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Is the reference to the iteration where people ascend after completing a tower a reference to Tower of God?
Indirectly, yes. I love Tower of God. I think it's a great comic. I think the anime was really good. Some people had some complaints about the anime. I did not, I thought it was really good. So, indirectly, yes, it's not exactly a reference to Tower of God, that's not quite like the Tower, but it is a reference to that and other tower style worlds or cultivation.
So, Will, you tried some new things in your writing method, how do you feel it worked out for you?
I plan on blogging about this soon, maybe this week. I wanted to wait until as many people as possible got to read the book before I commented on the writing process, so now that sales are starting to slow down (relatively speaking), that indicates to me that most fans have had a chance to read Wintersteel and form their opinion on it.
In short, I feel like it was the most efficiently I’ve ever written a book. I was therefore able to write more in less time without killing myself.
However, I try to improve my writing process in some way for every book, so this is really just another step in a long iterative process that most likely won’t ever end.
Also, while I’m pleased with how efficiently I wrote Wintersteel, not all books I write in the future will be this long. For instance, Bloodline probably won’t be. It is (or it should be) a much more focused story, so I don’t need things like two competing primary storylines.
I feel like the answer I’m supposed to give is “I loved this process so much because it gave the story the room it really needed to breathe, and I felt more free to explore and flesh out the world,” but I didn’t really feel that way.
I felt paralyzed with fear over what to cut and what to leave in, shipped it off full of dread, received the positive reviews with a massive sigh of relief, and retroactively look over it with a feeling of “Well, I’m going to write the next book in a similar way but tweaked based on what I learned last time, and I hope they like the next one just as much but there’s every chance they won’t.”
Same as usual!
The Eledari Pact: An ancient agreement between the original Court of Seven that both increases and restricts the powers of the Abidan.
Agreements and restrictions are inherently ordered, so this pact is the tool that allows the Abidan to control the power of the Way as they do. There are many rules in the Eledari Pact, but the most relevant one is this: the Abidan cannot use their powers to prevent the natural progression of an Iteration.
They cannot stop a global war from claiming billions of lives and destroying a planet, unless that war was started by outside forces or by a significant subversion of Fate. Abidan only descend to correct a deviation, though they're granted a certain freedom of action in doing so. This law exists both to preserve the natural balance of existence and to prevent the Abidan from settling down in lesser worlds and ruling like gods.
What path do professional sex workers follow? Are they in a house and ranked like the janitors?
Prostitutes often follow dream Paths, because dream madra can be used to alter appearances, induce emotions, and even find potential customers. In the Blackflame Empire, they are of course ranked. Everything is ranked. The top brothel is The Court of Roses, which caters to members of the royal family and influential clan leaders. The number one courtesan in the Court of Roses is Haru Mei, a woman on the Path of Twining Vines. She cycles aura of life and dreams, in a strange combination that helps her sense what others are feeling and manipulate those sensations.
Is the Traveller's Gate fandom dead?
I've been searching around iteration 110 for a while trying to find anything partaining to Indiriel, Simon, Leah, or even Alin. I'll find a morsel occasionally, but is this fandom dead?
The fandom isn’t dead, but Cradle is the ongoing series. I expect to see this question about Cradle a few years after the series is over.
…which might be a little awkward, given that the name of the sub is r/Iteration110Cradle
I’d really like to get back to Traveler’s Gate, but I have to do something new first. I haven’t written in a new world since 2016 and I’m having a lot of fun.
Yes!
Are we gonna see more magic systems from other Iterations?
At some point, either in Cradle, the next few books, or in my next series when I write something with a different magic system.
Ichigo is so cool and awesome! Why don't you like him?
Alright, so for those who don't know Ichigo is the Japanese word for strawberries so he is asking why I don't like male strawberries and the answer is I just prefer female strawberries. So it's not really a prejudice thing it's just a personal preference and I think they taste a little better that's all.
So, there is one other possible meaning to that question. So, Ichigo is also the name of the protagonist of 'Bleach'. Probably isn't what he meant and probably asking about my strawberries preferences. But the protagonist of Bleach is fine. I don't dislike him. I don't have problems with him. The only really reason I don't like him as much is because I feel like the story is less interesting with him around. When he isn't around they tend to go into a lot of side characters who tends to be just way cooler. So we get to explore all the Captains in The Gotei 13 organization. That's just a lot more interesting to me and that only happens when Ichigo isn't around. So not a big fan of Ichigo being in spotlight. I don't dislike him as a character or anything.
So I don't dislike him but funfact, the Abidan Court was in its original iteration modeled off the Captains of Bleach, so that's why they have Mantles. That's a Captain Haori reference. It changed significantly as I developed that organization but that was the original inspiration as I was taking kind of taking...I would say Captains from 'Bleach' and then I guess sort of Forsaken from the 'Wheel Of Time' kind of thing. That makes sound them more evil than I think of them but that's sort of the organization I was going for when I initially thought of Abidan. So that actually comes from bleach and that's how much more compelling I think the side characters are in bleach than the main character.
Suriel said Cradle is where they keep the babies, but then alluded to her being from someplace else. Explain please. Is it like a reincarnation thing? or once you ascend beyond a world you are immortal fiveever?
She doesn't mean literal babies. She's speaking metaphorically.She's suggesting that, once he's mature enough, he can ascend past this world.People from other Iterations can become Abidan too, but it's much less common. Cradle is important to them because it produces people capable of becoming Abidan (which would be the "adults" in her analogy) on a fairly regular basis.
Did you always intend for Eithan to be Ozriel?
Yes! That's one of the things I've addressed a lot in comments this week. I think if you go back over the other books now knowing the revelation you'll see that it was in place the whole time. And this brings me to the story that I'm going to tell. So buckle up because I'm going to spend a few minutes answer a question from me. A lot of people were asking what the journey was with Eithan, when did I decide he's Ozriel? When did I decide to make this part of the books? The funny part is, I've answered this a little bit on Reddit and Discord, but I'll go into it a in a little bit more detail here.
Back in college, in 2011 I want to say, I had a couple of ideas for a story that I thought would be really good. A couple different stories. One of them was a story about magic kind of coming into a world and therefore just the existence of magic in the world, a world like ours but not ours because I am against writing in the actual real world, it merges with other dimensions that have magic. So other iterations. And therefore it develops a magic system, but it's not a magic system that anybody's familiar with. It's a new magic system, so it causes an apocalypse. That was one. And I was like, "Oh, I really like that idea but I don't think I'm good enough to write that." The other one was a system where there are a set of guardians that guard over the multiverse, and they use the way. And the way between worlds is the source of all order, and there is the void, the source of all chaos and destruction. And the guardians are called the Abidan, and they wear white armor, and they gather a bunch of different multiverses together to protect them.
So that was the other general plotline, and the idea there would have been that we would have followed a character who was going to the Abidan to be apprenticed to them. And he had risen from a mortal world, and once he joins the Abidan he is taken under the wing of Suriel. Who in this case, was The Ghost. So she was originally intended to be The Ghost, and her personal name was Mercy. So she was The Ghost, and she would take this guy under her wing, and start training him. Well as he went on these assignments, he also got mentored by a guy who popped out of nowhere, and had long blonde hair, and was dressed as a janitor. And he had a pristine janitor's uniform on. I wrote this scene years ago. And his name was Eithan, and he could apparently see everything that was going on around him at any time. So this guy remains mysterious, and he keeps popping up at different points in the story dressed in whatever uniform is necessary. So one time he'll be dressed as a mechanic, another time he'll be dressed as a librarian or whatever. And then the main character starts to wonder who this guy is, and he starts to investigate his background. And he finds that in every persona, his background checks out. So, he has been working for the janitor all the time, he has been working as a mechanic the whole time. And what the main character eventually kind of figures out by the fact that he can detect everything everywhere, is that this guy's gotta be The Spider. He's gotta be the Judge of the Spider division. And he confronts Eithan about this, and Eithan is like, "Oh yeah! That's totally me!" and of course it isn't. And it ends up that he is actually Ozriel, the Judge and solo member of the Reaper division. And he's out looking for people to join his division.
So that was the original idea. Also this main character, his whole powerset was that he could bind people to contracts. So he would help people or he would go on adventures and do things for people, and then he would cash in their favors. So he would collect all these things he would do for people, and then he would make them pay him back. And so he would cash these favors in and gain power. And his primary power set was the fact that he could tap into both order and chaos. So he wasn't as good at order as any of the Abidan were, but he could do both thanks to contracts with a small blue water spirit and a black dragon chaos spirit. And their names were Melusine and Oerthon, so those were the names I had for them. And the main character had both these powers, and was apprenticed under both these Judges.
So you can see how close that ended up actually aligning to what ended up coming out. It's kind of funny. When it came time to write Cradle, my primary inspiration were the Chinese cultivation novels. And a lot of other cultures as well, Korean and Japanese, but primarily these Chinese cultivation novels. And I knew that usually, there is a higher world or higher realm that you are ascending toward. So I repurposed the elements from this other story to Cradle. To be a layer over. So I had come up with Eithan's character years before. Now, this Mercy/Suriel character became several different characters, obviously it became Suriel and Mercy. And then, funnily enough, while she was The Ghost, one of her things was that she would pop up everywhere because you couldn't notice her. She was unnoticeable all the time unless she chose not to be. And the only person who could always her, of course, was Eithan. So she was always sneaking around everywhere and popping up out of nowhere, unless Eithan was around. Then he was aware of her the entire time. And then he was popping up everywhere because he could evade just like Eithan actually does. So you had two characters that could pop up in different ways. So that was the original inspiration behind Cradle. So not only did I know this from the beginning, I knew this years before I even started writing Cradle.
You said in part 2 that Ozriel was skilled enough to fill any position save for Suriel, does that mean Ozriel is equal to or stronger than the other Judges in their spheres of power?
Or is the Spider just unfamiliar with using methods not involving The Way to find something he is looking for, while Ozriel, being newer, doesn't rely on The Way as much as other Judges?
That's the question!
The other Judges aren't really sure how Ozriel managed to elude them. If Telariel wasn't good at his job, he wouldn't have ascended to the position in the first place, but Ozriel somehow managed to completely evade all detection by the Way.
Some of the Judges have wondered if Ozriel actually obliterated himself.
Would hiding somewhere not governed by the Abidan have something to do with why he can't be found THE Spider?
Could be! That's one explanation. It's also why Suriel was hanging out in Cradle, so FAR from Iterations the Abidan don't control: she was stalling, trying to order her thoughts in the last place Ozriel would come back to.
She has a long journey ahead of her.
What is your process for creating magic systems?
So there are a few principles and it would be hard to go over them all.
A lot of them have to do with, I mean Brandon Sanderson, obviously he's talked about creating magic systems and in a very systematized way, a lot, and he's much better to answer that question than I am.
But how do I do it? there's a few things I start with. One of the things I start with is the general theme.
So in cradle, one of the things I like the most about Chinese cultivation novels is that the progression system is tied to the plot the world and the characters, so you get more in tune with yourself and with your element and with the world all kind of together at once. So character development and power development and world exploration are all tied together and it's all part of how the world functions, right? Everybody knows how this advancement system works and that's because of that, that's tied into all aspects of culture and how people think all that stuff.
So I also knew the sort of vibe I was going for. The aesthetic Magic martial arts right?
So because we're starting there, that's what lent itself to techniques I wanted there to be something tied to the world, that's what led to Aura.
So I started off with that and then I started off with what I wanted the characters to be able to do.
Which then of course the question after that is what can the characters not do? and how do they?
Do it so the funniest thing is when other people have given me their magic systems to look at.
I find that one of the things people forget to define early on is what the magic systems can do.
I'm always so surprised by that because that's one of the first things I start with, but they've heard so much about restrictions that they make sure that there's a large list of what magic can't do and what weaknesses it has that they forget to define its strengths and capabilities, and I'm going, well, that's the fun part Dang it!
Then for a practical perspective, one of the first things I do after I get the theme down and some of the basic tenants is I try to go now I want to picture how it actually works in world so I....
*reads chat question* Do you have a can do attitude toward magic?
That's exactly right. Can do attitude, ladies and gentlemen.
You try to you try to go OK How exactly does this work? You try to picture yourself in the world.
How exactly do you learn about it? What does the Learning Center for this magic look like?
What are you teaching people? What philosophy is behind you? How do people interpret it?
You try to really put yourself in the shoes of a character interacting with this magic system, and as you do that, you start to figure out practically how it's used, how it's built, how it's made.
And then as you model that out, you start to realize what you need and what you don't need.
One of the clearest examples of that I've ever had is as I was fleshing out the traveler system in Travelers Gate, I realized very quickly that if different travelers can't open gates to other territories, then the sure fire method to beat any traveler of another territory is just go open a gate, go in there and wait until they leave.
So even if you can't like travel travel which most Territories allow that, so you can just go to a different place and they can't follow you so either Gates needed to be really hard to open and slow to open, which they are for some and they're less so for others like Valinhall travelers usually under most circumstances can't open a gate in the middle of combat 'cause it takes like a whole minute.
Then there has to be a way that other territories can open so that that allowed me to come up with the concept of Gate crawlers, so most territories now have a method by which they can open other territories gates. So after you open a gate then they can be chased back through so that's the, that's the idea.
I should have expected that. If the humans can kinda do it, why can't Suriel.(referring to the above question)
Suriel did it already. It's how the Great Elders came to be sealed in that world in the first place.
And the versions the Emperor and Estyr Six dealt with were pale shadows of the entities Suriel would be dealing with. When they're inside an Iteration, they're bound by its rules to some degree. Not so outside.
Gadrael, the Titan
The Way is fundamentally a force of protection, a barrier against chaos and destruction. Gadrael is the embodiment of that concept.
Titan Abidan are the defenders of the Abidan worlds, raising shields and barriers against creatures of chaos and against the enemies of the Court. Whenever the Abidan need a world quarantined, a weapon sealed, a prison reinforced, or an attack turned aside, they call on the Titans.
This generation's Gadrael was rescued from a dying world, then raised as a son by Makiel. His loyalty to the Hound is total.
He once had a reputation as the weakest Judge, due to his lack of skill in any discipline but his own. Other Judges typically have expertise in more than one area; Suriel, for instance, is an accomplished Fox (who excel at instant travel) and an able Spider (who detect deviations in chaos). Makiel could have inherited the post of Razael the Wolf instead, had he desired to do so, and Ozriel was skilled enough to fulfill the duties of any Judge but Suriel.
Gadrael cannot read Fate, he can barely cross through the Way, and his combat power is lower than many ordinary Abidan.
But his barriers are flawless.
Gadrael is is the sturdiest protector in existence, a one-man fortress, an immovable object, an impenetrable wall. Worlds under Gadrael's protection can rest easy, but there are thousands of Iterations under the purview of the Judges.
And the Titans cannot be everywhere at once.
Are Iterations sequential? Like, does one universe die and then another one spin up, but the members of the Abidan court are able to travel through time to some extent? Or are they all scattered throughout a multiverse, and coalesce at different times?
They're all scattered through a multiverse. There are thousands of simultaneously extant universes managed by the Abidan.
It's just that, at any given time, one might be dying and another being born.
Did corruption exist before the original seven ascended?
Oh yeah. Corruption absolutely existed before the original seven ascended. Corruption is kind of how the multiverse works. So, by default, it's just sort of decay in reality. Therefore only a few Iterations remain active at any one time. Or inhabitable, I guess should say. Until the Abidan manage and garden them and then they can make a lot more stable and a lot more exist. And a lot more stick to their original Fate and destiny.
I saw this sentence in the same chapter we first see "web of madra" used and it caught my eye
"Well this is a lucky daym" he said, hopping down from the wall. His blond hair flowed behind him like a banner, and a simple Endorcer technique made him drift slowly to the muddy ground.
I know of no Enforcer technique that would be able to slow someone falling. In fact, the only way Eithan, specifically, could slow himself would be with soulfire controlling aura. Either Will made a typo there or just hadn't fully mapped out the sacred arts system in his head yet, this is Chapter 5 of Soulsmith, our first meeting with Eithan, so I can't say for sure which it might be, I'd be interested to hear /u/Will_Wight 's answer to it.
It’s a construct that makes him lighter.
Middle of chapter eight (Soulsmith):
Eithan skipped along behind, touching down with one foot and using an Enforcer binding to launch himself far enough that he almost appeared to be drifting through the air.
In my original character sheet for him, he used the construct all the time, and we were going to explore it in Blackflame. But he didn’t really need it, so I just didn’t go into it.
Are there any independent nations or territories on Asylum? Are there multiple worlds in the Asylum iteration?
No, there are no independent nations or territories in Asylum. There are isolated communities that aren't aware they are part of the Empire, but the Empire considers them Imperial territory. They're not undiscovered, after all, just so remote as to be not worth collecting taxes from.
So did lindon power degrade back to just being a sage by the time he ascends?
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.
Is the Way universal, or can recognizable reality exist beyond it?
The influence of the Way anchors worlds in reality by providing structure. Consistent, recognizable rules. In some of these worlds, even forces like gravity or time work differently, but they do work consistently within the world. That's the influence of the Way.When the Abidan first started exploring the "shape" of the Way, they found it like a branching river, with Iterations like boulders in the stream. Outside the Way was the void: a hostile emptiness dotted with the fragments of broken worlds and populated by strange, unknowable creatures that sought to break rules and disrupt order.The farther you travel into the void, the more recognizable reality crumbles, until you cease to exist. Even these fiends of the void, incomprehensible nightmare beings, can only exist somewhat close to the Way, because existence itself is a function of order.However, when the Abidan organized, they determined that they would explore the scope and breadth of the Way. They followed each branch to its ending, until the power of the Way grew too thin to sustain them. Then they turned back.They found that the Way WAS finite. It had an end. They've mapped it like a three-dimensional spider web, like a branching skeletal ball. In and among its branches is the endless, infinite void.But their theory says that the Way should be infinite. There's no reason it should ever be contained, and indeed they've never seen it end; they've only followed it as far as they could.Some believe that the Way stretches across an endless cosmic darkness, and this is the only place it has pooled thickly enough to sustain life.Others believe that our Way is only one of many, and that there are other collections of reality out there. Perhaps an infinite number.
