to subvert what you see there, THAT is the sort of thing that knocks Fate off-course.

Questioner

What do people do on cradle who don't pursue sacred arts?

Will Wight

To a degree, advancement in the sacred arts is an act of survival. Almost every adult on the planet is at least Iron, because that's essentially the minimum it takes to interact with the world on a normal level. However, many of Cradle's people don't consider themselves "sacred artists" per se, because their life does not revolve around the pursuit of advancement. Aura and madra are still a part of their lives, but not personal power and achievement. Cradle certainly has farmers, but farmers who can pull the rainclouds closer with Ruler techniques. They have chefs who can determine your tastes by reading your feelings, doctors who can diagnose you from across the room by sensing your blood, and carpenters who shape wood with their spirits.

Questioner

We all know your preferred spiritual elixir, the Oreo. Now we need to know despised food and spiritual food, IRL and in the books.

Will Wight

So... My most despised food are red bell peppers. I can't eat 'em. I just can't do it. I cannot eat red bell peppers. Anything with red bell peppers in it, if I smell red bell peppers, I will die. It is the worst, I can't taste them. Anything with them in there. And one of the big problems is with a lot of this frozen foods they don't have a whole lot of flavor so they add red bell peppers to it in order to give 'em a little bit of color and flavor and I can't; I can't do it; I just can't do it. And a lot of cheap crab cakes too. They just add red peppers to it. And I love crab cakes, but I can't do it.

Will Wight

What favorite spiritual food... most despised spiritual reward. I don't know what that means. I guess maybe like if red peppers gave you a power, what would it be?  It would be something related to venom aura or poisonous madra because they are toxic and the food of death.

Questioner

What is your favorite path, not necessarily the path you would want? What path would you want to practice, assuming you gain madra channels?

Will Wight

So, the path that I have set up that I would practice, is probably Cloudhammer, from the Blackflame Empire.  Even though I never went into it, it is the one I would probably take, because it's good for combat, it's good for not combat.  You can walk in the air on it, you can repel people, you can do a lot of things with it.  And it feels like its the kind of, you can also cultivate it anywhere, like that aura is all over the place.  So, yeah.  Felt like the most convenient and the one I would most like in a real world scenario.