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Lil' Blue

Will Wight

Zhanzy

Suriel mentions Li Markuth as Gold whereas we know he is greater than that and possibly an archlord so is this a mistake ?

Will Wight

That was me looking for an imperfect solution to a problem.I never intended Li Markuth to merely be Gold, which is why he says as much when he shows up, and of course Suriel knows exactly what his power level is. However, I didn’t want to throw new terms at the reader in book one, so I had her refer to him in the same way everyone else was.Of course, now it’s confusing. In hindsight, I should have said something like “The stronger practitioner’s core.”

Adaen

1. I am super interested in the Nethergate. Will that be explored more? How far does it go down? How much has been explored? 1 a. Was the treasure in the halls from the Nethergate? Even Yerin seemed impressed with the treasure from the first room. What else is in the other 2?2. I believe you mentioned that Sacred Valley was proctected by some very powerful people that wished to keep it more or less a secret. Will be learn about them more?3. I think another asked, but I will too. What level of power is the a Sage? I did find it kinda off that someone of his level of power was even able to be poisoned. Was there simply no good way for him to die otherwise?

Will Wight

1.) Yes, I hope so. I actually wanted to spend longer in Sacred Valley, exploring things like the Nethergate, but publishing the series as a novel instead of as a web serial really forced my hand. I didn't feel like I had time to let Lindon adventure all over the Valley before leaving with Yerin; I wanted to introduce Lindon and get them both to the real sacred arts ASAP.

1a.) I hope to explore that too! 

2.) Yes we will! All the mechanisms that protect and hide Sacred Valley SHOULD be explored, in time!

3.) This will be explained. However, you are correct that under normal circumstances, a Jade couldn't kill a Sage even if they poisoned him, stabbed him as he slept, set him on fire, and riddled him with shots from a machine gun.

Questioner

Does or did the Abidan every bother to research esoteric sacred arts? 

Will Wight

Not really. What the Abidan did was they had...again getting into spoiler territory, oh no. 

They had research facilities that they used to investigate the more fundamental nature of madra why certain aspects are on cradle, why things are, how sage works all that kind of stuff and they tracked that back to the function of The Way and that was really how they got off cradle. 

So in that sense, they did but what they were really doing is they were looking into the origin of how sacred arts work and they were looking for other worlds and they were looking for deeper effects. 

They were almost tracking sage authority backwards in a way. 

But did they research strange types of sacred arts? 

I mean, in their quest to do this, sure, but in the sense of are they trying to create new paths nobody ever seen before? 

No, not really. 

Questioner

If you had to pick between Sage first or Herald before Monarch which would you choose and why?

Will Wight

A Herald. I'd pick Herald. As much as I think Sage is the, I guess, more optimal option just because you gain access to abilities you didn't have and as Herald you don't exactly, like it's sort of you are like you were before but just kind of better at it. Uh, Heralds get a few things that I think are really important. And this I think is mentioned in Reaper but I don't think it gets fully explained but Heralds are effectively immune to any attack or attempt to harm them that doesn't have intention behind it, doesn't have will behind it. So, therefore, they can't drown unless someone drowns them. So they can just lay there at the bottom of the ocean and just sit there forever. And that would suck, they wouldn't have a good time but they wouldn't die. So they could fall from any height and be fine. They would have to be thrown into something to be hurt by it. So just for the sake of improving yourself-

Questioner

Only Will can kill a Herald? I see what you did there.

Will Wight

*laughs* For the sake of survival, if you're picking superpowers you always pick the one ensures your survival first. And yeah, that's my answer, I guess.

Terrible

If a Sage or higher level Sacred Artist world-hopped over to Amalgam and got access to a Territory, could they Incarnate?

Will Wight

Yes.

Terrible

If so, would they be corrupted, or...

Will Wight

Depends on the Sage's powers and their control over them. It's possible that they could remain themselves, but simply draw more deeply on the Territory. They could potentially siphon the entire fragment of a world that formed that Territory, leaving it a powerless husk.

Questioner

Is ascending harder if you don't join the Abidan?

Will Wight

In a sense, yeah. We're obviously going to go into that process a little later in the series. But in a sense it is harder in the sense that the Abidan want you to join them, or at least support them. So one of the things the previous books have said that the Abidan only get a recruit from cradle once every century or whatever. That is... that’s a count of people who do end up ascending and joining the Abidan. The number of people who ascend is greater.

Not everybody who ascends joins the Abidan, a lot of people just kind of ascend to the next world and...chill. One other fun fact about ascension, you can bring other people with you and they do not count as having been ascended. This also ties into the question earlier about are there people in the Abidan who are weaker than sages. There are people who were brought along with other people who ascended so they can be.. you know, you don’t have to ascend completely alone. You can bring people who were not qualified. They are not treated the same, they of course don't have the same level of power or skill or whatever but it is something that can be done.

Questioner

This is probably too spoilery, but in Blackflame Jai Daishou (I forget how to spell his name) mentions how the the six or so truegolds he brought probably could have killed Eithan without him. So, it is possible for truegolds to gang up on an Underlord and kill him. Is this possible with higher ranks too with sacred artists ganging up on those above? For example, could a bunch of sages kill a herald? And could a bunch of heralds kill a Monarch? It seems the gap between ranks gets bigger and bigger so I’m just curious.

Will Wight

As the gap between ranks gets bigger, this possibility gets less likely. One of the reasons Jai Daishou believes this strategy could work against Eithan is because the Truegolds had set up a trap that he believed would work.

bamfious

Mercy's 4th Technique is called "Dream of Darkness"

Will Wight

Funny story about that: I immediately regretted naming that technique in Uncrowned.

I don't like technique names that also contain the name of the aura, because then you end up with weird phrases like "She wove dream madra into the Dream of Darkness, which projected dreams into the darkness using dream aura and darkness aura and dark dreams of Dreamdark, the dreamiest darkest dream that ever dreamed a dark dream."

So when I was actually writing this technique in Wintersteel, I came up with a way cooler name for it: World of Night. And then I remembered I already revealed its name in Uncrowned (taken straight from the character sheet I made for Mercy's Path like three years ago), and I tore out my hair and burned all my clothes in regret.

EDIT: Also yes, the Book manages the extra aspects. She harvests only shadow aura, and her Book has a limited supply of other aspects that she can use initially, but she’ll eventually use that up and have to cycle more from the environment. Everything other than pure shadow is stored in the Book, not her core.

bamfious

Damn. It’s just one single line from one simple Sage....

Can’t Mercy alter it herself and make it different ?

World of Night is cooler.

Will Wight

Oh man, you’re right, I might do that.

It’s Charity’s technique, too, so that could add extra weight to Mercy going “Yeah, but...no.”

Kandra

So, mechanically, could you say that each page of the book acts as a second core, almost (but not quite)?

Will Wight

I have a technical answer and a meme answer.

Technically, it stores madra in the same way that any construct stores madra. Each page’s store of energy is used to power the binding on that page and that’s it.

Meme-ly, yes Mercy has eight cores.

Questioner

What would the emperor from Asylum be ranked comparatively in Cradle?

Will Wight

This is one of those questions that I’ve been asked before and it's hard to answer because relative to his world he’s a monarch, obviously. He's a global spanning superpower that manipulates reality directly. But relative to Cradle, all monarchs in Cradle have specifically designed combat powers and he doesn't. So, he would be much better at fighting on a conceptual level or creating artifacts - stuff that his magic system is better at - but in a straight-up fight, anybody from Cradle would annihilate him. 

It's kind of like - is this person stronger than Goku? I mean... no, that’s what Goku's good at, it's the one thing he does - So that's the difference between Cradle and... virtually anywhere else. So, it's hard to say but in terms of his authority and his control over reality and his ability to manipulate things, I would still say he is monarch-level or close to it.

Questioner

Would he be especially effective against a herald because of his intent? 

Will Wight

Yeah, if you ever got into a direct Will-to-Willpower confrontation with him he would be able to crush pretty much anybody - monarchs, probably not, monarchs would be on the level with him - but your average herald or a sage for sure. Again, presumably. It's a case-by-case basis

Questioner

Are the animated attacks of a Sage just will/authority giving them versatility or are their attacks actually living?

Will Wight

Read and find out.

Will Wight

All the Lord revelations are meant to steadily point you toward Sage.

Questioner

Although I have to say, now that we have a better grasp on how strong the sword sage was, his death seems kinda lame. I mean, they were jades and hes... something a lot stronger.But, I guess that it kind of shows that whatever level he was at, it wasn't something one should call a god or immortal yet. Still very much human and susceptible to death.

Will Wight

Everything you said is absolutely true, but I'm going to respond with a mild spoiler.[MILD SPOILER ALERT]Under normal conditions, a bunch of Jades would not have been able to kill him even if he were poisoned and asleep.I tell you this so you know that I'm aware of this apparent contradiction, there IS an explanation, and it WILL be shown to you in the future.

OrenVelciter

At what rank would someone be able to A)dodge a normal bullet and b) essentially ignore the damage a normal bullet would do?

Will Wight

Prior to Underlord, you are reliant on your techniques to do that. So, if you have techniques that would allow you to dodge a bullet - you don't have the reaction speed for it, so you couldn't see the bullet coming and then dodge it, but you might have a technique that improved your defense to the point that you could take a bullet, or one that moved you out of the way of a bullet as soon as you saw someone, like, pointing a gun at you. So, yeah, there could be techniques. 

At Underlord, then it depends on your Iron body, it depends on your Path, but at Underlord you start having the level of reaction time to do something like that. Later on - Sages, for instance, can basically just ignore bullets and the speed of bullets except under very specific circumstances. I'm going to leave that there because it gets into spoilers about the higher-level magic systems. 

Questioner

What are the lifespans of the different advancement stages?

Will Wight

You get into the hundreds of years, easily 200 years as an Underlord. 100-200 years more as Overlord. Archlord would be high hundreds. Functionally, people on Cradle don't ever live to their maximum lifespan. The more advanced into the sacred arts you go, the more risks you start taking. So then at Sage and Herald it's functionally an unlimited lifespan. It's not technically unlimited and you'd live for several thousand years before you died. There're ways to extend that though. If you wanted to live forever you could.

Questioner

Why does thus far everyone seem to speak the same language and very similar dialect? Even the people in the Sacred Valley, who have been isolated for centuries, seem to speak the same language as is known throughout the Blackfire Empire.

Will Wight

Looks like the Sage has covered this in detail, but I'll throw in my two cents: we're still largely in the same region, but even then, I've thrown in some different accents. Fisher Gesha, Lindon, Yerin, and Eithan all speak in a different vernacular, and I imagine them as having subtly different accents.It's all *largely* the same because we haven't left the country, and because language has spread further than we might imagine based on our history in our world. For one thing, most of this world used to speak the same language (I'll probably get into the specifics of that at some point). It's drifted over the years, but less than you might think thanks to fairly widespread communication. Even though Cradle is a harsh world, a single sacred artist can travel much farther than a single real person, and nomadic tribes are common. There are also dream techniques for transferring language, which allows them to transfer speech much more efficiently.As for Eithan's accent specifically, he spent his childhood in the Blackflame Empire. He speaks the local dialect better than Yerin or Lindon do.There are, however, multiple languages in Cradle. As the world expands, we'll run into them.

Questioner

At what level can a royal madra user transfer their power?

Will Wight

That is sort of a weird question to answer because there is really only one line that does that and its the royal line. So, at what level? I mean, they are all Monarchs kind of by default. In order to design a system like that you'd probably have to be a Monarch. I suspect you could do it if you had Sages cooperating, but it would be difficult.

Questioner

Are there members of the Abidan that are below Sage level or didn't ascend?

Will Wight

Yes there are.  So, the way the Abidan work, which I hope to get into at some point, is there are people who

(Pause for Will to argue with the game.  It's a liar.)

(Also, a moment of silence for the massacre on Obraxis Prime)

So, the Abidan, there are definitely people who are born to Abdidan, who didn't ascend on their own, so they can join, maybe they can develop the powers necessary. That's certainly possible.  There are definitely people among the Abidan, who are in technical terms, not great.

Questioner

Yerin at the end of Bloodlines vs Estyr Six

Will Wight

You know, there are some things that Yerin can do that Estyr Six doesn't have a good ability to block.  Like, Estyr Six is an extremely powerful telekinetic, probably one that could give Yerin trouble.  But at the same time, Yerin's now a suedo-herald, working on a conceptual level, so she's able to fight on some of the same tiers that Estyr Six can, and she can shoot what are effectively laser beams.  And Estyr Six doesn't have a good way of blocking laser beams.  So I'll have to give it to Yerin.  Mainly just a compatibility issue.  Now, there are problems that Estyr knows how to solve that Yerin does not, not that she is not capable of doing that, because there is some of those that a herald would probably be capable of solving, she doesn't know how.  Also, Estyr Six's power set is a lot more similar to a sage's.  So yeah, a little bit of a nuanced answer there.

Questioner

Of the eight badges Lindon found, I'm assuming the halfsilver one is Lord, would the Goldsteel one then be Sage, or Herald?

Will Wight

That will be revealed.