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Revan

What is your favorite type of madra? Is there a sort of madra that can do psychic things, such as telekenisis or telepathy?

Will Wight

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.

Felix

I wanted to inquire as to how a combination of let's say life and death madra would occur in a path.

Will Wight

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.

Natsuguri

So a High Gold decides to fight a Copper despite there being a higher ranking sacred artist right next to him. The High Gold kicks the Copper in the head while he is unaware of the High Gold's presence, and on his knees. That doesn't kill the Copper as the High Gold expects and he realises that the Copper is now Iron. The High Gold acts all reasonable to put the Iron off his guard then makes a flashy and painful strike to distract the Iron so he can sneak around to attack the Iron from behind. The High Gold arrogantly assumes he's delivered a mortal blow. The High Gold the tries smarmying up the the more powerful sacred artist and breaks the cardinal rule of 'don't turn your back on an enemy you're fighting!'. The seriously wounded Iron disimpales himself and attacks his would be assassin from behind because, well High Gold presented his back to the person he'd just tried to kill, why wouldn't you in such a mismatched fight? And yet it is the Iron who is labelled with cowardice and dishonour.

Is it just me?

Will Wight

I know this aspect of the series frustrates people sometimes, but it sounds like you’re reading it exactly as intended.

Did Lindon do anything wrong? No. The hurt and embarrassed people in power are reframing things so that it looks like they were in the right.

Does it make any sense that the powerless person they were picking on could possibly be the offender and THEM the victims? No, but they can get away with claiming they are and no one is going to call them on it for Lindon’s sake. The witnesses know the truth, the truth just doesn’t really matter.

It goes back to what the First Elder tells Lindon in book one. Essentially, even if he does nothing wrong, if the people in charge say he did, then he did. The truth is whatever they say because they’re stronger than he is.

So the definition of honor in Cradle is inconsistent. Yeah, it is. Everybody’s got their own definition and they constantly shift the goalposts to make themselves look better.

There’s at least one negative review of Unsouled where they say that the honor in Cradle isn’t anything like real, historical notions of honor in China. Absolutely right. This is “honor” in a fictional society where more advanced people are better in every way than less advanced people.

You don’t want a reputation for picking on people weaker than you because then someone higher on the totem pole might have a reason to beat the crap out of you, but at the same time, you can throw your weight around as long as you have an excuse.

Questioner

So there’s multiple examples of Sacred Artists having “living techniques” like the mentioned Path of the Crawling Shades during Blackflame I believe or Jai Long’s own twistedd path. Do techniques like these require a certain kind of madra (dream madra, life madra, Blood madra?) or can any madra or path create “living techniques”?

If they need a certain kind of madra what kinds are needed?

Will Wight

It's not a particular aspect of madra, so to speak. It's another ingredient that we'll go into eventually.

Questioner

What specifically is the difference between cycling vital aura to add it to your core and cycling madra to add it to your core like Jai Long does after he absorbs a remnant with the Ancestor's Spear? I thought cycling was the process of turning vital aura into madra but if you have to cycle madra you acquire directly then maybe I'm wrong.

Will Wight

"Cycling" is just moving madra through your body through certain patterns. You can cycle aura into madra, cycle your madra to prepare for certain techniques, etc.

DrDroopyD

That’s so many books lmao, I can’t believe Will signed all of them, must have taken ages

Will Wight

It did. I signed them all. They’re signed, every single one of them. And not just the manuscripts, but the womanuscripts and the childrenuscripts too!

They’re books! And I signed them like books!

Will Wight

(But for real though, idk if all the books pictured in that image are signed. Some of the books are part of the extra printing we’re hoping to get in bookstores, and I only signed the ones actually going to Kickstarter backers. Which was still over 20,000.)

Questioner

What can Dream madra do besides read Fate? Are Time and/or Space actual madra aspects?

Will Wight

Dream madra affects thoughts and perception.Space madra is somewhat different than most aspects; it's not shaping madra INTO space, as that makes no sense, but there is a way to develop madra so that it affects space.

Green0Photon

What does a core being deep mean, that is, does it have extra-dimensional depth? Does this have anything to do with why spinning your core make it more dense?

Will Wight

They say deep just kind of as a word to explore that. It's not literally elongated in depth. That's just how the describe capacity; so a deep core can hold more madra. The dense madra is more effective with a little bit, so very concentrated madra is more powerful; not more powerful in terms of you throw an energy blast and it does more damage than somebody else's energy blast but more like your mana costs go down. So, if you've got dense madra you can use less madra to accomplish to the same goal. And if you have deep cores, then you have more maximum mana. So, that's basically the idea.

Questioner

Can new types of madra be made artificially? Like if somebody invented the computer on Cradle would it collect computer madra?

Will Wight

All aspects of madra are essentially human interpretations of aura. You might notice a unique blend of aura around a computer, and you could break it down into storm aura and dream aura or what have you, or perhaps you could find a way to cycle it into your own madra and create what you called a "computer Path." What would you be able to do? I'm not sure. That sounds like a confusing blend of madra.

Questioner

How does life madra affect other kinds if madra it is mixed with?

Will Wight

Life madra is strange. It's widely known on Cradle that your experience and the aspects of your Path affect how you perceive aura. Some types of less-tangible aura--like destruction, for instance--can't be detected by some people at all. These are usually the aspects that deal with intangible concepts. Therefore, in theory, life madra would be difficult for the average person to perceive. But it isn't. This is believed to be because we are all acclimated to life aura ourselves, as living beings, and because we're surrounded by plants and animals even before Copper. Life madra interacts with the force that animates a living being. HOW it interacts depends on the Path and the technique. Let's take life and fire, for instance. One Path might have a flame that uses life for fuel, consuming the target even underwater. Another Path might have a flame that ignites a life-fire and gives you inexhaustible life aura, meaning you have more energy and heal faster. It's a weird one.

Questioner

I've noticed that spent Madra often returns to essence. Is that somehow recycled into aura? 

Will Wight

Yes/  So in the books, I establish how constructs and forged madra, well, all madra does this, it's just I pay attention to it with remnants and forger techniques, dissolves into these motes or sparks of rising light and dissolves back.  Yeah, madra dissolves back into aura.  That's what essence is.  It's kind of madra fuzzing back into aura.  So yeah, that does happen.  But because of the way it dissolves it's not useful for ruler techniques.  I mean, eventually it would be; you could sit there and let it dissolve and eventually you would have some aura to use, but it disperses quick, and aura tends to change form based on what it's around, so it's not good for fueling ruler techniques, but it is something that get cycled back into the aura of the world.

Fable

Why can't life madra be forged into a solid object?

Will Wight

Life madra can not be forged into a solid object because, there's a few reasons, one is it flows through very.....fluidly? I don't know how to put this, i don't know any terms here, because I didn't make terms for the physics of madra. Its just not rigid, it flows in a constant movement pattern through living things, so therefore it's always in motion, it's never static, that's why its not in a solid form.  Meta answer: I needed different physical properties for different types of madra because that creates challenges in soulsmithing, and it sorta made sense that they'd have different properties, so that's how that happened.

Fable

At some point would you be willing to add a table describing how to cycle the basics of Madra? As well as some of the properties that certain Madra's possess? I am wondering this because I am trying to make mechanics for a Cradle Quest. (Quest meaning something like a DnD game that is run online.) If you do not have an answer at this time then I have a simpler question. What exactly is force madra, how do you cycle it, and how does it work? 

Will Wight

So I definitely need to do that, this is something i probably need to bring up to the team, although they're certainly hearing this and are gonna hold me to this whether I want to do it or not. That's something I definitely need to do, i really probably need to do some sort of index or whatever for every series.....appendix that was the word i was looking for. The problem is it kind of changes based on the book, so you learn something new every book. So i either have to post just the very basics, so the very basics that you would learn in Unsouled, or the stuff that everybody knows, or I'd have to update it every book. So of course, before ebooks, you'd have all this at the back of the book, now i can create a page on my site and just link to it, so i could just have kind of a constant explanation encyclopaedia sorta thing up there. Its a lot more work that it sounds like, unless i do just the bare minimum and just put like a description up there of just kind of generally how the the madra system works. But i know i need to do something and i'm fully willing to do it, its one of those things that i feel like always is on my priority list, but never high enough to actually do, so it never gets to the top, so I'm sorry about that.

Lightsyde

This is my favourite blog since 'Ancestors of Cradle'!! Fun reading!!!

How aboutGrom (The Archmage of Menzoberanzan) vs Elder Whisper

Ryu Hayabusa (from Ninja Gaiden 2) vs Yerin?

Goku (ignoring anything past the Main Buu Saga) vs Northstrider?

Is there anyone in the Cradle world (not the universe itself but the planet) that can take one Majin-Buu or Majin-Vegeta?

Evangeline Kitty McDowell (from UQ Holder) vs Luminous Queen Sha Maria?

Touta Konoe (UQ Holder) vs Yerin

Esdeath (Akame ga kill) vs Li Markuth

More to come later =(^-^)=

Will Wight

This thread has gotten so long! It's been awesome, but now I'm having trouble keeping track of it all!

1.) Grom vs. Elder Whisper

I'd like to give it to Whisper because of the flexibility of madra vs. Vancian magic, which relies on prepared and memorized spells and material components. That said, I'd think it would depend on where they fought. Elder Whisper relies on light aura, and Menzoberranzan is in the Underdark. There is some bioluminescence for decoration, but the dark elves primarily rely on infravision to see. No light aura, and Elder Whisper's powers are more limited. Plus, Grom can attack directly, which Elder Whisper essentially can't. Grom gets it.

2.) Ninja Gaiden 2 Ryu Hayabusa vs. Yerin

I have to say I didn't play 2; I played 1, and I played Dead or Alive, but not 2. So if the specifics of what I say are wrong, forgive me.

I'd think Yerin would get it because she's from a magic system with more magic. Everything she does is infused with madra--she's strengthened by madra, throwing blades of madra, using the power of an opponent's blades against them.

Ryu has powers of his own, as well as a great deal of training, but for the most part he's swinging regular steel weapons. Yerin beats him.

3.) SS3 Goku vs. Northstrider

This is roughly the level of power I'm looking at for Northstrider. When he powers up, the world shakes for miles around. That sort of thing.

(Not blowing up planets, but they could do that in the Saiyan Saga, so I'm just kind of pretending DBZ characters can't do that.)

I'd think Goku would win, because Northstrider can't teleport or use ki blasts (unless between now and my introduction of the character I decide to give him that ability). In a straight punch-out, they'd be comparable.

4.) Majin Buu or Majin Vegeta

Yes.

5.) Evangeline vs. Sha Miara

UQ Holder Evangeline rather than Negima Evangeline, huh? Not that in her particular case it matters much, that's just interesting.

Evangeline has to win because she's immortal and Sha Miara isn't. In terms of magical firepower, I'd give it to Sha Miara, but I don't know that Evangeline has ever gone 100% all-out. Still a similar level.

6.) Touta Konoe vs. Yerin

Same thing: Touta wins because he can't be killed. So he basically can't lose a death match.

I'm also not fully clear on what his powers are, but the White Light of Mars can presumably disperse Yerin's Striker and Ruler techniques (though not her Enforcer techniques, which I'd guess would work more similar to chi in the Negima universe). Even if you say that dying once disqualifies him, Touta probably wins.

7.) Esdeath vs. Li Markuth

Esdeath can freeze *time itself,* which is pretty OP, but I think Li Markuth still wins. He's superhuman and has access to a broader variety of techniques.

Xektalon

If Lindon made a drudge look like a gold dragon (since they used to be a servant line to the blacks) ... How long would it last before said dragons destroyed it and tried to kill him? And would Orhtos pass out laughing at seeing the drudge?

Will Wight

Orthos might! He might really enjoy that. But the gold dragons wouldn't have it out for Lindon any more than they already do because a lot of gold dragons are selfish and whatever. They're going around stealing stuff and raiding places. As much as I said about Sesh's law-of-the-jungle mentality, his descendants really like the good life. They're rich and they're powerful and they really like it. And so they don't settle down places; they don't do very civilized stuff, but they do go take things from people who are civilized. Civilized is a weird word. I really mean settled; people who live in settlements. And so they see a lot of stuff. But they wouldn't care really--I mean if they ran across him they would definitely be mad, but that would be kind of they already kinda hate him like because Sophara hates him, and she's kind of their leader of their generation. So an older gold dragon would just completely not care--would just try to breath fire to kill him and that's it. But the people who are going to be swayed by that, they already hate him because he murdered somebody, so he's already on their list.

Questioner

Portals - Some are tinged blue because of the Way and others with the user's madra. Why?

Will Wight

So, the question is, some portals are blue because they go through the way, and other portals look like the users madra.  There's a more nuanced answer to this question.  I don't know how much I can go into without getting super weirdly technical.  But it's almost a, it's sort of a style, a method of transportation.  So there are people like Charity, who exercise their authority by going through the medium of their techniques.  They use their madra to move through the Way.  There is also a difference between short range teleportation and long range teleportation.  And others tear open the Way directly and walk through.  So someone like Northstrider could do whichever of those he felt was most appropriate.  And then there are pros and cons to each approach.  There are also others that mask what they are doing in their madra.  So it looks like they are teleporting you through a technique, but in reality they are just opening the Way and taking you through.  So one of the constants of that, is unless you are deliberately masked somehow, you are always going to notice the Way if you are going a longer distance.  Even when its used through a technique.  If you are not being teleported that far, relatively speaking, you might not be able to perceive the blue fabric of the Way.

Questioner

Would Destruction madra strain your madra channels in the same way that blackflame does, or is that only blackflame?

Would it be possible for Lindon to use a technique that only used the destruction aspect of his madra? Kind of like how Jai Daishuo used a force ruler technique in Skysworn.

Will Wight

Sure he could, yeah. He could use fire aura to light fires or destruction aura to...accelerate the destruction of something that was already dissolving.

Destruction aura isn’t as useful as it sounds unless there’s a ton of it or you’re at a much higher level.

Destruction madra alone wouldn’t necessarily strain you the way Blackflame does, but it would also be more difficult to use in any useful way. If you didn’t learn to focus it effectively, a destruction Striker technique would be like spritzing weak acid on something.

Questioner

Can new types of madra be made artificially? Like if somebody invented the computer on cradle, would it collect computer madra?

Will Wight

All aspects of madra are essentially human interpretations of aura. You might notice a unique blend of aura around a computer, and you could break it down into storm aura and dream aura or what have you, or perhaps you could find a way to cycle it into your own madra and create what you called a "computer Path."

MountainKing

Is creation madra a actual type of madra?

Will Wight

Good question; creation madra is NOT a type of madra, because there is no creation aura, which is kind of a philosophical debate in Cradle. Why does the act of destruction release aura, but acts of creation do not?

Mahfuzul Alam

Say if Lindon touches the Way can he also touch the Void? And if so, can he harvest madra from the Void?

Will Wight

Yes.“Can he draw madra from the Void?” Probably he wouldn’t be drawing madra.