Willverse

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle bloopers ATOMIC: ||How dare you forget the reveal she is Ozriel!||

[fresh pivot]

Commander is not coming this year, unfortch

[humble bluff]

Yeah

[thick bay]

The Pilot just came out this year, yall that starving yall want another?

[dreamy sorrel]

The Pilot all: ||I want the fandom to suffer for a bit longer not knowing the fates of our heroes||

[golden void]

Most years, Will has managed two books a year

[opal wadi]

||And for starters, this is the first book where EVERYONE ends up royally screwed, everyone's on the brink of death except for Sola||

[lilac vault]

Remind me of smth

Ghostwater general ||Where did Yerin get her first Goldsign? Was that for just accepting her master's Remnant?||

||And then she got the second for accepting that it wasn't him and completely absorbing his Remnant?||

||Or did her first Goldsign come from somewhere else||

[zenith kayak]

||She got her Goldsign as soon as she hit Lowgold, and the second when she started breaking the remnant down.||

[lilac vault]

||Okay so it just grew from her, it had nothing to do with her master's Remnant?||

||I knew when she got it, I just didn't remember if it was tied to the Remnant or not||

[zenith kayak]

||It's tied to the remnant, she reached Lowgold by taking the remnant into her core||

[lilac vault]

Okay so I was right the first time

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater general ||Is the Purification Wheel something anyone can learn, or does it need/is easier with a Pure core?||

||Cuz I wonder why Eithan didn't also teach it to Yerin||

Ghostwater 8 ||I can't wait for the side effect of the Dream Well to be revealed and Lindon just crashes for five months straight after all this is over lmao||

[inner loom]

Ghostwater general || It works for all madra types, but Yerin has her own jade cycling technique that her master picked out for her build ||

[opal wadi]

||Basically anyone can learn it but it only has one use, it makes your madra reserves bigger over time, Yerin already has a very tailor made cycling technique for her path and she can replenish by cycling Sword Aura, Lindon can only replenish by cycling so increasing his reserves is considerably more useful||

[lilac vault]

I see

||So she could learn it, but it would just be less helpful for her||

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 9 ||"It looked like a long thumb thick needle with a sword hilt"||

https://tenor.com/view/hollow-knight-silksong-silksong-news-silksong-2025-hornet-gif-12177587209464399582

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 9 ||I was gonna say "I can't wait for Ekeri to get stronger and come back for revenge, only Lindon helped clean her sisters madra channels so she's no longer deeply crippled, and then after they fight one last time she just goes off to wherever the hell Jai Long went", but uh||

||I suspect that won't be happening at this point||

[hollow ferry]

Oh yeah. Uhh… hi y’all

[opal wadi]

HELL YEAH SPOOKY

WELCOME

[hollow ferry]

THANK YOU

WHY ARE WE YELLING

[opal wadi]

FIGHT

[hollow ferry]

Unsouled 1-3 (most of 3) || Pretty neat setup so far. I’m kind of hyped for this. Always have heard good things about cradle in this server ||

[humble bluff]

Another one let's goooo!!

Cradle is peak

[spice socket]

Sick another member of the cult

Welcome spooky

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/homer-simpson-bart-simpson-join-us-sit-here-gif-15631014

[coral hatch]

WE GOT ANOTHER ONE BOIIIS

[dreamy sorrel]

SMH. We are not a cult! We just wear combat robes occasionally and overly discuss books to convince our god William Lawrence Wight III to release the next book. Don't mind the sacrificial blood

[hollow ferry]

Unsouled Chapter 6 || Well then… that certainly recontextualizes the entire series. Cradle is the PLANET? Interplanetary stuff be happening. I’m sorry, what? I’m so here for all of this. Thought this was valley life the anime? Nah, scale explosion ||

Same tags || I’m both so confused and so curious ||

[coral hatch]

https://tenor.com/view/sickos-sicko-haha-yes-creeper-gif-25057805

[spice socket]

Who are we sacrificing sending on vacation to entice Will to finish The Commander?

[safe knoll]

-# we hunger for reaction aura

[spice socket]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-patrick-cookies-inhale-eating-gif-9584341652258295094

[opal wadi]

||Fun fact, Cradle is the size of Jupiter and the population count is insane||

[spice socket]

|| cradle is the size of jupiter and its got like 200 people on it||

|| the planet has the population density of an under performing dennys||

[opal wadi]

Up to like Ghostwater/Underlord ||There's like 100 million people in Blackflame city alone ||

General ||I think it's mentioned somewhere that there's like 600 billion people in the planet||

[spice socket]

Okay so an average dennys

[spice socket]

It really goes to show cradle all. Safe for Spooky || how completely boned Lindon is||

600 billion people and you’re the Unsouled

[thick bay]

This is why Nick is prepping his friend.

[spice socket]

oh good

https://tenor.com/view/muahaha-evil-laugh-evil-laugh-futurama-gif-4133163

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah I did clock the whole underwater city thing and a whole bunch of other nutty stuff I don’t recall ||

|| Grand patriarch. Wings. This definitely seems like it’s probably an entity or being similar to the other one that was off world and decided to go for the sacred valley. But definitely not the same being. ||

This stuff is mad interesting so far

[spice socket]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-cant-wait-impatient-anxious-eagerly-gif-12243170376163390127

Travis guest voices in the dungeon crawler Carl book I’m reading

Just got to him. Very excited

[thick bay]

Guest voice?

And my friend said they liked those books.

[lilac vault]

Oh right I was gonna ask

Ghostwater general ||Is Monarch the highest power level other than the Abidan and the Dreadgods?||

[inner loom]

Answer (not exactly sure when this information is revealed) || Monarch is the highest sacred arts advancement level. The Abidan is the interdimensional goverment so most of their members aren’t from Cradle and therefore don’t have an advancement level. Some of their members are weaker than monarchs and some are much much much stronger. Dreadgods are something a bit more complicated and spoilery which will be explained later in the series ||

[lilac vault]

🤔

[safe knoll]

ghostwater general ||other than what Martin said, you will learn what every advancement level is all about by book 8||

[lilac vault]

||Wait so does that mean that the Advancements are Cradle exclusive?||

[inner loom]

|| Yeah stuff like aura, madra, cycling, advancement is all exclusive to Cradle’s magic system. Other iterations have their own different magic system. ||

[spice socket]

Indeed, the books are primarily voiced by Jeff Hays but the one I’m on currently has Baldree and even Patrick wurburton for a specific character for each of them

[zenith kayak]

It has an average population Dennysity

[spice socket]

Exactly

[opal wadi]

Cradle/Last Horizon all
||For example I think an Archmage is probably, magically as strong as an Overlord with some Sage things mixed in between but they can scale up to Monarch with tools and prep time, we've seen Varric do feats that equal that of Cradle Monarchs||

[jade notch]

||Different Iterations advance in different ways||

I think you mean WoW 😉

But answering aneon with spoilers from series they haven't read (I think) might not be the most helpful

[safe knoll]

yeaah, srry

[spice socket]

Cradle and last horizon all || where does Varrics avenged sevenfold archmagehood stack here||

[jade notch]

||Lindon can wipe the floor with him, if that tells you anything||

[spice socket]

|| Lindon clears Goku one piece and Naruto combined he doesn’t count lmao||

Cradle/LH all || imagine casting Absolute Burial on Reigan Shen. Ugh that would be satisfying||

[thick bay]

Light Willverse ||Actually not true, other iterations do have their own type of aura/madra/advancements. They may not make these things as big plot/mechanical things, but they do exist. ||

[zenith kayak]

You may want to reread what he wrote, your statements are in allignment

[thick bay]

Cradle/LH ||Probably... Overlord maybe Monarch? One of the reasons why it is so effective in LH is in LH there is a theme of things getting power from other things, interconnectivity. So when you have a power that can disconnect someone from their power, it is very strong.||

[zenith kayak]

Light Willverse ||Madra/Aura/Ironbodies/the general advancement system specifically is a Cradle-only thing (assuming no repeats/overlaps). Authority, OTOH, seems to be a factor in every system||

[spice socket]

|| is absolute burial just the empty palm with wizards||

[thick bay]

Willverse ||No, not entirely. For example the lightcaster clearly is using aura.

Small kinds of mechanical concepts are shared. Like intent/importance in items for example, It is really important in EE but Cradle(they actually have a whole semi explanation about truly important/historic things make for good things to create with) and in LH (the ship kept someone's hands who was important and clearly was keeping them because of that) they aren't as important.

I kind of see these things as mechanical sliders, how much intent does this world have, how much aura and etc.

There are things like this woven throughout all the series, not everyone may be able to see it, but they are there.||

[safe knoll]

same ||Lifelines are also universal. Aura might be universal, but with an asterisk||
Willverse all ||I don't remember Lightcasters using aura, but in his second meeting with Suriel in Bloodline, Lindon felt one of the daggers from her homeworld radiate life aura. So it might be that it also gathers around powerful items in other Iterations, while on Cradle everything generates it ||

[thick bay]

Willverse ||It 100% exist. Like how Varrick is attuned to blue/water. And I think it is also I think it is a thing somewhat in TG but I don't remember that well.||

[safe knoll]

Cradle + LH all ||We know by WoW that archmages are a Sage equivalent of Fathom. So, assuming that it grants their spells equivalent power, Varic can kill any Archlord and below in terms raw power. The problem for Fathom mages vs Cradle lords is that everyone on Cradle gets body enhancements. I'm not sure if Varic could even stand straight on Cradle, without supernatural aid. (Think of Jai Chen before Lindon cleansed her core.) So while Varic has the power to kill most people below Sage, most combat oriented Golds and any given Lord should be able to rush him with an advanced physical and reaction speed and slit Varrik's throat before he gets a spell out ||

[safe knoll]

Lh general, Cradle all ||The way he spoke about elements to his students reminded me more of elemental Icons than aura, but those are seemingly related, so ||

[thick bay]

||The funny thing, is I actually see Varric as a herald more so than a sage because he gets all of his power inward and not outward.||

[lilac vault]

I did not realize that

I thought it was universal

[opal wadi]

it is universal

not multiversal

[hollow ferry]

Unsouled chapter 10 || Linden died.

Doubt ||

[pseudo sedge]

Yeah, I had to look up which character Baldree voiced because Jeff Hays is so good, luckily caught it time for a big moment of that character's.

[spice socket]

He will not kowtow!

[hollow ferry]

Unsouled Chapter 11 || Wild ||

[hollow ferry]

Unsouled 13 || Whitehall is pissssed. And he’s stuck as an 8 year old so he’s an old man who looks like a child throwing a tantrum ||

Y’all I gotta say…

I get it

This is very fun

[opal wadi]

I forgot to ask the most important question
||What did you think of Lindon punching children for an afternoon.||

[spice socket]

It’s kinda funny that sacred valley is so backwards they’re only mad at him right at the end

[hollow ferry]

|| I thought nothing of it… oh dear ||

[opal wadi]

||Punching children? Not worth of praise, now trying to make your superior step down to YOUR LEVEL? preposterous, outrageous.||

[hollow ferry]

This society is whack

Unsouled 15 || I should have anticipated he wouldn’t get to take those elixirs and fruit ||

Halp I’m hooked

[gritty socket]

Its joever

[hollow ferry]

Quite

[thick bay]

Just wait till book 4, you'll be done for.

[opal wadi]

Me and friend are about halfway through Underlord

[hollow ferry]

I apparently have already purchased all 12 books on Audible. I only don’t have Threshold

[hollow ferry]

Already am

[opal wadi]

Remember
It gets progressively more bonkers

Because this is progression fantasy

🥁

[dreamy sorrel]

It's...
Raul is...
You know what? If you know, you know

[hollow ferry]

I thought progression fantasy was just another name for litrpgs lol

Guess I was wrong

[opal wadi]

They have similarities but litrpg goes a bit more into quantifying things and game-fying the magic

[hollow ferry]

Oh yeah I was super wrong lol

[spice socket]

ye

i love travis so much

i wish he and jeff hays worked more

together

i mean lmao

i know baldree auditioned for tress. but i would love to have him and jeff hays do some cosmere

[thick bay]

I am surprised they haven't, but I think Sanderson probably thinks that he is already really popular and at least for the secret projects, he was trying some not as well known people?

[spice socket]

That does make sense

But he did also want David tennant to do tress

[hollow ferry]

Baldree’s narration is pretty good but I think nowhere near the goats like Hays and Pacey

[opal wadi]

He does get considerably better over time

Like he's not bad but there's a point around the middle of the series where he gets the groove going and it becomes just so good

I'd say around Blackflame/Skysworn

[hollow ferry]

Gotcha

[thick bay]

It is funny, he does really have so many accents, so when you listen to him in other series it is funny for which voice he uses for which character.

[rugged basalt]

I think the biggest accomplishment Unsouled did was (general) ||showing how desperate Lindon is. I've read progression fantasy where the MC starts off in a way worse position but none quite captures the desperation, trickery and underhandedness of Lindon in Unsouled. Also does a very good job at setting up the world and hinting at how big things will get||

[safe knoll]

It's honestly surprising how much the first two books do lore-wise, because Will did most of the worldbuilding when writing Blackflame.

[mighty totem]

A lot of people say unsouled is pretty weak but i actually really enjoyed my time with it

soulsmith was the slog for me

unsouled had cool stuff whereas in soulsmith i felt like nothing happened

I can definitely see how blackflame was when the worldbuilding was done

Cradle general ||Due to how unsouled works a lot of the things can be explained by just "That's how it goes in sacred valley/their culture!"||

[opal wadi]

Unsouled tip toes around being my favorite book just because how it gripped me for the next 12 books

[safe knoll]

I don't know if I would call it a slog, but for the longest time Soulsmith and Skysworn were my least favorite

[mighty totem]

yeah skysworn and soulsmith both took longer to get through than the entirety of the rest of the series combined

for me

Not that they were bad I was just uninterested

every time I got my headphones I would compare the audiobooks to just listening tomusic and music would win most of the time, whereas even at the start of ghostwater I was actively making time to listen to cradle, not just during my commute

[hollow ferry]

Unsouled chapter 20 || Two cores ||

Unsouled chapter 20 || The path of twin stars 👀 ||

This book is wild

And you’re all saying he didn’t do his worldbuilding until a few books in?

Wild

Can’t wait to see what nuttiness awaits

[robust estuary]

Cradle all ||God, now I'm remembering Charity taking Lindon back to Ashwind after her got knocked out of the Uncrowned King tournament and you just get all these snippets of different Sacred Beast societies and tribes... legitimately maybe my favorite part of Wintersteel, even after rereading it and coming around on it, I just really liked it||

[hollow ferry]

Is cradle a complete series or will there be more books?

Unsouled complete

[opal wadi]

It's 12 books and one anthology, the story so far is complete

there could be some extra stories in the setting sometime in the future but nothing concrete

[hollow ferry]

Dope. Just downloaded the remaining 11

[zenith kayak]

Welcome

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 12 ||Can't wait for it to turn out that Dross' random throwaway statement that Ziel is a Sage in disguise to be actually correct because his core is all messed up||

||it's really funny that Ziel is just chilling with us lmao||

[opal wadi]

||Sleepy man too depressed to do anything more stressing than breathing||

[coral hatch]

Mood

[lilac vault]

https://tenor.com/view/sung-jin-woo-jin-woo-solo-leveling-solo-leveling-season-2-aurat-ka-chakkar-babu-bhaiya-meme-template-gif-15247714489658254671

Lindon rn

I haven't seen Solo Leveling but I imagine this is what it's like

[jade notch]

Too handsome

[lilac vault]

Meant the grindset more than anything

I couldn't find any appropriate gifs

[opal wadi]

When do we think Lindon hits peak handsome

Becoming more attractive is literally built into the magic

[jade notch]

Ghostwater all ||Probably right around then||

[spice socket]

Gotta be Wintersteel right

[lilac vault]

||I like to think that he makes Abidan and then just. Doesn't. He makes himself look worse by mistake.||

That'd be funny

[jade notch]

Cradle general ||Abidan is an organization with many levels of members, not a specific rank||

[lilac vault]

Oh lmao

I thought it was rank

[idle veldt]

Cradle general ||To be fair membership within the organization at all is still going to make you nearly a pinnacle being on Cradle, so it's not really inaccurate to phrase it that way. Just fairly imprecise.||

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 12 ||This books feels like Lindon is just on a big old level grind session. Like he walks in at level 30 and doesn't leave until he's at level 50||

||Lindon is gonna walk out that portal and Yerin is just gonna be baffled||

||"What the hell were you DOING in there?!"
"Training.", Lindon says with the severed head of the Redmoon Hall chick in his hands.||

[pseudo sedge]

Threshold story ||Harness|| - ||I had my suspicions this was Pokemon like when Dross said his name pretending to be a monster, but I also noticed it's Iteration #151... yeah ok, definitely Pokemon influenced and G-42 is like Mewtwo||

I uhhhh can't help but play the Always Sunny in Philadelphia theme in my head reading the title of the next story, ||The Gang Creates a World||

[golden void]

Cradle general ||welcome to cultivation fantasy||

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/excited-fuego-gif-12099368701239660790

[thick bay]

Cradle general ||Oh back when I was at your level, I was trying to keep track of the rankings, it was pretty fun.||

[thick bay]

Threshold ||It also had an evil corporation.

And the Always Sunny in Philadelphia thing was even funnier because when I was reading it, I made a similar joke(it might have been a friend's one) then he did that. ||

[vast haven]

I am about to start listening to Cradle back to back

Pray for me

(I read Unsouled but said, eh, why not listen to it)

[zenith kayak]

Enjoy!

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 13 ||In Eithan's myriad list of responsibilities, I see that they have forgotten to include his humble occupation as an aura farmer||

[coral hatch]

||he doesn't farm it

He cultivates it||

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 13 ||How is Lindon the one having a good time now||

[pseudo sedge]

Threshold, last story, "How Cradle Should've Ended" ||How Ghostwater Should Have Ended "Ghostwater's ending is perfect." lololol||

[thick bay]

||He enjoys suffering and having stress.||

[hollow ferry]

Soulsmith 5 || Aethen is interesting 👀 ||

[robust estuary]

||Eithen, actually (There are a lot of names that might not be spelled the way you initially expect in this series)||

[hollow ferry]

Yeah I’m an audiobook listener so I’m going to offer up some horribly off spellings

[robust estuary]

You're not the first, and I'd be shocked if you're the last

[hollow ferry]

|| It is the way ||

[thick bay]

Screw book readers. Our spellings are correct like their made up pronunciations are correct. They can't take Aethen away from us!

[safe knoll]

Will committed some crimes with a few of those tbh

There are like 2 nations in different book series, one in cradle, one in ee, which sound exactly alike but are spelled differently and have no connection to one another

[thick bay]

Granted, I doubt this so much.

[hollow ferry]

Lol

[safe knoll]

I mean, Will confirmed it

[thick bay]

Yeah...

[safe knoll]

Will do be like that sometimes

[thick bay]

Will:🤥

[safe knoll]

EE and Cradle ALL, nsf Spooky ||I would love if EE had a nod to a mythical city of legend, the one Oz named his house after ||

[hollow ferry]

Whoa

[thick bay]

||I have a feeling that Oz had something to do with the um... Throne that lets you see the whole planet.||

[pseudo sedge]

Not that I'm going to get to it anytime soon, but where do I go next in Willverse now that I've finished Cradle?

I've got the three pilot books in my library so probably that?

[robust estuary]

Definitely not a bad place to start, though that one starts with The Captain, notably, The Pilot is book 4

[pseudo sedge]

I know someone here had a pitch I should look up

[robust estuary]

That series (The Last Horizon) is still being written, and follows a space-wizard, whose father (the ceo of a galaxy-spanning megacorp, the richest person in the galaxy), conducts a ritual to grant his son the power of five extra lifetime's worth of skill in magic, which also comes with five extra lifetime's worth of memories... including how they died, and the various threats to the galaxy he fails to stop in these alternate timelines, sending him on a quest to stop them before they have a chance to get that bad

[opal wadi]

THERE'S POWER RANGERS THERE AND GIANT KAIJU AND THINGS BLOW UP

and GUNS

so many GUNS

[coral hatch]

And what's important about the guns?

[opal wadi]

They work anywhere

[coral hatch]

I will never get tired of how easily you spike my setups

[thick bay]

I would go with The Captain next.

I honestly feel like his earlier stuff is a bit rougher.

If you don't go the Captain/tlh, go Traveler's Gate, don't go Elder Empire.

[thick bay]

No, actually the point is a lot of them don't work anywhere.

[robust estuary]

I will note that EE definitely isn't perfect, but apepi is a lot more negative on it than most people here (not that no one else dislikes it)

[thick bay]

EE has a loootttt of problems.

[robust estuary]

(I like it quite a bit, but its also a little weird and its main gimmick, the favt its two trilogies that tell the same atory from opposing PoVs, isn't perfectly executed. Even as a fan of EE, I'm not sure ot actually does that idea much justice, after rereading it back to back with his other pre-Cradle series, Traveler's Gate, which also uses a lot of dramatic irony moments where one of the main characters will see another main character use their powers without realizing how it worked, or if they even did anything)

[thick bay]

I will point out, don't look at the Traveler's Gate book covers unless you want to get spoilered as well.

[pseudo sedge]

See, this just makes me wonder how far Lindon would go/how much shorter the series would be if he just had access to guns from another iteration

[inner loom]

Starting EE now is probably bad timing anyway since the 2 trilogies are getting merged into 1 trilogy “soon”

[hallow cypress]

PLASMA BOLTS

[opal wadi]

We have finished Underlord

Now time for pre peak

and then PEAK

Uncrowned and Wintersteel

[dreamy sorrel]

Last Horizon general: ||Lightcasters. They work anywhere||

[opal wadi]

Last horizon general
||I'm waiting for the gun to work somewhere it shouldn't, or to one day malfunction in a critical moment, both would be insane payoffs||

[rugged basalt]

Elder Empire is my favorite of Will's books but also my biggest disapointment. That came from expectations, because when I read Cradle or Travaler's Gate, I expected a progression fantasy story and Will was simply great for that. But for Elder Empire, I expected a modern epic fantasy, and while the world building lived up to that, to put it bluntly I think Will's writting ability simply didn't catch up.

this section is me being mean, but I will personally say that his character writting espcially falls flat. he's great at writting personality and simple character arcs, which is fine for Cradle and Travaler's Gate. but when applied to a genre (which imo) has much higher standards of what a character could be, most of his characters just feel espcially weak.

the ambitious structure he had for the story did not help and I don't think the story lived up to what it could've been. this is like when pre-WOT Brandon tried to write Stormlight. The ideas are there but the execution was lacking

[thick bay]

Won't help it.

[dreamy sorrel]

It might. Will's coming at EE as a stronger writer and could rework it so the elements you didn't like are fixed

[spice socket]

What’s elder empire about again

I feel like I ask that every time the discourse returns

[inner loom]

Humans trying to deal with eldritch horrors

Willverse general || Takes place in Asylum, the prison iteration for class 1 fiends ||

[spice socket]

Ahhhh

That sounds like a tragedy if it’s as lackluster as yall say

That’s an incredible set up

[robust estuary]

I think one of its issues, imo, is that it doesn't quite lean in that direction enough. The best eldritch horror in that setting doesn't even happen in the books, its in a short story he released free online

[spice socket]

Ah

That sucks

WW has plans to do a rewrite?

[thick bay]

The problems with EE can't be solved by putting them together, he would have to rewrite them.

[spice socket]

Word

[rugged basalt]

Like with Brandon I don’t care for a rewrite, just do a sequel/or prequel with a different cast. What has happened has happened and I’d rather move on to the future.

[golden void]

It's the reason we're not getting two releases this year
tragic, I know

[south pendant]

Might be some minor spoilers for Unsouled and Soulsmith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJTLwiVJoZY

[hallow cypress]

[thick bay]

Yerin is so good.

[spice socket]

Wow Matt Mercer huh

That is definitely someone Jai Long should kiss

😮

Wow

And just when I thought Jai Long couldn’t be more Shadow the Hedgehog coded

[lilac vault]

Fisher Gesha's voice is exactly how I imagined it

So is this just gonna be short animations of certain scenes

No way this is a full on animation

[golden void]

We have a sneak peek (unsouled + maybe Soulsmith?) ||https://youtu.be/fbUv-BECD94||

There's also a video on the same channel "what is an animatic?"

[hollow ferry]

|| I literally just read Unsouled and I don’t remember anybody being able to straight up hadouken/shoot madra beams at that point in the story ||

[golden void]

||that's how they're representing striker techniques I think||

[hollow ferry]

Gotcha

[opal wadi]

We've been doing so many running jokes with my friend over the audiobooks sometimes we have to pause to laugh

General
||"Lindon the type of guy to steal everything not nailed down to the floor, then the nails, then the floor."||

[thick bay]

Wintersteel ||If they give points yes.||

[opal wadi]

Oh my god I forgot

Points

[spice socket]

https://tenor.com/view/points-miles-travelhacking-jean-ralphio-parks-and-rec-gif-5277735163831899481

[hollow ferry]

Soulsmith 16 || Not Lindin on the ground like just a little more venom while yerin is like what did you do to the poor guy. Anyways, iron ||

[hollow ferry]

Soulsmith 18 || Eithan being an underlord isn’t too surprising. He’s a fun character. Glad it sounds like he’ll be here to stay for a while at least ||

[opal wadi]

||The funniest part is how he gets poisoned like 5 times and eats entire sandvipers to advance and then they shift to the sandviper kid that gets 2 drops of venom and a sip of blood while Kral says he got 3 drops and that was a lot||

[coral hatch]

||I know it's impossible yadda yada but I wish we could get kral or jai long seeing Baby Monster Lindon who's convinced He Ain't Crem. I think Kral would immediately offer to find him some enemies to punish in Lindon's honour||

[spice socket]

Lmao

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah and then Yerin being like “huh Lindin should be having a bad time a day after being stabbed through by Madra, what kind of iron body did we create” and Ethan being like “yerin if this pays off with Lindin I’m more worried about you keeping up with him”. Which I mean duh we all know what we’re in for here and Lindin is the protagonist in a progression fantasy. But still very fun and excited to see this journey ||

Blackflame chapter 2 || I feel like Lindin not taking the magic soul sword to not anger Jai Lin or whatever his name is was a bit of a dumb mistake, particularly with the whole duel in a year thing lol. I am curious to see what the pacing looks like/which book gets to that fight - whether it’s in this book or within the next 3 or so. Like obviously his progress is going to end up being kind of cracked because he has a long way to go to become uber god level. ||

These books may single-handedly be responsible for me having any chance of recovering my pace for 52 books this year lol

[thick bay]

||Spear I think?||

[opal wadi]

Soulsmith
||Write down every power up Lindon has and how they can connect, starting with the iron body it makes him highly resistant to poison but the main use is that it has very fast regeneration and strength||

[humble bluff]

Simply read cradle + threshold 4 times each

[opal wadi]

I have only read threshold once

Well I've read a few tales twice

[thick bay]

||Nah, if they are gonna do anything, they need to make a list of ranks, weakest to strongest. ||

[safe knoll]

I reread Threshold's fourth story an unreasonable number of times

[thick bay]

||Which one was that one? ||

[safe knoll]

threshold 4 ||Northstrider||

[thick bay]

||Is it bad that the one that I remember the most is the Pokémon one? ||

[safe knoll]

threshold all || my one complaint about the book — not enough Yerin ||

[pseudo sedge]

lol that's my fave one

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 2 || Wow the humanization of Jai Long and Kral’s father here is really good damn ||

[mighty totem]

if you feel this way already, blackflame and onwards is going to make you addicted

I say, as I see the "Blackflame 2" message sent a day prior

Ghostwater and onwards legitimately affected my studies because I only wanted to listen to cradle

So cool, so fun, so interesting

and some legit good nuggets of wisdom in there too

I liked blackflame and soulsmith but ghostwater was just wow. immaculate. perfection.

underlord was simply amazing and then uncrowned? I want to marry the book

[opal wadi]

We finished like six hours of Uncrowned today with a friend we simply couldn't wait for tomorrow

Tomorrow we begin peak

Wintersteel

[mighty totem]

any book with ||akura fury|| in it is already peak

[spice socket]

Man baldrees guest voice for dungeon crawler Carl was. Something else man

That dude commits to the bit.

[safe knoll]

DCC Bedlam Bride general ||It was so appropriate for Travis to voice a cultivator, given how many of those books he voices||
And the performance was... wow

[spice socket]

He definitely cultivated that’s for sure

[inner loom]

He did not kowtow fr

[thick bay]

I burned through all of Will's entire catalog in a month or something while walking each day.

[thick bay]

I've been meaning to listen to DC but I am finishing Critical Role.

[spice socket]

Critical role doesn’t seem to ever end

[coral hatch]

There's always another Thursday

[spice socket]

Truth

[golden void]

Next Thursday?

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 6 || It’s wild to think about the state of Lindin’s world already, still so early in the series, and just how incredibly weak Sacred Valley is. Seems like anyone outside Sacred Valley could easily come and steal the land any time they would want ||

Same tags || I also recognize that it’s very likely we eventually get to the point in later books where Eithan and Jai Long and everyone in the Blackflame empire area is seen like we see Sacred Valley now ||

[golden void]

https://tenor.com/view/michael-jackson-comendo-picoca-gif-9669437860846841235

good, feed us your thoughts

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 6 || Lindin is a damn baller. Not him going for the parasite ring with the new heaven and earth cycling technique ||

These books are so fun

Blackflame 7 || Eithan wants to put Lindin on the path of the Blackflame on one core it seems. The path that the start of the book warned of. This should be interesting ||

Ahhh to continue listening or play Pokémon Z-A. The urge to binge this is strong

[thick bay]

I read the beginning of Shades of Grey by him. It was alright.

Tbh I thought he was a she until I checked rn.

[opal wadi]

||Thus is the nature of progression fantasy, eventually Jai Long would feel like a flea next to how strong the gang is by the end of the series||

[thick bay]

It's pretty great being on the other side being able to read someone's reactions. 🍿

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/why-not-both-why-not-take-both-gif-11478682

[hollow ferry]

I want to be able to focus on the book when listening. I know I can’t fully take in the book while gaming

[coral hatch]

Yeah for me it entirely depends on the game

I can play football manager while listening or watching something else because 75% of that game is waiting on stuff

Anything more involved and it's just noise

[hollow ferry]

Ahh yeah I don’t play games like that

[thick bay]

Oh no, is the voice acting in ZA gonna confuse you from the audiobook? 😂

[coral hatch]

I am well in deep in that rabbit hole.

As in, the literal only reason I am not "working" for the game is because it's a mess of burocracy and money to actually do a good job

[hollow ferry]

Lolol

[hollow ferry]

Nah it’s just that adhd focus

Audiobooks are great when doing things like eating, walking, house chores, driving, etc

But gaming nah

[coral hatch]

(You can volunteer as a researcher for FM which is why it has such a great database, but to do that you "should" be attending games from your selected team as much as possible. In Argentina that means not just tickets but also becoming a club member)

in exchange you get the game for free every year and the game generates a player with your name and rough characteristics practically every time

[hollow ferry]

Wild

[thick bay]

It's wierd for me, I don't have adhd, but some things it actually helps me concentrate if I have something playing while I am also doing something else or my mind wanders too much.

[coral hatch]

Yeah depending on what I find that "grounding" too

but really depends

[hollow ferry]

Yeah it really depends on the thing. My mind needs to be able to focus in on what I’m listening to while I do the other thing, because I don’t want to miss anything. If my attention gets pulled too far towards the other thing I’m doing then I just keep rewinding the book over and over

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 8 || Dragon boneyard town is metal AF ||

[thick bay]

Cradle General ||Lindon and Eithan||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 10 || Eithan was born half a world away and then they’re like ooo an underlord, this is good for us. Perhaps where Eithan came from underlords are a dime a dozen? 👀 If we continue with the trend we’re on so far ||

Blackflame 10 || Mentally ill dragon-descended turtle 🐢 ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Blackflame 10: ||You better not be talking trash Orthos||

[opal wadi]

||Majestic turtle||

[hollow ferry]

Will look at these when I finish the chapter

Blackflame 10 + Stormlight || Eithan just turned the river seed into Syl ||

Blackflame 10 || Jade advancement. Already has surpassed his parents and the majority of those in the sacred valley. ||

[hollow ferry]

Same tags || Nah I think it’s dope haha ||

[thick bay]

Cradle ALL NOT YOU SPOOKY
||You know, spooky is kinda right, where Eithan came from 'underlords' were a dime a dozen. ||

[safe knoll]

fun fact, same tags ||Will originally intended to allow the river seed to transform into a spear for Lindon, but had to scrap the idea because Brando already did it||

[hollow ferry]

Same tags || So funny especially because it’s the SYLvan river seed ||

[lilac vault]

||Imagine how terrible it would be if he turned her into himself like he was expecting. That would have been the worst.||

[hollow ferry]

|| Ngl that would have been so funny. I love Eithan ||

[opal wadi]

Cradle all Waybound
||I think the end result is considerably funnier, Little Blue can just suplex a mountain now||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 11 || The way people react (aka barely or don’t react) to jai long killing people in the streets. They’re just like, I’m sure they deserved it. May we assist with cleanup? ||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 12 || This multi-month trial is giving Yerin advances to high gold. Time will tell ||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 12 || Can we take a moment to appreciate the magitech? I love me some magitech ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Unsouled all: ||beat up children Beat up children Beat Up Children BEAT UP CHILDREN!||

[safe knoll]

Cradle and Threshold ALL, nuclear ☢️ ||And Oz's Presence can definitely transform into a pair of scissors||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 13 || Every universe has a single inhabited world. So that’s what the iterations mean. Wild stuff. Bouncing across iterations we get multiverse stuff.

I’m curious about connection between madra and the way and whether they’re somewhat one and the same somehow or madra is an extension of the way. ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Unsouled 4/Cradle ALL NUCLEAR!!!: ||"He saw the familiar touch of fate on the Unsouled" OK, that's either a pre echo of Suriel in a few chapters, or Ozriel's effect on Cradle||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 18 || Yerin and Lindin working together against orthos and being so in sync is awesome ||

[opal wadi]

I find it hilarious how you say Lindin

[robust estuary]

Makes me think of Linked in

[hollow ferry]

What’s the true || (gold) || spelling?

[humble bluff]

Lindin? More like Lindout! ❌
Lindon? More like Lindoff! ⭕

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 15 ||IT'S TIME TO GET INTO A FIGHT WITH AN AKURA OH BOY||

[opal wadi]

Lindon

[thick bay]

Tbh, as a audiobook listener, I get gaslight about how it is supposed to be spelled by other audiobook readers.

[opal wadi]

London

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 15 ||Ohhh Northstrider was trying to make a Presence. I guess in some way it worked. I can see Dross being a baby Presence.||

[hollow ferry]

Llhinndunn, got it

[thick bay]

Yindon.

[lilac vault]

His name is spelled Lalilulelo

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 19 || Dreadgod 👀 High gold 👀 Two gold signs 👀 Offense 👀||

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 15

||"You may ask one question and receive one drop of ghostwater. And for the rest of your life, know that you are in my debt."
Then the Monarch vanished, and Harmony turned to meet them.||

||I seriously did not think we would be going toe to toe with Harmony||

[hollow ferry]

This series is SO PEAK

And I know it’s still just getting started

I know I’ve seen nothing yet but gahhhh

[lilac vault]

||Which makes it wild that we're SAVING the fight with Yan Shoumei for later||

I love things like this lmao (Ghostwater 16)

[robust estuary]

||smh, a dragon I don't recognzie the name of, gotta reread again I guess 😔||

[thick bay]

Cradle all|| I looked and was Who??? ||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 19 || LOW GOLD. Sacred Valley would be so freaking shook rn lol ||

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 16 ||I love Mercy so much lmao. She's just so happy to be here||

[opal wadi]

||Currently Lindon would be considered a generational prodigy in Sacred Valley, but outside he's like a baby still||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 21 first minute || He’s totally going to somehow heal Jai Chen and Jai Long is going to join team avatar Luffy Lindon ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Yep ||

[lilac vault]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Ghostwater 17 ||DROSS IS OFFICIALLY A PRESENCE NOW||

KJAJOjuihOIIJHIUSHDFIUSHFIUHASFGYASDUFHASDF

||NONE OF THAT EVEN HAPPENED, THAT WAS JUST A VISION OF THE FUTURE||

https://tenor.com/view/xenoblade-chronicles-defnitive-adition-shulk-monado-gif-22472684

Ghostwater/Xenoblade 1 ||THIS IS JUST AS AWESOME AS SEEING SHULK USE THE MONADO FOR THE FIRST TIME AND JUST EFFORTLESLY DODGE EVERYTHING BEING THROWN AT HIM||

||LINDON LITERALLY HAS THE MONADO NOW||

[thick bay]

Ghostwater ||This was my favorite part of the series.||

[opal wadi]

I don't know anything about Xenoblade but
||Does the monado speak with a funny voice and does terrible jokes? ||

[lilac vault]

||No, the Monado is a sadly non-sentient sword||

[robust estuary]

Xenoblade all ||Well, there is Alvis. Does a british accent count as a funny voice?||

[lilac vault]

Well. Sort of. Xenoblade full ||It IS a person, but it's a relatively serious twink||

[hollow ferry]

Blackflame 21 || Jai Dai Sho isn’t dead omg ||

[lilac vault]

||Xenoblade 2 has a very sassy woman does that count?||

[thick bay]

||I've only played Xenoblade Chronicles 2, I need to play the other ones.||

[lilac vault]

You do

btw (Ghostwater) ||I just read Dross with the Wheatley voice lmao||

[robust estuary]

Xenoblade full trilogy ||And them there's A, as well. I don't... think they make any jokes, at least not many, but they do have some banter with the rest of the party, and if we're gonna bring up Pyra and Mythra, we might as well bring up A. Oh yeah, and Malos too||

[thick bay]

I have three, but the combat turned me off.

[lilac vault]

||Malos isn't the Monado though, he's his own thing. I don't think he has Foresight, that's Mythra and Ontos' ability. Malos never shows the ability to use Foresight||

||A is just Alvis as a woman||

||And with a partner that she's significantly more baffled by than Shulk lmao||

[robust estuary]

||A is nonbinary, for starters, but also there's more to the Monado than foresight, Malos literally uses Minado arts in 2||

[lilac vault]

True

[robust estuary]

But also also: This is not the channel for Deep Xenoblade Lore

[lilac vault]

XB full + Ghostwater full ||But also we're talking about the future sight part, so the rest of Malos' abilities are irrelevant in the convo||

[robust estuary]

||Sure, bht he is there and he is a Monado||

Anyways Cradle

[lilac vault]

||A Monado without Foresight is useless and that's why he's the only one who dies lmao||

Anyways Cradle

Based ending

This is awesome lmao

[robust estuary]

Well, this conversation has successfully reminded me I need to get back to taking those NPC notes in Xenoblade 3 so I can flesh out the wiki...

[lilac vault]

lmao

[safe knoll]

Ghostwater’s ending is perfect 😎

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 17 ||I wonder if that's truly the end of Harmony, or if he will return somehow||

||If the "collapse" of this world isn't as final as "It and everything inside is gone" and is more like "They're completely cut off from the outside but if you're really skilled you can get back||

I live by the eternal motto

||"If there's no corpse, they ain't dead"||

[thick bay]

||What if Lindon burns their corpse alive? ||

[lilac vault]

||Ashes constitute a corpse||

||If they are burnt to the extent that there is no body, then that is as good as a corpse||

||Lindon did not do that, Lindon locked him in a pocket dimension that was collapsing||

||That is significantly less final and he was very alive the last time we saw him||

||Therefore, no corpse, they ain't dead||

[hollow ferry]

Only have like 15 minutes left of Blackflame but I’m starting to fade so I’ll finish it in the morning. Book has been fire though

Pun intended

[lilac vault]

Ghostwater 18 ||Damn literally everybody is advancing to Truegold this book. Even god damn Fisher Gesha.||

[hollow ferry]

Skysworn is super short so I imagine I’ll start ghostwater this week too

[lilac vault]

You'll catch up to me eventually

You're reading at a far faster pace than I am

[hollow ferry]

I must advance

[lilac vault]

this is just like Advancement

LMAO

[humble bluff]

Lollll

[lilac vault]

I'm keeping ahead, but for how long. The spren advances

[hollow ferry]

Not for long

I started the series 9 days ago

[humble bluff]

Got it, neon's yerin and spooky's lindon

[lilac vault]

Yeah I started uhhhh

Over four months ago at least

[hollow ferry]

Yeah I’ll easily be on Underlord next week at this rate, if not sooner lol

[lilac vault]

I start it tomorrow

Since I'm finishing Ghostwater literally right now

[opal wadi]

I'm at Wintersteel, this is the point where the books become thick

[hollow ferry]

Challenge accepted

[lilac vault]

"Challenge accepted, reach Underlord before Neon"

[hollow ferry]

No, that won’t happen

[lilac vault]

And then you proceed to binge Skysworn and Ghostwater in the next 16 hours

Because that is approximately when I start it

[hollow ferry]

Lol nah I have work in the morning. But I could possibly finish Skysworn tomorrow

[lilac vault]

||Every main character who wasn't higher than Truegold hit Truegold this book (yes I count Mercy, she may have been Truegold for a single minute but she was still Truegold)|| Ghostwater 18

[robust estuary]

Underlord all (neon don't click) ||Ah, yes, Mercy hit Truegold for just a minute, she's definitely never been there before, totally new for her||

[thick bay]

Ghostwater ||What's your thoughts on Ziel? ||

[robust estuary]

Ghostwater ||And I GOTTA get your thoughts on Ekerinatoth and Yan Shoumei||

[lilac vault]

He's neat

[lilac vault]

||Ekeri is dead||

||She was neat||

||Yan Shoumei is neat||

lmao

I just don't know enough about them to say

||Other than Ekeri, who is dead now, I felt like I could have gotten more from her||

[robust estuary]

Followup question bout a character who features even less in the book: ||What about Sopharanatoth?||

[lilac vault]

||I know even less about her than I know about Ekeri right now||

||She big angy||

But also I have one more scene with her

That I have yet to read

I will say that ||Sophara does have more potential than Ekeri did and Yan Shoumei does||

||YEEEEEEEEEEAH THERE'S NORTHSTRIDER HIMSELF||

||Okay Northstrider is heading to Ghostwater personally. Either Harmony dies here or he lives to mess with us another day||

[lilac vault]

LMAO

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

||HE JUST SAYS NO||

[humble bluff]

You've finished, I take it

GW all

[lilac vault]

GET WRECKED NERD

||Alright now I believe he's dead. Like I said before, if someone is burnt to the extent that there is no body, then that's as good as a corpse. And Northstrider, despite using a water Path, burned that man far more than Lindon could hope to||

[opal wadi]

||Despite what it may look like, Northstrider's path is not Water based||

[lilac vault]

||Oh really? Weird, considering everything about him has been water so far||

[opal wadi]

||He does like his theme of aquatic life tho||

[lilac vault]

||It's called Hungry Deep (I guess that means it's Hunger), he fights sea creatures on the day to day, he made a place called Ghostwater that is always underwater and is full of underwater creatures||

[opal wadi]

Ghostwater
||It's Blood and Hunger, he eats the dragons for power||

[opal wadi]

||I think there's a joke about that in one of the books yeah, he has no water aspect in his path but really loves having water as his running theme||

[lilac vault]

Anyway yeah best book so far

I don't get that joke

[opal wadi]

I think it's a reference to a different series by Will

he does have a series called "Traveller's Gate"

[lilac vault]

LMAO

[robust estuary]

||Lindon in Valinhall would vastly limit his potential (iirc, he is currently at a point in his career where he could take the main character of TG in a fair fight at the end of that trilogy, when Lindon's story is less tham halfway over), but also WOW I really wanna see it||

[opal wadi]

Sometimes will is hilarious

honestly the bloopers are so peak

[humble bluff]

Is that one blooper in this book?

[opal wadi]

some are better than others but the best ones are always the characters dying in ridiculous and anti climactic ways

[lilac vault]

Yes

[safe knoll]

literally perfect

[lilac vault]

The only thing that would make it better is if ||I had a deeper emotional dislike for Harmony||

||Because then it would be satisfying||

||As it stands, Harmony was mostly just an obstacle, I wasn't really emotionally invested in him. I was more emotionally invested in Ekeri||

||I guess he killed Renfei but i didnt care much about her anyway she did not get much screentime||

[mighty totem]

somewhat of a meta answer: Ghostwater ALL, ||The characters in this book need to be discardable||

at least in my opinion

||Harmony doesnt work if he isnt utterly uninterested in Lindon, he cant be built up during the book itself because it needs to focus on lindon speedrunning gold, ekeri is a midboss and needs to be dealt with early on, yada yada||

it's a fault to be sure but I don't think you could fix it

[safe knoll]

blackflame 6 ||I forgot how fun Yerin's sayings were. “Scream and bleed when you need help.” ||

[hollow ferry]

Same tags || The writing as a whole is very fun. Eithan and fisher geisha too ||

[safe knoll]

there's so many little things I'm catching on this reread, but I'm afraid to talk about them while Spooky and Neon are still on their first read

some people are too hungry for our scripts against intrusion to handle

[hollow ferry]

Feel free to tag NSFS&N or something

[opal wadi]

Very atomic spoilers do not click
||Having done line 50 rereads, every time early on Lindon mentions Hunger, and Emptiness or this... void he feels inside I chuckle, same with Yerin not wanting to be alone or trying not to be a clone of her master, and Eithan ooooh Eithan, my sweet little man too melancholic for someone in their 30's.||

[robust estuary]

||It really ia incredible how well that stuff is woven into their super early stuff, before they even meet, or leave Sacred Valley||

[lilac vault]

I do understand that logically. I just sorta wish they had smth else.

[thick bay]

Ghostwater ||I was actually happy that they died. ||

[thick bay]

Same tags ||Speaking of Eithan's age, I remember specifically asking yall how old he was and yall tried yall did your best to not answer. It was so great. ||

[robust estuary]

Cradle all msf Spooky and Neon ||My favorite Eithan gag is still "How old did you think I was?" at the end of Underlord. Its great the first time around and its even better on the reread||

[thick bay]

Cradle all ||My favorite gag Eithan was "To the blood pits!" for some reason.||

[safe knoll]

Cradle all, nsf Neon and Spooky ||It struck me how many mentions of the First Patriarch of the Arelius clan there were. ||
||Stretching, Eithan spoke through another yawn. “My father used to say the First Patriarch could watch over his descendants from another continent. Maybe even from…beyond the grave.” Eithan waggled his eyebrows up and down. ||

[safe knoll]

blackflame 12 ||"You’re asking me, but who am I supposed to ask?" is another great one ||

blackflame 12 ||Cassias Gaming approaching his station, folks||

[safe knoll]

same tags ||hehehe||

||Cassias gave him a wry look, but his spiritual perception was already moving over the console. If he was going to run these Trials, he needed to know the controls like his own sword.||

[safe knoll]

blackflame 17 ||“Gentlemen,” the Underlord said, “this is a mistake.” ||

[opal wadi]

Blackflame/Bloodline
||I find it really charming that Lindon wasn't present for that and just reverse engineered what Eithan would say in a similar situation, by Bloodline he knew the man's mannerisms so well he just spawned the quote from aura ||

[safe knoll]

blackflame 20 ||Lindon had so many questions that they all tried to exit his mouth at once. They came out together, so they sounded like, “Bluh.” He's such a cutie for a sect leader's evil son||

[hollow ferry]

|| Wait wut. I feel like I just got a massive spoiler 😭 Bruh ||

[jade notch]

They're joking about the son part because he's described as looking like that a time or two

[hollow ferry]

Not safe for me or others who have just read up through Blackflame || The evil part ||

[jade notch]

Yes, it's a joke

Soulsmith 16 ||They're making a joke based on Eithan's joke from Soulsmith: "Eithan moved his hand back and forth. “Eh...I'd say he looks like an evil sect leader's rebellious son.” He thought a moment longer and added, “Wearing his mother's robe.”"||

[hollow ferry]

Same || Ooooooh. I was thinking he was talking about Eithan in his original comment ||

Phew, false alarm. Apologies

[opal wadi]

Everyone, we need to be more careful about the commentary

or at least tag things very clearly

[jade notch]

?

[jade notch]

If you're referring to this, I was extremely vague on purpose

[opal wadi]

It's not about this, it's in general, to remember what to mention because sometimes we can say something that was mentioned much later or hints too much at a twist

I'm guilty of this

[lilac vault]

Underlord 1 ||Well I guess Northstrider's living status is gonna become public knowledge now||

[lilac vault]

So based

[opal wadi]

https://tenor.com/view/durarara-punch-people-who-possess-overwhelming-power-tend-to-inspire-instinctual-fear-gif-15823738

[lilac vault]

SO TRUE

[safe knoll]

ghostwater 8 ||orthos best turtle 🔥 🐢 || ||“No, sure, I understand that, but what do you think his odds really are? Ten to one? A hundred to one? Maybe just two to one?” Orthos locked his eyes on the purple-lit gem. “One hundred percent.” “...optimism! Oh, that’s a good one, it really is. False courage really does wonders for keeping the spirits up.” “One more word, and I will eat you.” ||

[hollow ferry]

Skysworn 2 || Eithan is part of Azrial’s bloodline 👀 Heh I guess that explains another book title ||

Skysworn 2 || Dang, Machial is letting them both live and trying to expedite getting them off planet. Stakes elevated. I need more free time 😭 ||

[hollow ferry]

Skysworn 2 || 👀👀👀 Dreadgod. I really hope the dreadgods aren’t humanoid but rather various incredibly powerful and intelligent beasts. Would be a lot of fun I think ||

Skysworn 3 || Continuing to find their magitech very cool ||

[golden void]

||Ozriel, fyi||

[safe knoll]

ghostwater 17 ||Dross' first combat report hits just as hard. What a wonderful scene ||

[safe knoll]

underlord 7 ||“Ladies, turtle, spirit, one-armed man” is one of my favourite Eithanisms||

[thick bay]

Underlord 7 ||Lil Blu isn't a lady Eithan?

🗡️ ||

[lilac vault]

Underlord 2 ||I'm not half wondering if the owl is Harmony's Remnant, somehow escaped from Ghostwater. I can't imagine what else it could be, unless Bai Rou died and it's his Remnant, but I don't think he would die off screen and even if he did, I would think his Remnant would focus more on Yerin than Lindon||

[lilac vault]

Underlord 2 ||This is what I mean. If Yerin knew the Heaven and Earth cycling technique, then she'd be able to get something out of cycling even when circumstances are such that she can't cycle normally. Adding ten extra mana once in a while might help in the long run.||

||Her face was on the level of Lindon's chest, and she looked up at him, standing over her. The head from his body filled the space, and the quiet aura radiating from his spirit was stronger than it had ever been.
He looked down, eyes intense, and her heartbeat picked up. It was the same old Lindon, but the strength in his soul made him feel older, more reliable, and somehow new, like she had taken her eyes off him for a second and he had grown up. And he was so close||

Oh she's down BAD

Like BAD bad

[robust estuary]

||Yes she'd get a benefit, but the opportunity cost of using that technique instead of what she has been using would likely outweigh that benefit, and splitting her attention between both would just kneecap her in both directions. In gaming terms, Cradle is a min-maxing world, diversifying your build is very rarely worth it, and the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel's benefits people who already are diversifying moreso than people who are already waist deep in a different build||

[hollow ferry]

Cradle through end of Blackflame || I can think of two characters this may be referring to currently and who the target is ||

[lilac vault]

Clearly it's ||Little Blue||

[hollow ferry]

|| I forgot about Little Blue ||

[lilac vault]

How could you

Underlord 3 ||Ohhh the owl is Charity's||

Hmmm interesting

||Charity is only taking three to the tournament. That means one of our main characters isn't making it in||

||The logical choice is Mercy. She's the newest and the least progressed, it would be insane for her to go from Lowgold to Underlord in this one book. But who knows, maybe something wild will happen and she'll enter anyway despite the three person limit||

[lilac vault]

Something occurs to me

Underlord 3 ||Only Truegolds are going to the training. Unless something happens, that means Mercy won't be coming. I hope that's not the case because this girl barely feels like a part of the group as it is, and she spent the whole last book outside with Yerin as well. She would need an extensive B-plot for me to feel satisfied with her not being there, and that wouldn't help her relationship with our main fellas. But knowing Eithan, he's gonna pull some strings. Or maybe her B-plot will be him training her, which would be substantial||

[hollow ferry]

Skysworn 5 || Had to stop mid Jai Long duel for a massage and it ended up being the most mid massage I’ve ever had, dang. Time to continue 👀 ||

[hollow ferry]

Skysworn 7 || Lindon was… disarmed ||

Skysworn 7 || That all was pretty wild. And then it’s like actually this is great because now you get a new OP arm that’s going to be wild in the long run even if it’s a bit of a hassle now ||

[lilac vault]

||All us for the sake of becoming the most OP person in history||

[safe knoll]

underlord 17 ||Then he pulled out a cannon. ||

18 ||Lindon dropped his cannon and pulled out a second. ||

[opal wadi]

Absolutely hilarious

Me and my friend had to pause that acene to laugh

[safe knoll]

underlord 20 ||Dross spun out onto Lindon's shoulder, squinting his eye at Mercy. [Who are you? I’m warning you: I have a large sacred artist attached to me. He fights.] I don't know why, but I'm cackling right now ||

[jade notch]

Because it's funny 😄

[safe knoll]

I forgot how comfy these books are

underlord 20 ||“I will add a gift of my own to the Blackflame Empire in compensation,” the Sage said serenely. “I will also allow each of you to take all that you can carry from this place.” Lindon's void key zipped open. Everyone looked at him. “Apologies,” he said, cutting off the flow of madra. “Forgiveness, please.” ||

[jade notch]

||Embarassing premature manipulation||

[mighty totem]

Underlord ||I listened to this entire scene imagining like a DMC pistol juggle and I was smiling like a crazy person during my bus commute to my uni||

||I can vividly picture Kiro spinning in the air like a drill||

[lilac vault]

Underlord 3 ||I wonder if Mercy's clumsiness and seemingly her physical weakness (since more and more it's describing her using her bow as a walking stick) is related to how she "used to be stronger||

||Oh also, THATS why she's so interested in the owl. It's not just a curiosity, she knows that it's Charity's||

[hollow ferry]

Skysworn 10 || (Jai long and Jai Chen) “Whether the heavens willed it or not, they would never see Lindon again” ||

https://tenor.com/view/doubt-press-x-la-noire-meme-x-button-gif-19259237

[opal wadi]

Fun fact!
||Jain Chen is the girl that shows up in the original timeline that Lindon was fated to live, the one where he grows old and has a family in Sacred Valley until he dies by Dreadgod||

[hollow ferry]

|| Omg. Makes sense now ||

[coral hatch]

Cradle all ||if Lindon had locked in he'd have mastered the you-people Icon||

[opal wadi]

||If Will wasn't a coward we'd have ended the series with Lindon having like five wives||

[coral hatch]

Cradle all ||I still think that if any of The Three suggested it, there would've been a polycule right there. None of them will suggest it but they're all down for it||

[opal wadi]

Cradle all
||Wei Shi Lindon Arelius Akura Jai ft Yerin and we can ducktape Yan Shoumei there too because why not shipping is a lawless land||

[robust estuary]

||Why have ONE blood wife when you can have THREE blood wives!||

||And some other, non-blood wives I guess, if you're into that||

[opal wadi]

Cradle ALL
||I know Ruby is Yerin and Yerin is Ruby now but I so, so want Adult Yerin to have a technique that splits her again just to see Ruby back in action||

[robust estuary]

||I wanna see an alternate future where Ruby is still around and is treated as Yerin's sister and nobody really thinks much of it but every once in a while word about her whole situation gets out to someone who didn't know and they're just like... "Damn, Cradle is wild I guess"||

[opal wadi]

||Alterante route where they do a sort of Eight Man Empire thing where Ruby reaches Herald and Yerin Sage but they are both still the same entity-ish so they can achieve Pseudo Monarch by lending power to the other||

[coral hatch]

Same tag ||Wei Shi Lindon Akura^2 ft Yerin. His first future wife deserves some recognition||

[coral hatch]

Same tag ||I will say nothing more than I had to check what channel this was after reading most of this message||

[hollow ferry]

My pace has been really slow the last few days. Won’t finish Skysworn until tomorrow morning

[opal wadi]

I'm in the middle of Wintersteel with my friend

I think we're finishing in 2 days, 3 max

[hollow ferry]

Oh yeah this may have been Skysworn 15 or slightly before || Lindon being antagonized by the guy before the obstacle course and accidentally obliterating his ribs was kind of funny? I’m going to hell. But also a really interesting way to put into perspective just how strong Lindon has gotten in just over a year.

It wasn’t that long ago that he was punching toddlers in the gut for personal gain, and now he’s brutalizing other low golds with his evil eyes and skeleton hand ||

[thick bay]

||He might have three o.O||

[lilac vault]

Oh don 't worry it's very funny

[safe knoll]

https://youtube.com/shorts/Fi-cQoHm_YM?si=4jDTUjZrH2Ej5W0i

Instant chills from the first sentence

[mighty totem]

still unsure how to feel about lindon's face

it looks better than i remembered but still a bit too soft

I imagine him like an edgelord even though he acts like the complete opposite

[hollow ferry]

Oh dang only kickstarter backers are going to get access to it for the foreseeable future

[hollow ferry]

Skysworn 16 || Seems like now is a prime time for some protag plot armor ||

Skysworn 16 || Lindon the mad man. The fafo is real ||

[hollow ferry]

Skysworn 17 || “That’s my mother” Buried the lead there, eh?

Also if London hits Monarch or even higher status and then goes back to Sacred Valley and sees his family again, that’s going to be the absolute funniest ish. Can’t wait for that, assuming they aren’t all dead ||

[opal wadi]

Wintersteel 14
||Ziel regaining his will to fight||

[spice socket]

That’s my goat right there

[thick bay]

Got that 🐕

[hollow ferry]

Finished Skysworn. Breaking for Will of the Many but then it’s back to Cradle

[lilac vault]

Underlord 6 ||I dunno who I thought we'd be going into the tournament immediately when I said that Mercy could be left out of the plot lmao. I thought it was gonna be this book, not next.||

[violet apex]

Cradle all ||nah, Yan Shoumei will eventually Ascend and finally get with Northstrider like she always wanted||

||the fact that Yan has a crush on Northstrider is my favorite completely random character detail||

[zenith kayak]

Cradle all (inc. Threshold) ||Nah, she'd need to take Durandiel out of the equation first. That or convince her to share.||

[thick bay]

Soulsmith ||https://youtu.be/aV_Ii2LqgtI||

Cradle all ||How much do I have to pay to see Eithan getting yeeted?||

[golden void]

||Man Lindon is such a Block Head (literally)||

||Lore accurate||

[pseudo sedge]

omg the musical cues, the hair

[coral hatch]

||WHY DOES HE HAVE GUYBRUSH THREEPWOOD DESIGN VIBES||

I have no idea what exactly makes me think of it

But it isn't leaving my brain

[lilac vault]

Underlord 6 ||I knew it, Mercy's clumsiness is related to her apparently weakened state||

||Interesting. It was a price for leaving home. I got the impression that she was forced out, but that makes it seem like she left voluntarily.||

[safe knoll]

just got to drop 50 mil on will and crew to get them to adapt all books

[coral hatch]

Gonna show up in Matt Mercer's sock drawer to convince him to convince Amazon

(Why Matt? Process of elimination. It'd be creepy to pick the ladies, Taliesin would be unphased, I am not prone to startling people who can punch my head clean off so Travis is a no, I am not going anywhere near Sam's drawers, I haven't thought of an excuse for Liam)

[hollow ferry]

Soulsmith || I don’t get why they chose to make the heads twice as tall as they are wide. At least for Lindon and Eithan. Cool stuff though overall! ||

[coral hatch]

||Pretty common stylistic choice honestly. I think that's what reminded me of Guybrush Threepwood||

Pic for reference:

[hollow ferry]

|| Huh, I don’t think I’ve really ever seen anything with that style. Don’t love that part. But it’s not a huge deal. Just very odd proportions ||

[coral hatch]

||I think it's an older style? I feel it was pretty common a few years back, especially in gaming. And by a few I mean... Twenty to thirty? lmao I may be misremembering but I feel it was very common for those 2d cartoonish-er artstyles||

[dreamy sorrel]

I listened to this party earlier today!!!

[safe knoll]

wintersteel 5 ||"Lindon chose his favorite of the compliments he readied in advance." ooohhh ||

[safe knoll]

wintersteel 6 reread, cradle all in case ||[Wow, that was amazing! Did you cast us through space just by thinking about it?] So much foreshadowing loaded into this book, I love it every reread||

[safe knoll]

wintersteel 7 ||stubborn as a boulder hitched to a donkey is still my favorite of Yerin's sayings ||

[safe knoll]

wintersteel 9 || heheh||

[lilac vault]

Underlord 7 ||Seeing Eithan well and truly flabbergasted is exceptional||

||THAT IS A VERY CASUAL WAY TO GIVE YERIN S I X TOTAL SWORD ARMS||

[robust estuary]

Underlord 7 + Slay the Princess ||Yerin's final form||

[violet apex]

https://youtube.com/shorts/XsTZseMVwfE?si=t6L08RuMjdxqGXAK

[golden void]

|| remnant ||

[coral hatch]

The Captain ||Varric wishing Moonfall had a bit more personality and conversing with it as if it listened, only to then be suitably horrified with Horizon having a LOT of personality feels weirdly prescient, thinking about it||

[lilac vault]

LMAO

[zenith kayak]

TLH all ||It turns out Varric is the proud owner of a depleted Monkey's Paw. His wishes were to be a better Wizard, for friends on his level, and a better ship AI||

[lilac vault]

Underlord 7 ||It's too bad Orthos is the main character I'm least invested in||

[thick bay]

Cradle all ||That reminds me, when Orthos left, I thought he turned into a human because Travis used an Orthos like voice for a random character ||

[safe knoll]

cradle ALL, wintersteel reread ||"When they separated and she caught her breath, Ziel was standing next to them. He didn’t look like he cared what they did, and he would probably wear that expression if the sky collapsed." Yerin was closer to the truth than one might think||

[mighty totem]

man wintersteel was so good

[spice socket]

anyone here post the new animatic

[golden void]

It's not public yet

[spice socket]

I just saw another animatic on the YouTube

It said it was only posted a day ago

Cradle animatics ||https://youtu.be/aV_Ii2LqgtI?si=vsE9aMVe7uidEPEH||

[golden void]

Oh ye, that was posted a couple days ago. Here, if you want to see comments at the time

The full animatic is premiering tonight in Texas
I can't remember what the plan is for getting it out to the rest of the backers and/or public

[inner loom]

Backers will get it by the end of November (if all goes according to plan)

No plan to release it to the general public since investors are much less likely to make an anime if the animatic is widely available

[thick bay]

Isn't it in California?

[golden void]

uhh

maybe?

yes it is

[thick bay]

Void, if Texans other than me could read, they would be very mad right now.

[cloud zinc]

I am sad it is not in Texas

[thick bay]

I was gonna say, Texas, where I can go? 😂

[proven fox]

Hey guys, I finished the main series of cradle books a few months ago and absolutely loved them. What do you guys recommend next? In particular I enjoyed the magic system and everything with the abidan

[jade notch]

The Weirkey Chronicles are very good and have a number of similarities (although it's not finished)

[safe knoll]

I thought you didn't read unfinished series?
I absolutely second weirkey, they're fun books, just surprised

[jade notch]

I do read unfinished series, I just try not to

I don't always succeed for various reasons

(A large one being, I thought it was done but it wasn't)

[safe knoll]

Will's own Last Horizon is great too. Takes place in another Iteration in the Willverse
Mage Errant is a finished series with detailed magic and multiversal aspects, but it's very YA.
Mother of Learning has the best magical and character progression out of anything I've read in the progression fantasy subgenre. The audiobooks aren't great, unfortunately

Arcane Ascension, maybe? I'm not the biggest fan but it's one of the first books in the subgenre. Incredibly detailed magic, an enchanter MC, lots of well-written queer characters

Practical Guide to Sorcery has a detailed hard-er magic system set in a magic school. One of the best web serials being written at the moment, imo

[opal wadi]

Every time Lindon says Apologies while we're listening with my friend I send the same message saying "Apolocheese"

I think I might have sent like 50 already

[opal wadi]

Wintersteel all
||Ruby after being rejected by Lindon||

[golden void]

where is that from?

[opal wadi]

I think it's a frame from the chainsawman movie

I just painted it red

[golden void]

I didn't recognise it with the recolour

[opal wadi]

Wintersteel 26
||I got to say the quote at the same exact time as Travis, when Lindon shows up to smile at mercy and says "I'm here to punch a hole in the sky" ||
||My friend started laughing and cackling because I got the timing so right, and asked me how I got so many quotes so on time||

[opal wadi]

Finished Wintersteel with my friend

As always, very peak

[thick bay]

What's their reactions?

[opal wadi]

screaming

and laughing

and screaming again

we had to pause several times just to react to the hype moments and aura

[thick bay]

Wintersteel ||Whats their thoughts on Lindon losing, points, and Yerin killing drago?||

[opal wadi]

||"Now it's very obvious Yerin is going to win this, she just needs to do the usual and power up." "Lindon there's a war outside, but please continue focusing on the points because it's hilarious." and no reaction to killing Sesh but laughing really hard at Yerin just smacking Sophara around like a bag of potatoes||

[dreamy sorrel]

Just got to my favorite mistake that made it into the final audiobook. Skysworn 7: ||It'll be like the arm you were born with. Love that Travis dropped from Fisher Gesha down to his normal voice on "with"||

[opal wadi]

I went to buy some paint the other day and found the Wei family's new commercial endeavor, acrilic paint

[thick bay]

Arelius must have been too expensive.

[spice socket]

I wouldn’t trust anything with a connection to Jaran

[lilac vault]

https://tenor.com/view/reze-csm-reze-reze-arc-chainsaw-man-chainsawman-gif-7116171322807163890

[coral hatch]

LH and Cradle||Between Ben and Jaran I'm starting to wonder if Will's dad is a bit of a donkey or something||

[inner loom]

He actually got asked about this at dragoncon lol

https://youtu.be/yt7yolzUmEM?si=OYrI1iih7w2DNFPs&t=3420

At 57:00

[spice socket]

lmao

[lilac vault]

Underlord 10 ||The fight with Kiro and Meira is the best fight in the series so far. That was awesome.||

[robust estuary]

||Its a good fight!||

||Think my favorite (tgat you've seen) is still Lindon v Jai Long, though||

[lilac vault]

||That was good, but I think this fight just does more. I really like doing the first part of the fight in Kiro's perspective, so we can see how terrifying Lindon is from a perspective other than his own, before we cut back to Lindon and how he believes he's on the back foot. And then the dual fight of Yerin and her Blood Shadow going 2v2 against them is just. So badass.||

[robust estuary]

||You make a good point, I do love the Blood Shadow...||

[humble bluff]

I do love the enemy pov's showing off how overpowered the mc's are

[lilac vault]

||It also does a great job making me actually want to see Lindon beat them. Before I didn't really want them to fight. But now, it's a grudge match!||

LMFAO

||LINDON JUST WALKS IN ON YERIN CHANGING|| Underlord 11

[robust estuary]

||Her (fairly extensive full-body) bandages being changed, iirc||

[lilac vault]

True

I also really like how ||both of them are absolutely terrified that the other is so much better than they are and are worrying about not keeping up.||

[coral hatch]

Last horizon general (rereading the engineer) ||God, Raion is SO nick coded||

(cc @opal wadi )

[zenith kayak]

Ghostwater 9 (reread) ||Man, I forgot how cat-coded Ekeri is||

[safe knoll]

Cradle all ||her, Silent King, and Reigan Shen make me think Will has a grudge against cats||

[thick bay]

Willverse all ||His grudge against Alchemist is worse. ||

[coral hatch]

I have seen the light.

Willverse all ||I need a Yerin - Lemon roadtrip||

[opal wadi]

Wintersteel
||This is what Lindon probably felt like right around the middle of Wintersteel ||

[spice socket]

cradle/last horizon all || imagine all these things the crew has stopped had a bloopers scene where lindon and the polycule show up like. just after everything is okay||

[robust estuary]

||They just start to get to a point where they're not in danger of immediately dying, Horizon notices something inbound from outside reality, they all get ready to blast it with everything they have left the instant it comes through, and once they all show up they're like "Oh, ow, this actually kinda stings, good work guys, usually we don't even notice it when people attack us"||

[coral hatch]

same tag ||there IS a blooper where Horizon accidentally includes Waybound+ Lindon in the crew tryouts and he just immediately vaporizes Varic||

[spice socket]

i do love that one

[hollow ferry]

WOTM is finished and I am now free to get back to peak tomorrow morning

Ghostwater up next

[safe knoll]

Wintersteel all ||I only now realized the importance of the few "Some cultures worshipped Fury as an omen of war" lines. They were foreshadowing Fury's readiness to advance to Monarch, and the importance of a person themselves becoming a symbol of something, not just being good at it.||

[robust estuary]

||Okay I'm thinking more about Sage/Herald/Monarch lore, and I think I need to make a Sage OC after all||

[safe knoll]

Cradle all ||In retrospect, it's a bit of a shame that Will couldn't fit more fleshed-out Heralds and Sages into the story. Heralds especially. For being more numerous than Sages and being described as person-shaped disasters who can't fight one another because of how damaging it would be to the nations and lands around them ||

[opal wadi]

Bloodline all
||Finally we reached "Gentlemen, this is a mistake."||
||My friend was ecstatic at Lindon absolutely humiliating the first elder and the patriarch||

||My friend also loves Dross, I don't know how he's going to react to the ending.||

[thick bay]

||Idk, the fights between heralds can't be worse than the fights between monarchs/Dreadgods. ||

[lilac vault]

AYO

HE'S GONNA BE AT NEXUS

[opal wadi]

Ay

[lilac vault]

Underlord ||I just realized that if Mercy is younger than Charity by 150 years, and Charity is her niece, then Malice had kids 170 years apart minimum. Good lord.||

||Also I feel bad for her husband currently lmao. How terrifying must it be to be the partner of someone who can kill you with a wave of the hand||

[cloud zinc]

||eh some people are into that||

[lilac vault]

True!

[opal wadi]

||When you can mechanically live forever and are one of the most powerful people in the world you get to have all the fun you want in your spare time, being in power is stressing too.||

[lilac vault]

||I'm just saying a woman named Malice sounds terrifying at the best of times||

[opal wadi]

Bloodline ALL
||Waiting patiently to tell my friend Dross is dead||

[thick bay]

Underlord ||My headcannon is that Northstrider is Fury's dad.||

[jade notch]

I'm so glad I got a little cart to bring with me this year. I couldn't carry everything I want

[opal wadi]

Bloodline ALL
||My friend is so hyped up that Dross is about to hit the Titan, we paused because he had to go to the bathroom right this instant, he doesn't know HE DOESN'T KNOW||

[violet apex]

Same tags ||I think Malice’s lovers are more like concubines than husbands tbh||

[lilac vault]

Fair

[spice socket]

She’s like Big Mom

[safe knoll]

Cradle all ||Her memories in Waybound suggest that she'd at least like them to be husbands ||

[boreal oasis]

Anyone know what Will means by his big Elder Empire fusion-lump thing?

Is he gonna rewrite it all as a chonky trilogy?

[safe knoll]

[thick bay]

From what I have heard, he is going to put them together as one book, unsure if it will be in three splits.

But I am not sure if it is actually going to be a rewrite.... It seems to more help pacing?

But honestly it needs rewrites.

[boreal oasis]

I remember him saying something about the magic needing a redo. Too much was bundled in Reading

I don't want one giant book. It'd be gigantic unless he cuts a lot

However, if he's planning a Kickstarter for it, it'd be very neat to see the Emberdark white-and-black page switch

[thick bay]

Elder Empire is what I consider Will's most Sanderson like book, and that isn't a good thing.

[golden void]

My assumption is he's turning each pair into a single book

And yeah, there's definitely too much going on in just reading

[dreamy sorrel]

If Will does a rewrite, the series would be much stronger for it. He's become a better writer since 2014 when the first pair released

[opal wadi]

Cradle Book 3, Blackflame, in one image:

[lilac vault]

I bought Uncrowned 🙂

[opal wadi]

No

You bought peak

[robust estuary]

Oh shoot, I missed your reaction to almoat all of Underlord 👀

[lilac vault]

I'm still on Underlord

I'm at the climax

I'm planning to finish the climax this night lmao

[jade notch]

So...many...dirty...jokes...

[lilac vault]

I have a question about the animatic

I know that it hasn't come out for backers yet

But is there going to be a public release of it?

[proud oar]

I’m not sure. It’s…kinda up in the air?

I think it’s likely to go public but I don’t know for sure.

[lilac vault]

Is it set to get like a full animation treatment?

Or will it remain an animatic for the forseeable future

[proud oar]

They’re using the animatic to seek out producers for a full animation, which is also why I’m not sure if it’ll be public.

[lilac vault]

Underlord 17 ||I'm thinking Daji will try to actually kill Mercy, ignoring Charity's instruction, and she'll finally allow herself to use her full strength.||

[lilac vault]

||LMAO LINDON PULLS OUT A CANNON||

||GESHA DID WANT HIM TO CHEAT MORE||

Underlord 18 ||Did we know Eithan's Iron Body before now?||

||I don't remember hearing Raindrop Iron Body before||

https://tenor.com/view/kingdom-hearts-axel-two-axel-two-kh-gif-13046226

[lilac vault]

Underlord 18 ||"Daji's body stopped. And a second later, his thoughts stopped. And darkness flooded the fault"
TIME FOR MERCY TO GO CRAZY||

Underlord 19 ||AND WE START WITH A REPORT ON MERCY LET'S GO||

||OOOOOOOH NO I WAS WRONG THAT WASN'T MERCY||

||THAT WAS M A L I C E||

||Man. Monarch's are busted, huh.||

||I knew they were, but it's not until now that I know just how much||

[lilac vault]

Underlord 20 ||Man why did the best person of the Seishen trio have to be the one to die lmao||

[safe knoll]

||sums up the world of cradle pretty well||

[lilac vault]

||That's one way to get all four of the MCs in the tournament. Just have Mercy be on a different team!||

||So that leaves Yerin, Lindon, and Eithan for the Blackflame team, of course||

||Nnnnnever mind, Lindon is out lmao||

||I'm gonna guess that the last Blackflame is probably Saeya then?||

||It would be neat getting more Saeya||

||But it could also be a curve ball, someone we don't know yet||

||OH LINDON IS COMPETING FOR THE AKURA'S||

||LINDON VS YERIN INCOMING, LET'S GO||

[lilac vault]

Underlord epilogue ||Ohhhhhh dear, Ozriel has started destroying worlds?||

||Yep, I was right. Saeya is the last one for Blackflame.||

||A MONARCH REMNANT?!||

||EVEN THE REMNANT OF A MONARCH HAS THE SAME POWER AS A LIVING MONARCH?!||

||SHE HAS HER OWN TERRITORY?!||

[humble bluff]

Underlord ||Just remembered Eithan's "how old did you think I was? I'm 35" so silly and unnecessary of him lol||

[lilac vault]

||Northstrider is going to the Beast King to find someone for the tournament. That's gotta be Ziel. No way it's not.||

[humble bluff]

||Anyway hype for the tournament arc coming soon 👀||

[lilac vault]

34

[humble bluff]

Close enough

[lilac vault]

||THE ARELIUS HAD A MONARCH AND THEY LOST THEM?!||

||DID EITHAN KILL THEM LMAO||

||Yes this is my immediate thought||

||If anyone could kill a Monarch, it's Eithan||

||KELSA||

||wE'RE BACK IN SACRED VALLEY||

||Either Jai Long or Lindon is gonna come in at the end of this. I'm thinking it's probably Lindon.||

||It would be poetic for Jai Long to save Lindon's sister like Lindon saved his, but it would also be one heck of a way to end a book, having Lindon finally return home||

||OH NO, ORTHOS SHOWED UP TO HELP HER||

And done
Peak fiction

LMFAO what the hell is this bit

[inner loom]

It’s a reference to many passionate arguments on Reddit

[lilac vault]

Ah I see lmao

||Charity and Miera?||

Oh

Uncrowned doesn't have art in the front pages

[opal wadi]

Soulsmith
||It's mentioned back in Soulsmith when Lindon gets his iron body, Yerin mentions that hers was being submerged in a pool of a burning liquid and breathing with a straw for 3 days and Eithan says he had to dodge raindrops to hit bells and stuff like that, and they look at him weird and he says something like "Not all iron bodies have to be painful to get"||

[hollow ferry]

Ghostwater 12 || I did not hit her, I did not. Oh hi(gh) gold ||

[opal wadi]

||I find it hilarious how Lindon was trapped in basically the sacred arts equivalent of a fully equipped Gym, with steroids and everything||

[hollow ferry]

|| Lmfao yeah. And he killed a freaking true gold dragon. Yerin is going to be in for one hell of a surprise when she reunites with Lindin, especially if he makes it to true gold before then like I suspect will happen ||

[opal wadi]

Starting Reaper with a friend

Peak time

[safe knoll]

How did they react to the ending of Bloodline?

[opal wadi]

Screaming and coping

a lot of coping

he was so hyped up

Bloodline
||"Dross is fine right? he can come back, just feed him more dreams and all, he's going to come back stronger from feeding on a Dreadgod, he's coming back for sure."||

[safe knoll]

Reaper and Dreadgod will be interesting then

[hollow ferry]

Ghostwater 12 || Lindin really has a knack for finding people with knowledge or advancement far beyond his own who are willing to help him out ||

[safe knoll]

||mysterious benefactor is a very common trope in cultivation novels||

[hollow ferry]

Ahh lol

[safe knoll]

||in settings closer to original xianxia, the reasons why that happens even in extremely cruel and violent settings are karma (which is often a real force) and that teaching someone young your techniques gives a new perspective on them, granting insight and enlightenment. obviously different in Cradle, but that's the origin of the trope ||

[hollow ferry]

Ghostwater 13 || Dang. Eithan OP. And he’s not even OP yet ||

[hollow ferry]

Same tags || And before we know it, Lindin will likely have surpassed him. Nutty ||

[thick bay]

One of my friends started talking about a popular book series that they really hated, and all I was thinking/saying was Don't be Cradle don't be Cradle..

😮‍💨 It wasn't Cradle.

[hollow ferry]

Ghostwater 17 + mistborn || Just some casual ghostwA(I)tium ||

Ghostwater 17 || Oh wow that was just a report lol. “Now just go do that. You probably will not die, I think” ||

[opal wadi]

https://tenor.com/view/goku-dragon-ball-gif-4685554128794268208

[hollow ferry]

Ghostwater 18 || No ||

Ghostwater all || Fun one. Lindin and Yerin are so into each other it’s hilarious, particularly with mercy just tagging along. Lindin and Yerin both hitting true gold. Dragons be mad. Wight does a really good job with the pacing of the raising of stakes I feel. 5 short books in and we’ve gone from beating up children as an unsouled to making enemies of underlords as a true gold with an AI tacked onto the soul ||

[thick bay]

It ended up being The Primal Hunter.

[safe knoll]

I vibe with your friend right now. We don't like Primal Hunter in my house

[lilac vault]

https://tenor.com/view/xenoblade-chronicles-defnitive-adition-shulk-monado-gif-22472684

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned prologue ||Ohhh Sacred Valley literally drains power||

Typo discovered

[violet apex]

||cycling… er … madra||

[golden void]

||she's British, innit? Cyclin' 'er madra||

[opal wadi]

British dub of Cradle

London

That's the whole joke

[robust estuary]

||She does say "Oy!"...||

[opal wadi]

||I just realized, Lindon does mention Yerin has a strange accent...||

||Oh my god Yerin was British all along! The swords! it makes sense now||

[robust estuary]

||I'll add it to the pile of Cradle art to comission...||

[opal wadi]

going over the series again with my friend has given me so many ideas

[humble bluff]

||I've been saying yerin has a welsh accent, like nia xenoblade :P||

[robust estuary]

Cradle general ||You know, british Yerin never sounded right to me as much as I loved the gag, but welsh Yerin does actually sound more fitting than the generic U.S. accent I typically imagine characters with||

[humble bluff]

Cradle general, xenoblade 2 general ||Like I could totally imagine nia saying "you cracked in the head?" to zeke/shellhead||

[lilac vault]

https://tenor.com/view/nia-xenoblade2-xenoblade-gif-20718210

[hollow ferry]

Underlord 3 || Mention of uncrowned king tournament. I guess we know exactly what the next book will be then. And what this one will be. Probably. (Advance to Underlord here. Then participate in tournament next book) ||

[hollow ferry]

Underlord 3 || “Byro, shut up. Just… shut up” Also the absolute bliss of Naru Grey when making the deal with Eithan to keep Eithan away from him ||

[zenith kayak]

||Allow me to curse you with more spellings: Bai Rou and Naru Gwei||

[hollow ferry]

|| I’m absolutely killing it between Cradle and WoTM these last few weeks ||

[spice socket]

oh good someone else gets to have the same spelling revelations i had to have

smfh

[opal wadi]

Everyone gets those

[acoustic echo]

When will does his big sales do the audiobooks usually go on sale too?

I’ve been thinking of re reading but I’d honestly prefer audio right now….

[golden void]

when a new book releases

[zenith kayak]

Missing capitalization strikes again!

I wanna say probably, but audiobooks in general are expensive to make...

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 1 ||Hmm. I'm probably overthinking things, but it's very strange to me that Eithan and Mercy both left their families, losing access to their resources, before joining the Skysworn and then ultimately being forced by circumstance to come back to their family||

||Is there a connection there? Almost certainly not but it feels strangely specific||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 2 ||Why is my immediate thought that Pride hates Lindon because he thinks he's dating his sister, and he's being an overprotective brother lmao||

[hollow ferry]

Underlord 6 || Eithan is so fun lol. Basically telling Yerin which path to pick for the blood shadow and she’s like how has nobody killed you yet ||

Underlord 7 || Surprising Eithan with Dross ||

[robust estuary]

||Alternate theory: He's being a tsundere||

[lilac vault]

||Nah they just met and he instantly decided that he hated Lindon||

||That's too sudden for tsundere.||

||I think it's that he saw Mercy grab Lindon's hand and went "NOT MY SISTER YOU RAT BASTARD"||

Wait

I am confused

||I thought that Fury was Mercy and Pride's brother. Because Fury is Charity's father, and biologically, Charity is Mercy and Pride's niece, even if they call her aunt. So why did Pride call him Uncle Fury? Have I made a mistake somewhere in this family tree? Is Fury not Charity's father, and Fury is actually Malice's brother?||

Yeah I'm right, I checked, ||Charity called him Father||

||So why does Pride call him Uncle Fury? Mercy said that she called Charity her aunt because it would be awkward having a woman 150 years older than her call HER aunt, but I don't think the same logic would apply to her brother.||

||So unless Fury is ALSO their nephew, and Charity is actually their great-niece, I am confused||

I imagine there's gonna be a lot of this

[zenith kayak]

||Nah, it's for basically the exact same reason. They may be half-siblings, but the age gap is so big, it feels wrong to call him brother. Uncle fits just fine though.||

[lilac vault]

I see

||I figured that calling him older brother would feel a lot less weird, but I guess not||

Uncrowned 2 ||I am really loving this bit where Lindon just takes as much as he can take if he's given the chance. It feels like it's gotten more prevelant recently and it's really funny||

||I wonder if Little Blue will grow to be able to speak||

[dreamy sorrel]

Uncrowned 2: ||Alternate alternate theory: he's into his sister. Which I seriously hope not. That's real messed up. But could make sense for royalty...||

[lilac vault]

||Ehhh I doubt it. I mean, we do already know that there is some family marriage to some extent (since Mercy and Harmony were engaged), but iirc that was pretty far out the line, and I don't think that Cradle will delve into things like that||

[jade notch]

Underlord 12 explains this ||Mercy looked to Charity. Her 'aunt' was actually her grand-niece, but the Sage was so much older that she had always referred to Mercy as a niece. Mercy felt more comfortable with this arrangement. It would have been too strange to have a woman a hundred and fifty years older than her call her 'Aunt Mercy.'||

[lilac vault]

||Oh she DID say grand-niece||

||So Fury isn't Malice's son then?||

||He's Malice's grandson?||

[jade notch]

||Fury is Malice's son, Charity is Malice's grand daughter||

[lilac vault]

🤔

[jade notch]

||Mercy is Malice's daughter||

[lilac vault]

||But Charity called him father||

||She said "Father will be here soon to test you"||

[jade notch]

||Yes, Charity is Fury's daughter, and Malice's grand daughter?||

Spoiler tags, too

[lilac vault]

||But then Charity wouldn't be grand-niece|| Uncrowned 2

I knew this was gonna happen lmao, I knew this was gonna confuse me a lot

||Damn family trees!||

[opal wadi]

they use different titles to make it simpler for themselves

[lilac vault]

Yeah I get that part

[jade notch]

Oddly, there's not a graphic of their family tree

[lilac vault]

||Now I'm trying to figure out why Mercy called Charity her grand-niece if Fury is her brother||

[jade notch]

Hold on

I need to get kiddo to sleep heh

[lilac vault]

||Because Charity would be just her niece. If she's her grand-niece, that implies that Fury is her nephew||

[dreamy sorrel]

Uncrowned 2: ||Where was Charity referred to as Mercy's grand-niece?||

[lilac vault]

R'Shara quoted it above

It's in Underlord 12

I just checked myself and it does indeed say that

[robust estuary]

Uncrowned 2 ||Probably just a mistake on Will's part||

[lilac vault]

I'm gon- yeah

I was gonna say I'm gonna just figure this was a goof

Like maybe ||he planned for Fury to be Malice's grandson, but then he started writing Uncrowned and said "No he's her son" and just never fixed it in Underlord||

||Because as far as I recall, they didn't say that Fury was Mercy's brother before this point||

||tbh they still havent technically said it but the point stands||

||Are there any middle children between Fury and Mercy? Or did Malice take a break and just decided to start randomly having children again after almost 200 years||

||also i have but to wonder why she bothered having pride if she already got her successor in mercy||

[zenith kayak]

Actually, no, not RAFO, you've already passed the relevant text

[lilac vault]

||I guess they're close enough in age that maybe she had Pride before Mercy showed her talent||

[zenith kayak]

Underlord 19 ||Mercy has 108 siblings that have been labeled failures, and lost or failed to gain acknowledgement||

[jade notch]

Many many

[lilac vault]

Ahh right

They did mention that

There was a lot mentioned in that chapter lmao

No wonder some if it slipped through the cracks

[dreamy sorrel]

||It's possible Malice had other kids. The non-traditional names like Mercy, Malice, Fury are part of the direct lineage||

[zenith kayak]

||With an unmentioned number that are acknowledged, but aren't important to the story||

[lilac vault]

||It's very funny to me how so far, half of the Akura's are perfectly in line with their names (Mercy, Pride, Charity), and the other half are completely different (Harmony, Fury). I haven't seen enough of Malice yet to decide if she fits her namesake yet, I could see it going either way. She was very kind to Mercy but that's because she's Mercy, we haven't seen her interact with anyone else yet||

[zenith kayak]

||Fury's just Fury because Malice's lawyer said she couldn't name him Akura Goku||

[lilac vault]

I assume there's a joke here that I don't yet get

||Because I don't know Fury well enough yet||

[dreamy sorrel]

Uncrowned 2: ||You've seen enough of Malice to know of her name fits. As for Harmony, he's part of a distant branch of the family, and if you squint he kind of fits. He was searching for harmony within himself, not seeking to create harmony in the world||

Threshold/Uncrowned all: ||So something's been confusing me about the Uncrowned King Tournament. It's supposed to happen every 10 years, but we're on the 18th. Shen participated in the first, and the only Monarchs were Emriss and Sesh. So did 6 people become Monarch in 180 years, was the Uncrowned King Tournament not on a regular schedule, or did Will get the timeline mixed up?||

[zenith kayak]

Cradle all, Threshold all ||Probably a little of both two and 3; the Blackflame Emperor is 55 (iirc) and the second Naru head, but iirc it's implied it outright stated that the human Blackflames rose to power because of the Dreadgod war (which is also why the tournament started). 180 would also be like halfway through Orthos' life, and he is very surprised by the behavior of an actual black dragon.||

[zenith kayak]

||I think somewhere there's a throwaway like about how the Monarchs throw an Uncrowned tournament when they feel the world will need new rising stars||

[jade notch]

||It's not every 10 years, it's whenever the Monarchs think it's a good idea||

Underlord 3 ||“When they feel the time is right, the great Monarch clans hold a tournament for their students, measuring their star disciples against one another to demonstrate their strength. It is in this way that those of the young generation can test themselves and grow against equal opponents.||