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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.
So are the sword & other deadly artifacts supposed to be a common type of thing in Cradle, or were they just a rare(but deadly) occurrence?
Most people don't practice a Path that's as strictly lethal as this blood/death Path. These guys figured, "If we use the sacred arts in combat so much, then surely the most lethal Path is the best."And they were sort of right, until they all killed each other.
By 'common thing', I meant more along the lines of 'ancient tomb with valuable/powerful weapons/treasures that travelers stumble upon and try to loot'. Also, what's the general technology level in Cradle? It seems like a blend of low-tech and madra usage
Then yes, it is pretty common!
It's an old world, in which aura tends to gather and condense naturally over time into very valuable materials/treasures, so treasure-hunting and adventuring can be actual careers.
On top of that, animals can advance into sacred beasts over time, which means that small non-human civilizations can rise spontaneously from the wilderness.
In other words, it would be a great world to run a DnD campaign in. That was not by design, but I'm willing to take credit for it nonetheless.
Technology is pretty medieval with a few exceptions, although constructs have changed things in more civilized areas. I explore that more in Blackflame, where you get to see what a more advanced civilization is like.
For instance, there are mechanisms for audio communication, but they're expensive and they can be blocked by natural phenomena. Likewise, they have aerial transportation, but any number of crazy aura-fueled weather patterns or terrifying flying monsters can make travel impossible, so they tend to stay within very controlled routes.
Also, this is a world where a single individual can become so strong as to be untouchable, so that tends to create a situation in which personal advancement is far more reliable than technological.
Instead of inventing and perfecting a device so that everyone can have an ability, you can just develop that ability yourself.
Here's a more commonplace example of "treasure-hunting" than what we saw in 'A Sword Unclean':
--There's an abandoned temple at the top of a mountain. It's broken and ruined, but you suspect Cloudgrass will grow in the cracks; Cloudgrass grows wherever the wind is strong, and contains within it vital aura condensed from the wind and clouds.--It can be used to create a Thousand-Mile Cloud, to further someone's advancement in cloud or wind sacred arts, or even drained and purified to make scales. You don't care; you just need to grab some so that you can sell it.--Nobody else has taken it yet because the winds are very strong up there, a cloud covers the mountain 24/7, and packs of Blood Eagles (sacred beasts nourished by the pure wind aura of the area) circle the peak, looking for prey.--They don't watch for an approach through the earth. You're part of a mining clan, and you use your techniques to excavate a tunnel right up and into the ruins of the temple. There's plenty of Cloudgrass, a few ruined lines of ancient script that you make casts of in case a scriptor will pay you for them, and a Blood Eagle sitting on its nest. You kill the bird and its Remnant, taking both bodies back with you--you can sell the Remnant to a Soulsmith and the body to a medicinal refinery.
That sort of thing. The people who go around looking for naturally forming treasure typically have a reliable source of leads, a skill-set that allows them to go where no one else can, and a way to turn those leads into cash.
If you make a career out of it, you typically know where you can go, you find out which of those places have valuable resources there, and you spend your time making a circuit between those locations.
And if someone else with similar skills starts taking your stuff, well, it depends on how strong they are. If they're more advanced than you, that's how life works. Suck it up. If you're more advanced than they are, you threaten them until they leave or you just kill them.
Cradle life!
In soulsmith we saw Eithan giving Lindon madraso why not give the ability to Lindon ... like what if Eithan saw Dross and thought Lindon could handle the family ability and poor madra into him and to push his pure core to true god as well. Man that'd make Dross into BIG BROTHER
Will may have give that answer before skysworn ... because both Jai Chen and the underload gained the ability after absorbing Eithan's madra.
Just noticed this, so I'm popping in: Jai Chen and Jai Daishou got the ability temporarily by draining power from Eithan. They didn't gain it permanently. It's not their bloodline power now.
How temporary are we talking? Would it wear off in hours? Days? Years? I got the impression that it had become a permanent part of her but that she had to actively expend Madra to make it work.
Her madra has permanently changed, but her bloodline hasn’t. And at the point where Jai Chen leaves, she still hasn’t stabilized her madra yet, so it hasn’t settled into its final composition.
This isn’t even its final form, if you will.
Is madra a series of tubes?
Madra itself is not a series of tubes, but it can exist only in the context of a series of loops and channels that might be described as tubes. Bindings and scripts re-pattern madra in order to control it and produce different effects, so you might say that madra in its natural state is ALWAYS cycling through an interconnected network of tubes. So while madra is not a series of tubes, the system by which the sacred arts can be performed IS a series of tubes.
What effect, if any, would an Empty palm or Madra Bullet (eithan's core - breaker) have on a non-madra user? Could it scramble a reader's senses or some such, or would they just look at you funny?
Just look at you funny. If Lindon Empty Palmed Simon, Simon wouldn't even feel it.
Hi Will, what sounds do techniques make? Is sound integral to a small set of types of madra, and things like the Dragon's Breath and Rippling Sword only make sounds due to superheating the air or moving fast or something? Do scripts also make noise when they activate?
Scripts do make a small noise when they activate! It’s something like the strike of a match followed by a hum like a power line, though for many scripts, that sound fades away. As for the sounds of techniques, that depends on the nature of the madra and the technique itself. As you say, something like dragon’s breath would make a sound because of its heat (and because of its destruction component tearing apart whatever it hits), but something like the Path of the White Fox would make no sound.
For an actual question, what's an interesting type of aura/madra that hasn't been seen/mentioned in the books yet?
I’d like to get into death madra at some point, and we haven’t seen much of it.
How is Reading advanced? Is it like on Cradle?
Reading isn't trained like the sacred arts because the magic system is a lot harder to quantify than the sacred arts. A madra technique literally starts to crystallize in the practitioner's soul as a binding, so there are measurable and observable effects. Reading is much more difficult to boil down to a tangible process.
Is there room in the willverse for an iteration that is populated entirely by nonhuman intelligence? And what about AI? Do they add stability to they way or do they not count cause they are "artificial"?
This is one of the sacrifices I had to make in designing the Willverse, which I still think is a hilarious name: truly artificial intelligence doesn't exist.
In theory, as we understand intelligence in our world right now, we should soon reach a point where artificial intelligence starts increasing exponentially until it changes the world entirely.
Well, in the Willverse, developing civilizations eventually discover a hard limit to artificial intelligence. The same X factor that ties the Way to human consciousness also means that non-human entities can never be truly sentient.
A pure computer in the Willverse is never going to beat a really good Turing Test.
However, you CAN manipulate human consciousness to get around the intelligence barrier.
A Presence is an AI built out of what you might call human souls.
***
I had to make this decision because, if hyper-advanced AI is possible in this multiverse, then *that's* what would be running the Abidan. Not the Judges. Human decisions would be overrated, since an AI could come to the optimized conclusions a billion times faster and without emotional bias.
It also kind of fits the premise of a multiverse where human will is intrinsic to existence. If it's that fundamental and important, then it can't be faked.
Does mean that existential questions about what it means to be human are easier to answer, though.
(You also asked about nonhuman intelligence; bottom line is, non-humans gain intelligence by stealing or copying or otherwise transferring it from humans. So as they become more intelligent, they also become more human.)
Huh. Well I'm glad that you wove a reason as to why AI doesn't work in your universe. Makes you greater than most in that regard.
Years ago, I got to a point in this system's development and I realized I was pretending they didn't have AI. Which they would obviously have, as advanced as they are.
So I got down into it and realized that having AI violates the one core tenet of how this multiverse works: humans are important.
"Humans are important" is a key rule in the Willverse, because I wanted room for as many characters as possible. I wanted it to be people from the ground up, so that when you get up to the very apex of the universe (the Judges), you're not dealing with a bland personification of the will of the universe, or a hyper-advanced AI, or an unknowable alien god. You're dealing with a person, who might be incredibly advanced and powerful but is still human deep down.
So instead of humans being one sentient species on one insignificant planet in one insignificant system in one insignificant galaxy in a vast, uncaring universe, we are (in my world) a crucial part of the machinery of reality.
Many stories PRETEND humans are important, but how many of them hard-code it into the way the universe functions? HUH? HUH!?...anyway, since AI makes humans less special and unique, I built a set of rules that precluded AI. Sad to see them go, but I think it makes room for some interesting stories.
For clarification:--When I say AI, I mean advanced sentient AI. Obviously they do have some level of artificial intelligence.
--Here's the REASON I wanted all those humans: characters are what make a story interesting. An AI isn't relatable, and gods don't have flaws.
I wanted to be able to give every significant force in this multiverse a personality, a backstory, and a relatable motivation.
Not to mention cool powers.
...plus, it's kind of neat to have a universe where everyone, even on a cosmic scale, earned their way there.
Are there aspects of madra aligned with emotions? Like anger or happiness madra, or would those be derivatives of dream madra?
They would be derivatives of dream madra. So one of the things I did not do a great job of conveying at the beginning was how the world works, like what aura is, and I wish I had. So I initially didn't want to limit the types of madra because I didn't want to limit myself, I wanted to be able to use any cool powers I thought of. But what I wished later, because what I've effectively done is I have created an elemental system, so wish I had just names the ten or twelve elements that there are on Cradle, and the ten or twelve common aspects of madra. I didn't because its environmental, so maybe in some places...like again, sword madra is effectively just force madra, but it's so distinct and so concentrated that people can cultivate with it, and make sword paths and so on and so forth.
So I liked the idea of it being mutable like that and being culturally different and different people having different paths based on where they've come from and what they've learned, and they're environment and all that stuff. But what I wish I'd done was have a certain number of static elements, because you can mix and match. I think that's the more compelling part of the magic system, is you go "what would a sword/dream path do? what would a sword/storm path do?", and that's cool to think about, that's cool the picture. Where as when your trying to figure out, is there emotion madra? is there leaf madra? is there metal madra? that becomes confusing, because you're like " so okay, my path is not sword and....eyeballs..." and it's like, "thats...play...well, that's not a thing", but it makes you think it might be, and I didn't give a reason why not. So that's one of the regrets I have about developing the system, was I wish there had just been twelve elements, or whatever.
Pure madra has multiple characteristics that can be selectively emphasized. Do other madra types have multiple characteristics as well? It seems like shadow madra and dream madra do.
Yeah. Yes, so, one of the things I've called them in my notes, and I think maybe I've referenced them in the books a couple of times, is I call them lesser aspects. So what they really are, is while they are not types of aura on their own, it is a characteristic that a type of madra can be programmed or cultivated to possess. So, the Fisher path, like Fisher Gesha, is really just force madra; it's force madra that pulls and binds together. So connection madra is not a thing, it's not a major aspect, but it is something that can be activated in force aura. So it's sort of similar to how sword aura is really just an offshoot of force aura, and cloud aura is an interaction of wind and water aura in a unique pattern that appears in a cloud. And as you learn to sense that particular pattern and cultivate it in your spirit, train your spiritual perception, you can sense that more clearly and it feels like one complete aspect to you, even though technically it isn't. So yeah. There's lots of... All madra aspects have this.
I would like to know about the different types of madras. Do they have weight or density or other physical characteristics other than color? Are sacred artists taking in pure madras and converting it or do they need a source of that type nearby. For example, can you use sword madra if no weapons are nearby? And does sword madra work with blunt weapons or piercing weapons?
>Different physical characteristicsYes, and this will be explored in Blackflame.
>Can you use sword madra if no weapons are nearby?
I know it can get confusing, but this is the distinction between aura and madra. Madra is YOUR power, which you have slowly stolen from the world by cycling aura into your soul. Vital aura is the power of the world around you.
A Ruler technique controls aura to make a change in the natural world.
So, could you use sword madra if no sword are nearby? Yes. Could you use a Ruler technique without a sword? No. If a sword is sitting on a table, Yerin can manipulate the aura to cut the table in half without the sword moving at all. If there's no sword on that table, she needs to blast her madra at the table in order to cut it.
...I'll explore it in more detail in Blackflame.
A few days ago, I asked how bindings are powered/recharged here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iteration110Cradle/comments/d95b8u/how_are_bindings_recharged/
The consensus was that bindings work as they are described in Soulsmith, where Lindon creates his own water: his core is basically drained from the effort of "activating the binding," where that madra is converted to water madra.
The critical detail being that Lindon's own madra is drained from him into the weapon to activate the binding.
So far, so good.
Then, in Uncrowned, we see Yerin activate an Archlord weapon. The explanation we're given is that her new diamond channels kept her from being destroyed by using it two stages too soon. I guess if it's an enormous amount of Yerin's madra being ripped out of her into the weapon, this explanation makes sense, except...
Where did Yerin get all that Madra?
It's described as consuming the enormous arena stage, and being so much that Lindon's arm was ripping at the seams trying to control it all.
Has Yerin been using the HEPW? I can't imagine her having all that madra in her cores, especially after a long fight with Lindon.
The madra can come from the substance of the construct or from the madra forming the binding itself, which is how independent constructs work and why they cannibalize themselves over time.
Since Yerin can’t afford to subsidize an entire Archlord technique with her own madra, she puts as much as she can into activating and controlling it, and the rest of the power comes from the sword itself.
Which will cut down on the sword’s lifespan unless it receives serious maintenance.
Yessss thank you!
So if Eithan wanted to activate an Archlord binding, and hypothetically also had diamond channels, he could do so without damaging it?
He could! Technically any Underlord can, if they have some way to handle the stress it puts on their spirit. It’s just usually better to have a weapon you can control and activate consistently with no risk.
Do the inhabitants of the territories fit the definition of human? The ape from Lirial (whose name escapes me), the Avernus bird-men, the Nye, Marakos/the gnomes from Elysia, the lizard creatures from Naraka Kai kills? Or are those humans who were affected by the time they spent on a fragment drifting through the void?
Follow up. Assuming that the Territories are fragments that haven't fully combined with the Traveler's Gate World, what happens to travelers when the territories do fully combine?
They do count, but not fully. They're either humans who were warped by their time in a fragment or the descendants of humans like that. OR they could be non-humans that achieved sentience and became more human.
Either way, they count, just not as much as a full human would. Just like how Valinhall held together for a long time without humans in it regularly--it was populated by the Nye and a bunch of other sentient beings, but humans are a much better anchor (so to speak).
The Traveler's Gate world, Amalgam, is unique in that it has formed a stable relationship with the fragments "orbiting" it. The Way between the main world and the fragmentary worlds is thin, so their realities tend to bleed together (showing up primarily as natural Gates--randomly occurring portals to a Territory that weren't created by a Traveler).
However, normally when one world bleeds into another, the bleeding gets faster and faster until they collide. Like what happened with Limit and Harrow, the two worlds that Suriel is trying to euthanize.
Amalgam is unique because it has formed an equilibrium with its extra fragments. They're free to exist and grow without accelerating into existential destruction.
Are there types of madra that cannot be combined into a single path?
Yes, there are. There are definitely incompatible types of madra, it depends a lot on how the madra is expressed and what its source is. So in a lot of ways water and fire would be incompatible elements obviously as you would expect. But of course we have a character in the series who does follow a path that unifies water and fire so there are no absolutes I guess. But like for instance you couldn't blend life/death madra because it would be death madra. That would be it, that's all it would be. However, you could and this is a path - I was going to show off in the uncrowned king tournament but didn't end up having the time - where you could have a life madra AND death madra so what I was going to do is run into this guy who could use life madra and death madra because he had split his cores. Everybody's mentioned that as a possibility that everyone's aware of but rarely people use so I was going to have another person who had split their cores and they were doing this life/death yin-yang thing and I thought that would be fun but alas we didn't get to... Lindon's going to be the only yin-yang duality cultivator I guess.
@Ruff I thought there are so many prime madras
There are, but different cultures and sects disagree on what they are. There are greater aspects and lesser aspects of madra. Greater aspects are universal and usually elemental, like fire or water. Lesser aspects are the weird things that practitioners can do to their madra over time to make it take on a certain quality, like making it sticky or in the shape of a snake. Lesser aspects are what make everything confusing.
I'll be going into this eventually in the books, but I haven't up to this point because A.) most characters aren't aware of this, and B.) I'm trying to find a way to explain it so that it makes the magic system less confusing instead of more confusing, which is what I'm afraid of.
So if there is sword mandra that gathers on edged weapons does that mean there is club mandra that gathers around blunt objects?
From what I can tell of the world and the usage of Madra in particular, I think the most analogous form of "blunt" madra would likely be named "force madra" or somesuch. Sword madra seems to have less to do with swords specifically and more to do with cutting or sharp edged implements. I'm reasonably certain (fact checking would be appreciated) that Jai Long has "sword madra" in his sacred path, yet he uses a bladed spear rather than a sword. As a side point, the name sword madra just sounds so much better then sharp madra or cutting madra that it makes sense to use it.
You've nailed it.
Sword aura is really force aura gathered to a sharp edge, but what they call force aura is generally weaker and diffuse, so sword aura is brighter and easier to see.
And I absolutely do call it "sword aura" because "cutting aura" or "sharp aura" sounds ridiculous.
What is your favorite type of madra? Is there a sort of madra that can do psychic things, such as telekenisis or telepathy?
Telepathy yeah, 100%. Dream madra does that. That's basically what it does. Telekinesis... not reeeally. There's a lot of madra that lets you pick stuff up without touching it but not really telekinesis so much. Favorite kind of madra... If I were in Cradle I would probably want force madra or wind madra because the aura is everywhere and it's very useful, it's handy. And then you get the telekinesis kind of stuff so that's basically the telekinesis powers. My favorite to write is actually dream madra because you can do so many cool things with it, like you can share thoughts, communicate over distance, read minds and all that stuff.
I wanted to inquire as to how a combination of let's say life and death madra would occur in a path.
Most of the people on Cradle consider death madra a variant of life madra because they share a lot of the same properties, and if you combined death madra with life madra you would basically just have death madra. So that's basically just what it would be; it would just be death madra. You've taken life and combined it with the form of death and that really is just death. That's all you'd have. However, there is at least one character that exists that I have outlined that uses both life and death madra. And they use two different paths.
What would be an effective death madra path?
The weirdest thing about death madra is that it's kind of like blackflame madra in that it's not really healthy to interact with. Like pure destruction madra, which everybody of course thinks is gonna be the best cause it sounds awesome, it doesn't do well on it's own, so it usually needs like a physical medium. So therefore you would see a lot of destruction fire, destruction wind, death wind, death fire something. Something that has a physical form. Cause otherwise it's kind of like you're projecting radiation at your enemy, and they're just like waiting until they die. So an example of an effective death madra path would be off the top of my head like a death sword path so that you could really focus it and it would be very focused and then you could like, try and cut off somebodies life with a slice. Now, would that be necessarily any more effective than actually just straight up sword madra? Not necessarily, because one of the things that we're gonna get into, I mentioned this mechanic a little bit earlier, but everybody's got life madra in them, everybody's got life force in them, they all generate cause you're alive. So you generate life force, so you've got kind of a life line, so you've got a life line. So therefore death madra has to sever or erode away that life line in order to kill someone. So it's not as completely overpowered as it seems.
