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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.

KinOfTheMountain

Could an Elderspawn become soulbound to a awakened item with only human intent?

Will Wight

It could not! Elders don't interact with Intent in quite the same way.

Questioner

Me and my friend have been arguing about this point. It sounds to me that Dreadgods are more powerful or aware when they first awaken then slowly get corrupted by the hunger madra but he thinks that they become more aware the more they are awake.

Will Wight

It fluctuates depending on how strong they are. How strong they are at a certain time is how aware they are in general. But also the Dreadgods, some Dreadgods are more intelligent than the others. The Silent King is always aware, he's always self aware, and he's the smartest one. And the Weeping Dragon actually is the second most self aware. I kind of wanted to do the, I thought it would make sense for the Bleeding Phoenix to be that person because the Bleeding Phoenix absorbs a lot of awareness like its Emissaries and its Blood Shadows are all aware to some degree. But I figured the hive mind thing actually causes more problems than it solves, so the Bleeding Phoenix is now third. And the Wandering Titan is just kind of an idiot.

Questioner

What would happen if Eithan tried using his Madra dissolving technique on Yerin's Blood Shadow parasite?

Will Wight

I'm not sure if I can answer this.

Will Wight

The Steelborn body is just what Yerin's Iron body is called. Steel isn't a rank over Iron.

I changed from the materials ranking system to reflect a difference in how you advance at Underlord level. Up to Truegold, you're just adding to and refining your madra. There are Remnants involved at Gold, but there don't HAVE to be; TECHNICALLY you could cycle all the way to Truegold without ever bonding a Remnant.

It would take you hundreds of years and a ridiculous amount of unnecessary work, but you could do it.

Whereas Truegold to Underlord is achieved differently.

Questioner

Do all Abidan have to have used madra? I mean Simon cant become one.

Will Wight

Nope. Simon could become one, if circumstances allowed.

Reality Spasm

What conditions result in the generation of either spacial madra/aura, or what types can effect space? What kinds of limitations would you encounter considering that spacetime isn't really a thing here, as far as I can tell?

Will Wight

It requires someone of Sage or above, or one of their Remnants/devices, to cause madra to take on space-altering properties. Someone of lower cultivation could get it and cultivate it, but only if someone higher helped them.

Questioner

Do Ziel and Shira find the other cute?

Will Wight

You know, I mentioned this before but I come up with a name scheme for every faction or every culture, every source of names. And I named Akura Shira using those rules, not remembering that in the couple books prior I had named Akura Shiria. So otherwise, I wouldn't have created such a similar name but I forgot that Shiria existed and I was using the same rules. So that's the level of thought I put into Akura Shira because she exists basically just to be a foil for Ziel in the story but she does learn to see him as more human over the course of the story. So that definitely happens, she does have a little bit of an emotional arc there where initially she's seeing him for his rank and then, of course, he doesn't act like he's high ranked at all. And so she kind of gets a little softer on him and inspires him to do better. So they have a very healthy mutual respect and relationship and they've agreed to go on a couple of dates but other than that I didn't think a lot about their relationship.

Vulcanized-Homeboy

What core technique does yerin have? It's never been mentioned?

Will Wight

That's true, and it's not a spoiler, it just never came up.

I don't remember the name off the top of my head, but her Jade cycling technique focuses on increasing power output and madra control. Like her Iron body, it's made with her future advancement in mind: so that she can use more powerful techniques more easily and they'll hit even harder.

Skeletickles

Do you think Lindon is naturally talented at the Sacred Arts, or "just" an average/below-average person?

Will Wight

I think of him as talented in the sense that he has a base level of capability and a passion for improvement, but not talented in the sense that he has an inborn aptitude for madra control.

Even if he had been born somewhere other than Sacred Valley, nobody would have looked at him and gone “Wow, this kid is amazing at the sacred arts! He’s some kind of genius!”

They might have said “Man, he sure works hard,” or “He really loves the sacred arts.”

Equally, nobody outside Sacred Valley would have called him a dud either. Some people really have zero talent for the sacred arts, and he’s not in that group either.

Questioner

How would someone on a death path use an enforcement technique?

Will Wight

They probably wouldn’t, as you wouldn’t want death madra in your body. However, Enforcing a weapon is still an Enforcer technique.

Nltin

Did Ozriel forge his own Scythe? It was mentioned in first book that he managed to touch the way without even ascending. Atleast his fury did. Was he at same cultivation level as Sha Miara?

Was Sha Miara born with enough madra to qualify as true gold or something considering she is only 12?

Will Wight

Sha Miara inherited power that the most talented Truegolds would have to train their whole lives and exhaust fortunes to achieve. That's the base level of power she'd have if she were never taught anything about the sacred arts and never trained a day in her life.

The story about Ozriel's Scythe is going to have to wait until much later, I think, but he was a legendary Soulsmith of his time.

He did reach the same cultivation level as Sha Miara and the rest during his time on Cradle, yes, but he would have been considered a freak even among people of that tier.

Tim

Will, how old is Sha Miara.

It would be a bit too extreme for her to be 12, and yet be amongst the strongest on Cradle. 

Suriel, one of the strongest person in existence, said that she didnt even reach that level in 30 years, yet a girl is supposed to have managed to achieve it. Wouldn'T she have the potential, then, to outclass the members of the Abidan, given enough time?

Will

I don't remember how young she is without looking it up in my notes, but no older than 15 or so.

What's wrong with that?

Sure, she's decades ahead of Suriel. But in the grand scheme of things, there were a lot of people among all worlds who were decades ahead of Suriel at some point.

A lot of people have the potential to become Judges, but very, very few ever make it that far. There's a long way from the Ninecloud Court to the Court of Seven.

Lil' Blue

Let's say a trans person is becoming a Lord, can they transition?

Will Wight

Soulfire doesn’t allow a human to shift shape, so no. Sacred beasts have a different relationship to soulfire; it’s a lot more tied to their bodies.

Questioner

Do people with great Intent leave bodies that can be Awaken?

Will Wight

Objects gather Intent when they are used by a human for a purpose. You would have to use a body for a particular purpose in order to invest it, which is required for Awakening. Body PARTS are often Awakened.

Questioner

Are there any sacred artists out there focused on conditioning their minds, not their bodies?

Will Wight

Madra flows through the body, so there are no Paths that don't affect the body in some way.

However, not every sacred artist lives by his fists.

The Path of the Diamond Sky focuses on polishing the power of the mind, until its practitioners have perfect memory, utter control over their emotions, and imaginations so vivid that some of them die inside self-created dreams.

Questioner

What is Ziel's path/madra?

Will Wight

It's primarily force madra.

Questioner

Thanks for answer my first question! Here goes number two: Are there any "dark" or "evil" magics on Amalgam? (something that requires blood sacrifice or is socially unacceptable to practice)

Will Wight

There are some answers to this question that I don't want to go into too much detail about, pending spoilers and/or me changing my mind, but each Territory has its dark side.

In general, Ragnarus is considered to be the "evil" Territory. But there are birds in Avernus that can twist and warp the personality of humans, addictive parasitic flowers in Asphodel, and terrible weapons left buried in Lirial. Most of the Arbiters of Naraka obtained their power from the acts of brutal injustice perpetuated against them, and it has left them twisted and broken, willing to commit unspeakable deeds in the pursuit of their ideas of justice.

TheWanderingBeard

Does the Arelius bloodline power become obsolete after monarch?

Or will Eithan be able to see/hear even further than other monarchs if/when he makes it that far?

Will Wight

Spiritual perception and the Arelius bloodline power work differently. Spiritual perception is able to feel spirits, madra, and aura; basically spiritual powers. The Arelius bloodline power extends your physical senses.

Questioner

What's another absurdly weak or isolated place on Cradle and what would their Lindon look like?

Will Wight

There's an underwater, sealed-off city at the bottom of the Trackless Sea that's surrounded by much more prosperous civilizations of aquatic sacred beasts.

The human population inside this city has developed mostly independently, just like Sacred Valley. Their Lindon would be anyone who, for whatever reason, couldn't master water aura and the Ruler techniques required to go outside the city.

That person would be like someone in our universe who can't use a car...not just someone who can't drive, but someone who is unable to get inside an automobile.