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shadowsaber415

How long ago did you come up with the Monarch twist?

Will Wight

I assume by that you mean the link between the Monarchs and hunger madra. And the whole time I had intended for Monarchs to be a final obstacle for Lindon. Not necessarily THE final obstacle, of course you still have the Dreadgods, but involved in Lindon's final trials. What I always wanted was Eithan guides Lindon up to the final two books, and then in the final two books, Lindon and company have to deal with the challenges themselves. And what I wanted the final boss of Cradle to be, was effectively Cradle itself. I wanted it to be them working against the world. The whole world. Against them. So that was my original intention, and I intended therefore for the Dreadgods and Monarchs to be on the same side at some point, but the mechanics of doing that shifted and changed. I had certain ideas, I kind of knew how they were kind of linked, and it was one of those things where I set myself up for several ways I could have done it, and ended up picking the way that made the most sense.

FeralMelon

Are the Dreadgods all of equal power? Or are some of them weaker/stronger than the others? If so, which is strongest?

Will Wight

Hm, what a great question. The four Dreadgods are equal in power.

Questioner

Favorite part or line?

Will Wight

One of the things I like the most, one of the threads I like most reading on Reddit, or one of the conversations I most like reading are people's favorite lines or moments that don't get talked about a lot. Because the big moments everybody talks about, I designed to be big moments, right? I was like okay I knew the Dross becoming a Presence thing was going to be a big deal and I intended it that way. And I set up the entire book and worked and planned it to great detail to try and make that work. So when people say that liked that I go phew, I'm glad because I would be disappointed if you didn't. But when people talk about things that they didn't, that was, that they don't normally hear talked about that's pretty cool because usually those are moments or lines I wrote off the cuff or wrote and didn't put as much thought into or wrote and was like yay I like this little detail nobody is ever going to see. And people see those and that makes me happy. So I like feeling appreciated for the little stuff I did.

Questioner

Favorite part of Dreadgod?

Will Wight

You know, that's hard. There's a couple of big moments in Dreadgod that I really like. I think it's probably Little Blue's death. I think it's just heartwrenching, I think.

Kutsuu

Can sacred beasts ascend to the abidan once becoming as strong as sages/heralds/Monarchs, or do they not have that option? If so can they become a dreadgod eventually or is there a limit on dreadgods for some reason?

Will Wight

They can indeed ascend beyond Cradle.

Sage Pizza

With the release of Dreadgod closing in and without going into spoilers, what is the thing you're most excited for the fans to read? 

Will Wight

Without going into spoilers... (Sam says how Lindon dies from off camera) Yeah, how Lindon dies. There it is, that's the answer. I don't know how to do this without going into spoilers. What are you talking about? You ask me what my favorite part is, of Dreadgod, but don't spoil me. Ah.... I don't know. I don't know. I can't think of a non-spoiler answer. It's the, Sam's favorite part. That's what I want you guys to see, I'm excited for you guys to read Sam's favorite part. 

Questioner

Why did you name the sequel to Dreadgod, Plasma Bolts?

Will Wight

You'll find out in Dreadgod.  You'll get to the end, and you'll be like, "That's why it's called Plasma Bolts.  It's so clear now."

Anonymous

Who is Mercy's father?

Will Wight

That's, a common question, that I get a lot. I don't remem.. I think I, I think I covered that a little bit in Dreadgod. I don't think I explicitly said who it was in Dreadgod. So I'm going to continue to not do that.

Charles

If dreadgods are at least as powerful as Monarchs, why do they never use spatial transfer?  In the Wandering Titan's case it is because he doesn't like to expend energy, but that makes less sense when we think about the others.

Will Wight

What a question you have asked Charles.  *siiiippp*

Sam (offscreen)

What a question that is!

Will Wight

What a question Charles has asked.  Charles has asked the question, "If dreadgods are at least as powerful as Monarchs, why do they never use spatial transfer?"  What a question Charles has asked.  I'm going to move on.

Anonymous

It seems like dreadbeasts have their spirits fused into their material flesh as they grow more powerful, is this meant to be diametrically opposed to how the heralds do it? 

Will Wight

Yeah, so the end result is kind of similar, of dreadbeasts and Heralds, the point is that Heralds do it when both are stable and ascended, successfully I mean they're merging their spirit and body correctly, and dreadbeasts and dreadgods are doing it incorrectly. Now the dreadgods do it incorrectly, but they do it so synergistically that it ends up being correct, like loops around in on itself. It's, it's like doing it wrong so much that it becomes right, but dreadbeasts have done it wrong and they suffer for it. 

Twice Tested

What's the hardest part of writing Dreadgod?

Will Wight

(microphone starts to cut in and out here so some text is lost) Oh boy. Uh, yikes. Oh man. I have (...) to that question. It happens Every time. Reaper. So, it's hard to (...). There's some cool things in Dreadgod, but I don't have any spanning explanations, to reveal. So coming off, you have to, there's a lot of detail to explain without slowing the pacing down too much. So things like, show off all the stuff that happens with Ozriel, and the Abidan story line, but then the Abidan story line would be super long, and nobody wants to read that; and then so I go to Cradle and it's like I said, they're all going off training and he's sending them off but he's also doing stuff on his own. So I want them to explore the labyrinth, to have them go off and do all their training, I want to have Lindon explore his new powers, but again I don't want to spend too much time on it, because then those branch and diverge a lot more. So I want them all to be linked into one adventure. So it's hard to just balance all of that, is sort of the juggling act. Its probably the hardest. 

Blue Pizza

How close are we to the end of Cradle?

Will Wight

Dreadgod is book 11 out of 12. But after you read Dreadgod, you'll be like "you mean 13 books right?"

No, I'm sure I can do it in 12. At least a solid 40% sure.

Kandra (Ozkiel Forever)

Please do cut it in half if you need to

Will Wight

I'll put it this way: I really really want to just do an extra-long 12 rather than a relatively normal-size pair of 12 & 13. If I can make it work, I will.

Honesty I think it'll just be better for the reading experience. I don't want to do Book 12: Part 1 and Book 12: Part 2.

Questioner

Underlords vs. Underlord+

Will Wight

The Sword Sage and Li Markuth are both roughly two stages above Underlord.

The three entities listed by Suriel as the top of the Cradle food chain are FIVE stages above Underlord, including one big leap (like the difference between Truegold and Underlord, it's only one stage, but it's a big one). The Dreadgods are a threat on THEIR level--and notice that Suriel said the 8-Man Empire, Sha Miara, and Northstrider could save Sacred Valley from them. She didn't say they could destroy the Dreadgods.

The BF Emperor is the one person in the Empire who is a level over Underlord.

The EE Emperor is about his level, although since they're using different magic systems, it's less about stages and more about what they can and can't do to counter one another.

Questioner

Are there any sacred beasts (besides dragons) that could go toe-to-toe with a Monarch or a Dreadgod?

Will Wight

There's Juwei, the Ghostwalker Fox, who has tricked Monarchs and escaped. There's a single Monarch-level dragon--known by some as the god of the desert--who has a centuries-old feud with Northstrider. There's Nightsong, the musician on the Path of the Moonlit Flute, who is either a sacred beast herself or has strong inhuman blood.

Zach Sailor

If each Dreadgod released a flavor of Oreo, what would they be?

Will Wight

Rebecca! (Points at Rebecca) Answer, here we go.

Rebecca

So first of all, a lot of questions were submitted you guys are awesome, Sam and I were pre-selecting the questions, but I saw this yesterday, and I was like this will be a good one for Will to answer, and then I spent so much time thinking about it that I have answers and I wouldn't let Will do it. Okay. So, first, Bleeding Phoenix. There is, horrifyingly, there is a hot and spicy cinnamon Oreo. Perfect for Bleeding Phoenix, you would never want to eat it, it would be terrible. Then we've got, the Weeping Dragon. Okay so we've got lightning, so the fireworks Oreos that have poprocks in them that go pew pew pew pew pew in your mouth, it's great. Then, I really kind of struggled with the Silent King, but then! There's these white, fudge covered Oreos, so it's like an illusion because it's not a real Oreo looking thing, and it's covered in white frosting. So that's perfect. (Will Wight cuts in saying 'That's a great answer, I was just going to say vanilla regular, the white Oreos') No, no, I spent too much time on this when I should have been sleeping; and then the last one, wait, who have I not done? (Will: The Wandering Titan) The Wandering Titan! (They say it together) The Wandering Titan is a Mega Stuf Oreo, he's a big boi, that's it. Done. Definitive answer. Okay I'm out.

Will Wight

Wow. Man, those were great answers, she said she thought about that a lot and yeah, when we got to this question she wanted to be the one to answer it, she was excited, she invested a lot in this. I'm impressed.

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.

Dyslexic Satan

The cthaeh from the king killer chronicles vs the entire world of Cradle

*cthaeh is given 500 years to prepare and sets events in motion but cannot start violence until 490*Cradle does not know Cthaeh is there to kill them until it has been in world for 500 years*Abidan are not involved

Will

Those are some harsh conditions.

The only advantage Cradle has at this point is that there ARE individuals capable of seeing and manipulating the future. I mean, Elder Whisper already demonstrated the capacity to catch glimpses of the future, and he's pretty low on the overall power scale.

This type of scenario is interesting enough that I was already considering it for the distant future, actually (not the cthaeh, obviously, but some other malicious oracle entity). But if I did, their objective wouldn't be to depopulate Cradle.

Because here's the problem: the cthaeh WOULD be detected before 500 years are up. Some of the people on the top end of the scale would go "Who's that messing with the future?" and go find it to blow it up.

And if it started depopulating Cradle, the Abidan WOULD get involved. I mean, heck, the Abidan are pretty spot-on about any foreign threat messing with Cradle's fate. There's a snake in the nursery; the adults aren't going to ignore it.

HOWEVER, given your conditions...

...it gets pretty interesting.

The first thing the cthaeh is going to realize is that it isn't the only fate-manipulating individual around, and that the others have much greater destructive power. So it's going to have multiple layers of misdirection around it: a proxy oracle to take the blame, a decoy tree, some way to mask its touch on fate, and it would probably limit itself to a very subtle, long-term influence to avoid getting caught.

Then it would make a list of these other precognitive threats and make sure that whatever it did destroyed them first. If it can be the only entity capable of manipulating fate, it wins.

The advantage there is that, while there are millions if not billions (population of Cradle is huge) of sacred artists in Cradle with the ability to see hints of fate, there are only a handful capable of manipulating it. And if the cthaeh can kill them, or even most of them, its chances of success increase significantly.

But it's still playing with fire, because while it is making its own preparations, the native oracles are laying their plans as well. Plus, due to the nature of Cradle's magic system, new threats to the cthaeh can pop up anytime, so it has to account for POTENTIAL precognitives as well.

I think it would probably, in order to mask its own influence and still have the most destructive impact possible, start leading psychotic and murderous individuals to sources of great power. It might even start its own cult around itself, dedicated to killing readers of fate. It would certainly provoke the Dreadgods, leading them to go on four separate destructive rampages, and probably wake as many of the other ancient threats as it could.

There are things buried in Cradle that can affect the global climate, swarms of monsters that multiply endlessly, weapons that detonate living beings directly, curses that make innocents into killers...

All that said, I have difficulty envisioning a scenario in which the cthaeh is able to FULLY destroy Cradle.

In the end, it can't act too directly or it risks discovery, and new threats to its existence can pop up any day. And it's an individual, while Cradle is a massive planet with trillions of people, each of whom are POTENTIALLY capable of growing to the degree that they can threaten the tree.

I think it could easily destroy all civilization and cause thousands of Paths to be forgotten, erasing hundreds of legacies and killing billions of sacred artists. It turns the whole planet into an inhospitable post-apocalyptic wasteland in which only the most hardy can eke out a living.

But eventually, someone is going to kill it.

Jono

However, that only works if you go with Kvothe's belief of the abilities of the Cthaeth. If you were to agree with Bast's opinions, Cradle has no chance as the Cthaeth will have already predicted all this and everything that may come of it, and all counters to its schemes, thus meaning that the Cradle inhabitants working to stop it are, in fact, furthering its goals.

Will

Sure, except that it's up against similar beings, so assuming that they're equal is a stalemate.

"It predicted you'd predict it, so it was prepared for your prediction, but you predicted that prediction and prepared a prediction of your own..."

Stalemate.

Like a lot of these matchups, you have to assume a reasonably equal scale.

Questioner

Have Dreadgods become more powerful?

Will Wight

Possibly.

Emeraldreader

If a reader found their way to cradle, could they create a weapon that actually kills a dreadgod?

Will Wight

Potentially, sure.

I've mentioned this before, but I always write into my setting notes little hidden vaults into my worlds filled with the things I would need to live comfortably there. Just in the case of a sudden isekai.

You never know when you'll get sucked into another reality without warning.

Will Wight (in progress)

The topic that I really wanted to talk about tonight, in the sense that I wanted to talk about any particular topic in mind, is that Dreadgod is my twentieth book.  Which is crazy.  That's just a lot of books.  So it's eleven books in this series, 3 books in Traveler's Gate Trilogy ('cause it's a trilogy,) and then six books in Elder Empire.  So this book number twenty.  We are having out twentieth book come out.  I was talking before hand about things that I could talk about on stream, and they were going, "Do you have stories from the books?"  What I thought, was I could do a really quick, rapid fire version, where I gave you whatever, just the first memory I have, just really quickly, just the first memory I have of writing each book.  In all twenty books.  In all of my series.  So I'm going to go through them all; I'm going to tell you twenty stories, real quick.  About whatever the first memory, I've not rehearsed this, this is something a just thought to do a few minutes ago, so I'm going to give you whatever story pops off my head for each book.  It's going to be about the writing of the book, or where I was, or what I was doing, or any of that.  Ok.

So, obviously House of Blades is the first one.  And when I think of writing House of Blades, the number one thing that comes to my mind is we were in Roan Mountain.  Roan Mountain, which is a park here in the US, and we're camping, and we're at a stone table, that is covered in moss.  And I have set my laptop up, and I'm wearing a camp chair, and I've set my laptop up on the table, and I'm writing notes.  Which rooms have which swords, and which advisors go with the swords.  So that's the strongest memory for me from House of Blades.  That's what I was doing.

Then, Crimson Vault, which was only two months later, we went back camping, because obviously that worked for the first one, but this time we were getting cabins.  So I remember sitting in a cabin, because we could afford it, with House of Blades money, so I remember sitting in a cabin, and thinking over them, and trying to figure out the scene where we went on this montage over the Overlords of Damasca, and how they were reacting to the hanging tree; reacting in Crimson Vault to Valin breaking free.  So that's the strongest memory for me from that one.

For City of Light, the strongest memory I 

ParadoxRed

So did lindon power degrade back to just being a sage by the time he ascends?

Will Wight

No.

I know I didn’t go into great detail, but he didn’t need to shed a bunch of power until he was weak enough to ascend. He had to wait until hunger aura had faded more in Cradle AND his power was better integrated into his body.

A regular Sage wouldn’t have been able to handle a bunch of Dreadgod weapons at once, body Li Markuth, and then face down a guy called the Devourer of Dimensions.