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Scientific classification of madra
If you ask too many questions about the categorization of madra aspects, you’re just not going to get very many satisfying answers out of me. I didn’t organize it in, like, an elemental chart with categories and everything. There would have been advantages to that, sure, but I wanted to leave it open-ended to some degree.
How did the other empires of Cradle consider the Blackflames when they were at their strongest? And how would they react to a new Blackflame?
"How would they react to a new Blackflame?" is a bit too much of a spoiler, but...When the Blackflame Empire was at its height, it controlled the whole (massive) continent. That was when it was ruled by dragons.When the Blackflame family was at the height of their power, their empire controlled about half the continent. As for the other half...well, the dragons and their descendants had to go somewhere.Now that the Blackflame lineage has fallen, the Empire is even smaller. About a third of the continent. The dragons outside are powerful enough to wipe out the human empire, except that the humans of the Blackflame Empire have a backer.To the other great nations around the world, including the Ninecloud Court, the original Blackflame Empire was a real power. Now, it's just one territory sheltered under the wing of a true powerhouse.
You’ve said that Sha Miara counters/controls other people’s skills. Would this work as well with pure madra or could someone sufficiently powerful just disperse everything she does?
What purpose do Dross' core and Madra channels serve? Can he actually cycle with them?
That was all part of Dross evolving from a construct to an independent spirit. Without some form of madra channels, he wouldn't be able to process power. He cannot cycle aura, though technically Lindon could cycle aura to him. If he wanted.
Could Nightsong manipulate a Monarch?
No. It would be a classic clash of madra versus madra, and so the Monarchs would just beat her.
Dross cycled Charity's madra scales of shadow and dream. Does he only cycle the dream aspect of the scale?
Yeah, that's kinda how that works. There's a couple of ways to cycle things. It doesn't have to actually be the exact madra type that you cycle. So if you get the scale, you can process just the part of it that you can process.
My main problem with romance is that it's added to literally every story as though it's a required component, and it's often just thrown in there. In nine out of ten stories, the characters are just in love because they're in love, and we expect that because it's the weird side item that comes with every single meal.
So I intentionally left it out of Traveler's Gate.
But now that TG has become much bigger than I thought it would, if I want to expand on the character's lives, logically there's going to be SOME romance in there. There's romance in everyone's life to some degree.
It just won't be the focus, because the focus is fighting giant interdimensional monsters with a huge sword.
***As for the anime influences, the parallels to the Shounen Jump Big Three are almost entirely coincidences.
The madra in Cradle parallels chakra from Naruto because they're both based on chi myths and legends that originated in China and Korea. We're drawing on the same source material. But the two magic systems work exactly the same way, so picturing madra flow as chakra flow is dead-on.
The only One Piece connection is that they both involve pirates on a magical sea, but I wasn't intentionally making that parallel. They're pirates because I wanted to do a pirates vs. ninjas thing, and it's a magical sea because awesome things are awesome. I would love to write something that was directly inspired by One Piece, though. That would be amazing.
I love the Devil Fruits system but I wish it had more rules, and I love how haki solves the main Fruit problem (i.e. why aren't the Logia users invincible?) by giving them a catch-all force that can be used against anyone with any powers. But it's also kind of vague, as haki is just sort of "general magical power," so I'd want some more character there.
And if I wrote my own series I'd get to tweak those as I wish, which would be so much fun!
The Traveler's Gate parallels...I get the connection to Bleach, I really really do, but believe it or not it's entirely a series of coincidences. Simon uses a large Japanese-style sword because it's cool, and if I was inspired by anyone it was Sephiroth. With that sweet sweet Masamune.
The black cloak was a last-minute addition. Seriously, it was like the last thing I added to the book. My cover artists had come up with that sweet-looking Nye on the cover, but my beta readers kept assuming it was Simon (because anyone on the cover has to be the main character, I guess). And they were confused when he never wore a black cloak; I had him in peasant clothes all book.
So I gave him a cloak. Now it's Simon on the cover if you want it to be, or it's the Eldest, or it's just a random Nye. However you interpret it.
And the mask was complete improv. I gave Malachi a mask as his Ragnarus artifact, but when he died it was just sitting there on the floor. And I've always had this pet peeve where main characters let their enemies' strongest weapons sit there and rot instead of taking them and use them for good.
So I had Simon take it. Then I had to think...well, he has to find a use for this mask. For Malachi it allowed him to draw more from his Territory, but how would that help Simon? The chains already limit how much he can draw. Maybe they can fix it and make it work for Valinhall...
And that's how that happened.
If I were to take anything from Bleach, it would be shikai/bankai. In fact, I'm trying to figure out how to work something like that into Cradle, because I think it allows for a lot of character individuality.
***
That said, I can tell you where I DID intentionally copy the Big Three as well as a bunch of other anime series, and that's in the fight scenes. I usually picture fights as a choreographed anime sequence in my head, and work from there. If you think of them as reading an anime, awesome!
And finally, to answer your main question: yes, I picture Lindon and Yerin as Chinese, as well as most of the characters. The only exceptions so far are Suriel and Eithan (and, in Blackflame, the rest of Eithan's family).
Thanks for reading, Simon! Glad you're enjoying the stories!
What are the mechanics of a soul oath? Does the oath need to be made with equal consideration on each side? What happens if you break an oath? Can an oath be annulled by mutual agreement?
A soul oath is your spirit holding you to an agreement. When two people’s spirits are holding them to the same agreement, they resonate, and it creates a sort of subtle link.
Therefore, both people have to recognize that they have made an oath. Forcing someone to swear an oath under duress works, but is much weaker, because both participants know the oath is unfair. However, making a false oath isn’t really possible, because your spirit and the other person’s would recognize that you had made an oath.
Yes, you can annul an oath under mutual agreement.
If you break one, your spirit suffers the consequences. So you can have your madra channels or core injured, your madra can become more difficult to control, etc.
In the worst case, you can die, though those risks are exaggerated in rumor. Usually, if you do die from breaking an oath, it’s because your powers screwed up.
Some people with more powerful souls even influence the aura around them to hold them to their oath, meaning the natural world would curse them with consequences for oath-breaking.
Is lightning madra a derivative of storm madra or are they seperate?
They're the same thing.
So it seems to me that the other multiversal powers are actually doing more to stabalise iterations just by allowing people to cross from one too the other and share tech because that would push population higher and allow them to stabalise iterations by bringing in more people.
Not quite! I hope to get into the mechanics of this in a Suriel storyline at some point, but basically unsupervised inter-world interaction has consequences that spill over into other worlds. THOSE Iterations might be better off, but they're shifting consequences onto other worlds.
Great for you, bad for the neighbors.
However, that's not to say that the Abidan have it all figured out. There is a reason they do what they do, but they can still make mistakes. One of the reasons Ozriel left is that he couldn't stand their policies; there's a lot of gray area between "not interfering with a world at all" and "controlling every aspect of its development."
If you'll recall, when Suriel shows up to Cradle, she considers saving some random people from harm, despite the non-interference rules. She could potentially have done that by descending and then using no more powers than an ordinary resident of the world.
By acting within the rules of the world, she's not interfering with Fate too much and not violating the Pact.
She could NOT have waved her hand and cured cancer over the whole planet.
Ozriel's argument is that they should be saving as many people as they can, as their power allows, even to the point of weakening the restrictions of the Eledari Pact. There are many worlds that he wouldn't have had to reap if the Pact would have allowed him to end a war, or destroy a particular demon, or eradicate a plague.
...boy, I've said too much. Quiet, Will.
Hmmmmm. That's quite intriguing will. Seems like just an exchange of tech could easily exponentially increase the populations of various iterations and stabilize them without to many people going back and forth. Unless that destabilizing effect is based of something more obtuse than that.
A limited version of that is something that Ozriel might argue for. If there's a plague that's about to wipe out an entire planet and someone in another dimension has figured out a cure, why shouldn't we give them the cure? No magic powers necessary--we're giving them something they COULD have figured out on their own, but didn't. The Iteration gets to live at least a few thousand more years instead of getting Reaped.
Hey Will I don't quiet understand a part of this deviating from fate business. (I hope u don't take it the wrong way) I mean u mentioned that new iterations are formed from fragments drifting in the eternal nothingness or whatever.
Okay now these iterations are devoid of human life at first. (So their original fate is to actually devolve into chaos)
Then the Abidan sort of place humans in them sort of like pilgrims to that iteration, isn't that in and of itself a deviation of fate? Not only for the world, but for those people whom were taken there as well? (I imagine they have to terraform the planet first to be suitable as well)
The only way i see it being part of Fate is if the "Way" kinna speaks to the Abidan of whom to take and from where. Again i hope u don't take it the wrong way or if u have another explanation ready. :D
vWell, they don't usually have to do much terraforming. The fragments tend to combine into a single, inhabitable, central planet, and then the Iteration spreads out from there into a full universe. Like a seed growing.
When a world is born in this manner, it's not yet tethered to the Way. And therefore not yet bound by Fate.
Only when the people show up does the world start to develop a connection to Fate at all.
When Ziel showed Lindon the Tablet on pure madra in Ghostwater after lecturing him, was that always his intention, or was that only after Lindon explained he was advancing to protect his home from a great disaster?
I don't understand that question exactly. When Ziel showed Lindon the table on pure madra in Ghostwater, was that always his intention? I don't understand it. I think the question means did Ziel intend to help Lindon, or was he persuaded to help Lindon when he heard that Lindon had a good cause. And the answer is, he was persuaded by Lindon, finding out that he, starting to know Lindon as a person a little bit, and then when he did, he was like all right, I'll help you. He did not intend to help at the beginning. So I hope that answers your question.
What is a powerful elixir with a huge drawback
A Dragon's Tear. It's refined from two perfectly balanced varieties of madra (the actual ingredients used depend on the refiner's Path and the availability in the region). When you swallow it, it releases an explosion of power that "supercharges" your soul, so to speak, releasing enormous power temporarily. However, it strains the madra channels, which can lead to permanent spiritual damage. In a severe case, it could leave you with no more power than an Unsouled. More importantly, it's addictive. Not chemically, but even users with no spiritual damage report feeling that their souls feel weaker afterwards in comparison to that brief moment of transcendent power.
So how does aura become madra?
A sacred artist draws the aura into themselves and into their core, where they make it part of their spirit. If they succeed, they’ve taken control of a small amount of aura, which merges with their current madra so they share properties.
Are there any iron bodies that can affect the soul?
Yes, there absolutely are. So there will be iron bodies that will be more resistant to spiritual attacks. So an attack of madra will do more than an aura technique, and there will be some that would interact with aura differently, that's a potential iron body. There could be iron bodies that effect the processing of madra, but that gets kind of weird, because at that point it overlaps with a change in your cycling. So that's really the domain of the Jade cycling technique.
(1) So the Ghosts manage fragments of worlds that died naturally, while the Reaper (Reapers, plural?) is called in when a world gets corrupted? Before Ozriel became the Reaper, were the Ghosts busy dealing with corrupted fragments too?
(2) Is there any overlap/connection between the Spider’s intelligence gathering and the Hound’s investigation of Fate?
(3) Does Suriel’s Presence draw information from the intelligence network of the Spiders, or is it capable of detecting all of it on its own?
(4) In your original post you said, “Any universe that the Abidan recognize as capable of sustaining human existence and living out a complete life-cycle.” Are there places that aren’t recognized by the Abidan (but are still capable of sustaining humans)? Are there any places that are excluded out of spite or other bad feelings among the Abidan?
Minor theory time:the Wolves are the combat arm of the Abidan (none of the divisions discussed so far seem well suited)the Phoenixes (Phoenices? Phoenies? Does anyone know the correct plural of Phoenix?) are the healers and fixers of problems, in line with what we’ve seen Suriel do so far.
1.) Yes they were! They actually deal with corruption and chaos more than most Abidan ever have to, as their job takes them far from the Way.
2.) Yes there is, but the Spiders kind of work with everyone.
3.) Suriel's Presence is capable of drawing and processing information on its own, but it is also (usually) connected to the Spiders' network. Right now it's disconnected, with results that I hope to show in Blackflame (I might end up having to cut the scene, but I hope not.)
4.) There are pseudo-Iterations (and there should probably be a name for that status) where fragments combined but not fully. In that case, they wouldn't be a full universe, or the fragments would have combined in such a way that the universe will be unable to support life.
--Phoenixes. Also, in my head but nowhere else, Phoenii.
Out of curiosity, what rank would Simon be on Cradle? Both with his mask and without.And would he be practicing the Path of Valinhall?
This is a tricky question, because while I know what you mean, they're practicing different magic systems. Simon hasn't worked on his madra at all, so if he were plopped down in Cradle, they would see him as completely untrained.If we're talking parallels, yes his chains are like a Goldsign, and the dolls would be something like a Remnant.In terms of combat potential, he'd be at Underlord level physically with his mask on. In fact, he might have an advantage even at that tier (WITH the mask on, in a head-to-head confrontation).But that's purely a physical measurement. He'd have to ghost armor his way through their techniques, and hope that Nye essence makes him faster than their Enforcer techniques so they didn't break the armor, lock him in place, and cook him alive with fireballs or something before he gets close.Then again, let's say there's a fight between Simon and a sacred artist with similar powers. Path of the Steel Chains, or whatever. It focuses on Enforcer techniques and making the body stronger and faster, and uses giant weapons.Simon would have the advantage in a shorter battle, but if the sacred artist hangs on past the first few minutes, Simon is going to start running out of powers. The sacred artist isn't. Sure, he'll exhaust his madra eventually, but it's not on a timer like many of Simon's powers are. The mask extends that, but of course the mask itself has a time limit.And because of the Iron body, once Simon runs out of Nye essence OR steel, the sacred artist is going to dribble him like a basketball.
Eithan, for instance, would just dodge until Simon gave up, retreated, or had to take the mask off. A lot of an actual matchup would come down to information. Does the sacred artist know that Simon has a time limit, and does Simon know that he has to finish the fight quickly? Does Simon know what Path his opponent is on? Does he have Caela with him? How do the sacred artist's techniques interact with ghost armor?Then again, if some Abidan plucked Simon out of his world and dumped him into Cradle, Simon WOULD be able to learn sacred arts. In addition to his Traveler powers.He'd have to adjust to the planet itself, which is bigger and has higher gravity, and some of his Traveler abilities wouldn't work--notably, he probably wouldn't be able to cut open a Gate, so there goes the healing pool. But he'd still be able to call steel, essence, and so on, and he'd be able to use the mask and doll as long as he had them on him to begin with.Summoning Mithra would PROBABLY be possible, but it would certainly take longer.
To expand on the theory behind what I just said:Amalgam (the TG world) has a bunch of tiny fragmented worlds stuck to it like ticks on a dog. Those are the Territories. It's easy to cut Gates to and from these miniature worlds because they're close, and they're already somewhat connected to the main world. They're like the elemental planes in D&D, if that means anything to you.Cradle is NOT close. So anything Simon takes from his Territory will still work the same, but anything he has to call on the Territory for--like cutting a Gate, or summoning a weapon, or calling more power from a room (as Simon and Kai have both done before)--is going to either take much longer, reflecting the greater distance, or isn't going to work at all.This is metaphysical distance, by the way. These are worlds as in dimensions, not worlds as in planets. Although they are also planets. Suriel gets into detail about this in Blackflame, in a scene that I had originally written for Soulsmith and then cut.But there's a reserve of steel and of Nye essence inside his body, and those will work. Anything he carries with him and all his internal powers will function as normal, just like they do when he's inside someone else's Territory.
Are humans the most common Ascended beings/Immortals?
Yes, they are. Humans are the most common.
Is necromancy a thing on Cradle?
Not in the traditional sense, so not in the sense that like death madra allows you to resurrect skeletons. What they do have is they make corpse puppets. In that case, yeah you can reanimate corpses, but they can really be made out of anything. So you could also make yourself a little metal battle-droid, and that would probably be better than an actual corpse.
Will popped into the discord during a conversation referencing this WoW entry, and had this to add to clarify...
I say above that death madra cannot be used to resurrect skeletons. In the following sentence, I say that “they” can make corpse puppets. “They” in this case refers to the sacred artists of Cradle in general, not specifically death artists.
Dross’ relationship with Lindon for some reason reminded me of Vampire Hunter D. D is kept alive at one point in the first movie by an independent entity in his hand which lives off D but also allowed D to heal/regenerate (or at least regenerate faster). I wonder if such a relation would be possible in cradle. Essentially a symbiotic relationship (with a parasite or something of the sort), which could leave both parties better off but didn’t necessarily require a contract or sharing of madra. Now Dross is a construct and seems to operates off all madra, so maybe he’s a special case?
Yes, that would be possible.
If Lindon were to die and release a remnant, would he in fact produce two remnants because of his two cores, a single hybrid remnant, or two conjoined remnants?
It would be a conjoined Remnant, not two Remnants. It would be unstable at first, as the pure madra began to dilute the Blackflame madra, but would eventually stabilize.It would be less powerful and aggressive than a full Blackflame Remnant, but it would be less likely to randomly attack people, which would probably increase its likelihood of finding a food source.
