Advanced Search

Will Wight

The Aurelian Emperor ruled Iteration 112: Asylum.

Questioner

Eight-Man Empire versus Sha Miara...

Will Wight

She'd have more difficulty dealing with them as opposed to Northstrider, because they're relying on individual power and a formation that manipulates aura when they fight. In the end, it's roughly even, and it depends on a bunch of variables, but here's the bottom line: if Sha Miara can figure out and break their formation quickly, she wins. If she can't, they're sharing and pooling power, and they will overwhelm her.

the_insevitable

I [doubt] there is an icon for every weapon out there.

Will Wight

Every iconic one, yeah! You could absolutely become a representation of an iconic spearman, or archer, or Stabby Daggerman(tm).

the_insevitable

Or what about those people who do not use sword aura but still become renowned swordsmen can they summon the sword icon?

Will Wight

Yes.

The way Cradle—and different individuals within Cradle—refers to Icons is colored by their experience, but there’s not this Master List of Icons that you can summon.

It’s a lot more about embodying an archetypal concept that the Way then recognizes with a visible manifestation. If you became the archetypal representative of all spearmen you would definitely manifest the Spear Icon.

It’s related to Ozriel being the first person to become a Judge of Destruction. There were eight recognized archetypal properties of absolute order, seven of which were manifested by the Judges (the eighth being lost Creation).

Destruction was never considered a property of order, but rather a property of chaos, until Ozriel manifested it in the Way.

Leigh_Ola

So, I recently started watching Bleach. It's a popular anime with 300+ episodes that started airing in 2004.

I couldn't help but notice similarities between Simon (The protagonist in Will Wight's Traveler's Gate) and Ichigo (The protagonist in Bleach):

Ichigo is an adolescent boy who uses a ridiculously big sword. Just like Simon.

Ichigo has a mask that when worn, allows him to get stronger. The main upgrade is his speed. Just like Simon.

Ichigo gets chains around his arms when he uses his maximum power. Just like Simon.

Ichigo has a small, talking stuffed animal doll. Just like Simon.

When Ichigo uses his mask, he risks losing a control and going "mad". Just like Simon.

Ichigo's large sword comes from a dark, brooding, powerful man who's now stuck in his "world". More similarities.

There are even similarities between Ichigo's personality and Simon's...

The fact that Bleach has been running for years before Traveler's Gate was released, and Will Wight seems to be a fan of Anime makes this seem like more than just a series of coincidences.

Here's a link to pictures of Ichigo and other Bleach characters : https://www.wallpaperflare.com/anime-bleach-kurosaki-ichigo-orange-hair-chains-sword-anime-boys-wallpaper-tssqn

Perhaps there's more to this than I'm aware of, so I'd like someone - Will, maybe? - to clear this up, because watching Bleach is starting to unnerve me.

Will Wight

So I love Bleach, but it didn’t actually have any influence on Simon’s design.

Obviously I’m going for a very anime aesthetic, hence the giant swords, but I described them to my artist as Final Fantasy swords rather than Bleach swords. The chains and doll and mask don’t come from Bleach at all.

Chains: I just needed a visual indicator of the increasing influence of the Territory and thought chains would be cool.

Doll: I wanted a prop to show that Kai was crazy, and I thought talking to dolls was a cool way to do that, and then I thought it would be funny if he WASN’T crazy and the dolls actually talked. Plus Simon is alone a lot and needed someone to trade dialogue with, so that’s where that came from.

Mask: I didn’t intend to give Simon a mask power-up, but Malachi had a mask that he would have dropped when he died, and I thought it would be logical if Simon picked it up. Then I was like “Hey, I wonder what would happen if Valinhall took this in like they’ve taken so many other things?” And thus the mask was born.

Bleach did have one major influence on my writing: the Abidan organization that oversees the multiverse was essentially the Gotei 13 in its first iteration. The fact that the Judges have long flowing white mantles of energy now is a nod to the haori of the Bleach Captains.

LucasRuby

How's stuff going with the books?

How many iterations has the coronavirus spread to so far?

By the way, could a Sage travel to another world, like say from Cradle to Amalgam? If not, someone above?

Will Wight

The books have been slowed by almost a month because of my neck injury, which is really annoying because I was way ahead of schedule before that. Alas.

Could a Sage travel to another world? Potentially they could, but they would be intercepted by Sector 11 Abidan first and subjected to a bunch of rules before they were allowed to do so.

The coronavirus is the corruption Suriel speaks of.

Will Wight

Telariel, the Spider

The Spiders essentially function as the Abidan intelligence network. They spread their awareness through the Way, sensing deviation and disorder all throughout existence. Spiders maintain the system of Sector Control, through which Iterations are divided into sectors in order to make them easier to manage.

Inter-universal communication between Abidan is also handled by the Spiders, so they have a reputation as the busiest Division. However, they are also known as the weakest in combat, so they are usually left to roles in support and management.

A Spider may be hard-working, but the Spider is lazy, disreputable, and prone to leaning on the perks of his position. Telariel has long ago reduced his personal responsibility to only handling communication between Judges, which rarely requires his personal attention.

When Ozriel vanished, Telariel cast his laziness aside and bent his full attention to the search. He was soon forced to admit defeat. Ozriel took steps to hide himself from the detection of the Way, and the Spider's skill is nothing next to the Reaper's.

(After receiving the blow to his pride, Telariel retreated back into seclusion. To sulk.)

Nitin

Adriel? Is he the first Abidan?Did anyone work under Reaper or was he one man machine?Sanctum is home of Abidan or is it a world of ascended beings? Or both?Titan tanksPhoenix healersWolf dps.There goes our raid!

Will Wight

Adriel: You'll have to find out in a few days, won't you?Ozriel: The Reaper is a one-man band.Sanctum is home to the Abidan AND people who have ascended beyond other Iterations, but mostly it houses the Abidan and the civilizations that support them.Titan tanksWolf DPSPhoenix healersFox...rogues?Ghost bardsSpider scoutsHounds don't raid, they're in the RP servers solving crimesReaper OP, needs nerf.TL;DR - balance team, wtf

Questioner

Does your Path become irrelevant after you get to know how to use the Way?

Will Wight

No. It does not. So, the magic you learn in your iteration just evolves and changes as you ascend and you learn how to use the Way. And it gets worked into who you are and what you can do.

Will Wight

I'm glad you enjoy them! They're fun for me too, they just take a long time due to sheer volume.

I find it easier to be imaginative within constraints. So when someone asks me "What's the Cradle equivalent of a piano?" I tell myself that I have to give them a satisfying answer. I can't just say "There is none," or "It's a piano," unless there's a story reason to do so. I have to actually invent a Cradle piano.

Which is fun. It makes me consider avenues of the worlds that I hadn't considered.As for your trying to be imaginative, it's not like my systems are the most original magic systems ever designed. I just give myself permission to have fun with it.

I start with what general kind of magic I want the people to use. For Traveler's Gate, I started with the idea of an extradimensional mansion where you went for martial training. I knew I wanted the House to exist, so then I built a world where extradimensional training grounds were commonplace.

For Elder Empire, I started by knowing that I wanted a world where significant objects held automatic power through their significance. Excalibur wielded by King Arthur would have automatic power BECAUSE it was Excalibur and BECAUSE it was King Arthur's sword. Then I worked out from there.You can do that too. And there's nothing wrong with using principles from known magic systems; madra is basically just elemental mana.

My main weakness is that I throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Every idea I can think of goes in. There are more Territories than necessary, for instance. Too many Guilds. Reading, Awakening, Soulbound, etc. are more complicated than they need to be, and could probably be separated into two systems. Vital aura is essentially elemental energy, but by trying to integrate it into the madra system I accidentally made it muddy and unclear.

No approach is perfect, but I like mine because it's fun. My magic systems might be too unintuitive or complicated, but they're colorful and fun. That's my priority over a logical, fully hammered-out, and ultimately simpler system.Of course, the Holy Grail is a simple, intuitive system that nonetheless fires your imagination and can be used to create as many fun and colorful situations as you want. And toward that distant goal, we all strive.

Garbagiel the Raccoon

1. If reaching copper allows you to see the madra around you, what would a copper see in the worlds of House of Blades or Elder Empire?

2. With a mixture of madra and intent, could someone create an invested or awakened object that followed a path?

3. During his travels, did Valin get mocked a lot for his nye cloak?

4. You mentioned that it is very difficult to awaken a gun, but how difficult would it be to create a gun/gunpowder based path?

Will Wight

1.) Nothing. Copper's change allows you to see aura, which (for the most part) only exists in Cradle.

2.) If a Reader and a Soulsmith joined forces, they would be able to create some crazy self-aware objects, yes.

3.) He didn't wear one.

4.) Unnecessary. Why would you need chemical accelerant when you can launch projectiles with your mind?

Questioner

Are there any paths that utilize "space" aura like the rabbit, bat and mole in unsouled? (I can envision a path of the Infinite step. Highly focused on movement, mobility and field manipulation.)

Will Wight

Yes there are, and we'll get to see plenty of them...later in the series. Spoilers abound!

Puppet Master

What is remnant blood essence? ty

Will Wight

A condensation of the body's blood aura that remains after death

Questioner

Did the people who originally inhabited Asylum when it was used to trap the Elders/ Fiends volunteers/ criminals/ or did the Abidan breed or trap innocent people to tie the iteration to the way and support the prison?

Questioner

I don't know how much I want to go into that, I might want to do a short story on that someday. At the risk of telling you something that I am gonna change later, it was sort of an opportunistic thing. The world happened to be able to be used to lure the Great Elders there and be able to be trapped there. So they trapped them there expecting everyone on this world to die. So they did that because if the Elders had been released they would have killed a lot more people, so they saw it as an acceptable loss. But then the human population ended up producing the Emperor who figured out how to make a thriving population on what was supposed to be this cursed hell world. And they ended up lasting a lot longer than anyone expected. It's morally questionable, it sure is.

Questioner

Would there be any point in using 8 peak natural treasures like Titan's bone as soulfire fuel to advance?

Will Wight

Yeah, if you were advancing to Archlord it would be very fast. It wouldn't give any better of a body. You would have to then control that aura though, which would be difficult if you were advancing to Archlord. However, it would make a lot of high quality soulfire, so if you are an Archlord and you would have all of that then you would be super filled up on soulfire.

Questioner

Many paths seem that all they need to do is hit somebody with one hit and the person dies, ex. Heavens Glory. It seemed like if somebody was hit, they die. What keeps underlords, sages, from being just one shot K.O. by a Jade or lowgold?

Will Wight

Within your body, your madra holds sway. This is why non-pure madra can't be effectively used in an Empty Palm style technique, because you can't just "inject" your madra into someone and expect it to do anything. It's also why fire Paths don't just set the air in their opponent's lungs on fire and walk away.The reason why a Heaven's Glory Jade can't just gun down an Underlord is an expansion of this principle. If your madra is sufficiently more powerful than your opponent's, it becomes hard for their Striker techniques to even hurt your skin. Often, the madra is simply dispersed when it touches you. The same is true for Forged madra--it can be dispersed by the natural madra of a more-advanced opponent.Ruler techniques will work equally on anyone, so they're usually what you use if you have to fight a more advanced opponent. However, there are some drawbacks.First of all, not every Path has a battle-ready Ruler technique. Second, Ruler techniques often take a long time to implement; you have to gather up compatible aura in the area and then activate it in a specific manner.It's also expected that an Underlord will have more powerful Ruler techniques than a Truegold, or will sense what is happening and dodge or disrupt it.As for Enforcer techniques, they of course work fine against higher-level opponents. But usually, someone more advanced than you will also get better results out of their Enforcer techniques. ml

AntiSqueaker

If Lindon had a magic encyclopedia with every single Path/Territory/Awakened Weapon/miscellaneous magic powers throughout all the Iterations, which one would most interest him?

Will Wight

I don't have the mental energy to answer that right now, unfortunately, because it's an interesting question. I'm releasing a book, so my MP is 0.  

Xektalon

Since we know the Iteration is called Cradle ... what do the inhabitants of Cradle call their world? Is it rutabaga? or do all humans call the main planet terra or earth?

Will Wight

My thought on that is that almost always unless people are aware of a larger universe they just have a word that means the world, so we'd just translate it to Earth. That's usually my answer to that, because there's all these fantasy worlds where the inhabitants call their Earth "Kren", or whatever. And it's like - that's cool, that's really neat, that makes sense, they call it "Narnia" or whatever. I like knowing the name but would the inhabitants of their world really call it that, or just call it the world? So that's always my thought process on that. Depending on the language, they have different words - so that's just the world for Earth in their language.

Terrible

How would someone go about healing Ziel, Lord of Depression? Would they have to get rid of all the toxic aura in his body first?

Will Wight

Can't comment on that

Will Wight

The Blackflame Empire

The Blackflame Empire was founded by dragons.

In Cradle, dragons are a race of sacred beasts that can...well, they're dragons. You know what they can do. Like all sacred beasts and Remnants, their intelligence is based largely on their age and advancement levels, so many of them have human-level intelligence or better.

A family of black dragons once conquered and ruled half a continent, which is a truly massive amount of territory in a world the size of Cradle. They held their empire against all rivals for centuries.

Until a mysterious disaster killed most of the dragons, crippling their ability to continue the bloodline. As you know, no one in a fantasy novel ever discovers the truth behind ancient disasters, so I'm sure it will remain a mystery forever.

With their rulers dead or dying, a clan of humans stumbled upon a method of harnessing the dragons' power. They abandoned their old Path, instead choosing to develop the same sacred arts used by the dragons.

The Blackflame Empire shrunk in size, the humans lacking the ability to control quite as much territory as the dragons could, though it was still home to over a billion people.*

This clan started calling their main branch the Blackflame family, for obvious reasons, and they stayed in control for almost five hundred years.

But human bodies were not well-suited to the power of dragons. Slowly, the family declined, until even those who lived in the heart of the empire thought of them more as symbols and legends than actual individuals.

More and more of the day-to-day workings of the Empire were left to the Blackflames' traditional servants, the Naru clan. They became the face of the Blackflame empire, with their loyal reputation and shining emerald wings, and the people grew to know and trust them.

Fifty years ago, they quietly ascended the throne.

The first Naru clan Empress has since moved into private seclusion, and her son now rules the Empire. As for the Blackflame family themselves, they died out decades ago, gradually eaten from the inside out by their own madra.

That's the story, anyway.

*(A truly ridiculous number of people live in Cradle. The main planet of Iteration 110 is quite a bit bigger than Earth.)

Questioner (paraphrased)

How are Sacred Beast's born?

Will Wight (paraphrased)

So some sacred beasts start as normal animals that live long enough that they have been transformed by aura. Others are actually born as baby sacred beasts, like dragons. Or, in Orthos' case, dragon-turtles