Willverse

[jade notch]

||Yeah Charity should be Mercy's niece, not grand-niece. I think it's a typo. He might have accidentally gotten Charity and Harmony mixed up, because Harmony was Charity's grand-nephew for reals||

[dreamy sorrel]

Underlord 3: ||New question then, why are we having a new tournament so close to the last one? Mercy remembers the previous one. What happened 10-ish years ago?||

[safe knoll]

uncrowned 2 ||because Pride went ballistic after he saw how comfortable Mercy was around Lindon and Lindon called him "brother." (Which is a traditional form of address to peers in his part of the world.) He thought Lindon was exploiting Mercy's affection to worm his way into the family||

[lilac vault]

||Well this tournament is being had because of the Dreadgods||

[safe knoll]

||Because Makiel accelerated Fate with the Phoenix and all that||

[lilac vault]

||Presumably the last tournament, the Monarchs were just like "Well it's been a while, let's do it now"||

||But now it's out of genuine necessity||

[jade notch]

The books don't say. ||The Monarchs are all pretty damn arbitrary so it could literally be anything||

[zenith fossil]

When commander

[jade notch]

Why Commander

[zenith fossil]

Because I want it

[jade notch]

https://tenor.com/view/the-joke-superman-flying-missing-the-joke-not-getting-the-joke-gif-16558902

[spice socket]

WHO commander

[coral hatch]

Well that one we know

It is, of course, (TLH all) ||Lemon. Shyrax is just keeping the yellow seat warm||

[spice socket]

Truth

https://tenor.com/view/every-villain-is-kemons-spongebob-evil-gif-12070077

[thick bay]

||One of my favorite parts of this book.||

[hollow ferry]

Updates for Underlord will be paused for the next week or so probably

[thick bay]

No more reactions? I will be holding my rerecations accordingly.

[opal wadi]

The dragon awaits

[hollow ferry]

Underlord is paused to knock out Strength of the Few. It’ll continue after

[lilac vault]

Oh I get it now

Lmao

[coral hatch]

Hey so

TLH up until the end of Knight + tangential Reaper plot/cradle until reaper ||I'm not sure if pilot deals with this, but am I breaking anything that's been stated if I think the thing the Aether is warning about, the reason the devices are waking up, etc is the vroshir invasion?||

(I'm rereading tlh before sinking into pilot)

WAIT

Crem

[zenith kayak]

||This is a popular (and decently likely) theory. We don't know when TLH is on the theoretical Abidan Timeline, but the Vroshir invasion is the sort of thing you'd expect to hear whispers of. Also, mark for Cradle.||

[coral hatch]

I'd forgotten to tag the second part

[coral hatch]

Yeah that

You guys are the only willverse fans I interact with so I rarely see any theories lol

[zenith kayak]

Oh, same, I mean popular here

[coral hatch]

||it's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that fits the sheer SCALE varic fears||

[zenith kayak]

TLH through to Knight, Cradle ||Of course, I think it's more fun if it's the Aether preparing for the creation of the Eightfold archmage, when Varic dies at the end of the second last book and wakes up back in the chair, staring at one more blinking light than last time||

[spice socket]

|| why stop at 8||

|| the nonagon archmage||

[zenith kayak]

||Mostly because there were only 7 lights to light up||

[coral hatch]

Willverse all ||I do think Will won't be able to help himself and he'll try to write a Portals moment with varic and the reapers. Or at least an Avengers Initiative moment. He likes references too much||

[spice socket]

||the dodecamage||

[violet apex]

TLH + Cradle ||this is a popular theory, but personally I don’t like it. It would kinda be lame imo if the ultimate threat is just something that we’ve already seen dealt with in another series. Plus, the actions of the Abidan and Vroshir shouldn’t be predictable to anyone other than them, as we saw when the Mad King’s arrival suddenly threw off all fate-reading on Cradle||

[coral hatch]

See I agree but I think there's a main difference

||We're not dealing with divination, which seems to work similar to cradle's, we're talking about literally The Force, a fundamental magic that I am still not convinced it's not a manifestation of The Way||

[robust estuary]

||Personally, I think that it can work if the crew is dealing with much more local matters than was depicted in cradle, more disaster relief than a big punch up. Plus, while the devices might not be waking up in reaction to the battle itself, Fate was sped up across most/all Iterations hasten recruitment, not just on Cradle||

[coral hatch]

TLH/Cradle ||That said, I do agree it'd be a bit lame since we know how it ends. I just feel it's the only thing that's not wholly outside of context (for us as readers) that would fit the theme of dread Varic feels about the whole affaire with the Aether basically preparing a Hero Dream Team (or at the very least calling all the possible heroes of legend available)||

[robust estuary]

||Totally open to it being something else though, yeah||

[coral hatch]

Actually, yeah thinking of that that may have to do too

[safe knoll]

LH + Cradle all ||I have faith in Will to pull it off. He earned it with Reaper and E=O, imo||

[thick bay]

Willverse all ||I am trying to remember, but are the Vroshir supposed to actually come from a different iteration?||

[robust estuary]

||Vroshir is a general term for non-Abidan individuals that have ascended are messing around outside their own Iteration||

||That said, we do see individual Vroshir in that fight that we very specifically know are from other Iterations (the Mad Kind and... the Angler iirc is her name? the one who stole all of the prototype knockoff scythes Makiel was working on and sold them to the Mad King)||

Willeverse all ||Huh. I just realized, Valin was totally a Vroshir, technically...||

[thick bay]

Willverse all ||My personal theory is VV becomes the next Hound. And that is why it ends up being important.

The Hound's job is basically seeing into the past/future and using it to see what will happen... VV has been basically been doing that with all of his past lives. Fighting 'deviations'. And Curse magic is even somehow thematically tied to fate magic. ||

[fresh pivot]

willverse all ||I've been kind of really into the idea that what Cradle was all about was justifying and validating Ozriel's perspective, and the way to not just make him "right" and to really show how he can be so frustrating to other similar paragons across the Cosmos, is to show someone ascending to Makiel's point of view||

willverse all ||in that sense, I don't VV to be a Reaper, I want him to be a Hound, but like, not just a Hound we go, "look at this sucker, he's not really as good as a Reaper" but rather, "damn, he's kinda amazing and he's got a real point, and we saw why he's right too"||

[robust estuary]

||On the one hand, I kinda want more stories like TG, where the characters are allowed to not be such huge badasses they overturn multiversal standards and ascend to the highest tiers of power in all of existance, but on the other hand, I really like that parallel||

[thick bay]

||I don't think this will happen at the end of the series, but something that happens over time.||

[robust estuary]

||Oh for sure, but I still like it when protagonists are allowed to not be The Most Specialest Person Ever, especially when the last guy was already The Most Specialest Person Ever in his homeworld||

||The counterargument there, of course, is The Most Specialest People Ever do tend to have interesting stories aurrounding how they got to the top||

[thick bay]

Willverse all ||Lindon or Ozzy? ||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 6 ||Is Fury or Charity stronger? I was under the impression that Sage was just a step below Monarch, but Charity keeps calling herself an Under Lady||

[zenith kayak]

||Is Charity calling herself an Underlady, or Mercy?||

[lilac vault]

Oh whoops my mistake

||Not Underlady||

||Archlady||

||I still thought Sage was past that point, but is it not?||

[zenith kayak]

||Things get interesting, those are good questions to be asking, RAFO||

||(WW doesn't lay out the top of the advancement tree for a surprisingly long time. It isn't like a big secret or anything, but you'll know the lay of the land in a book or two.)||

[thick bay]

||(when I was reading and doing my reactions, it was fun trying to do advancement orders. 😂)||

[safe knoll]

reaper all ||I never really focused on it before, but Elder Whisper might actually be older than Li Markuth.||

[opal wadi]

Reaper All
||I don't think we have an answer from Will on how old he is, but he is a founder of the Wei clan and the text implies he's at least a couple hundred years old, with hyperbole up to two thousand (from that "100 generations" text from Unsouled) I like to think he was there when the Soulsmiths from the labyrinth abandoned it and populated Sacred Valley, as Lindon later learns that some of those Soulsmiths were his ancestors||

||Li Markuth sounds like he could actually be from that same era, since he's Li clan BUT he knows about the Dreadgods and was strong enough to ascend, maybe a bunch of the researches ascended too and he was just bad enough to want to return to rule the valley||

[safe knoll]

reaper all ||iirc, Whisper mentioned being there when the suppression field was first put in place. That was about the same time the Dreadgods were created.||

||he didn't know about the time before Dreadgods, though. Hmmmm||

[opal wadi]

This has opened a can of worms I had forgotten for a while
Reaper all
||The Wei Clan deals in Dreams, the Kazan in stone, we don't know what the Li clan does but they do live close to the Dragon River, 3 clans that correlate to 3 Dreadgods, with a fourth Blood clan missing, my bet is that each clan descends from the group that worked on each Dreadgod and then passed down what they learned from their experiments as the foundation of their clans||

[opal wadi]

||Maybe he was just the intern that brought coffee to the real reserachers||

[safe knoll]

||my first thought was that he was just a cub at the time. Sacred beasts both live longer and age more slowly. But he'd have to get some sort of lifeline extension to get Archlord level longevity before the suppression field was put in place ||

||I can see a Ghostwater situation going on at the time, with the most advanced experts and refiners working on a generational problem, they'd consider lesser artifacts and materials trash if they didn't contribute to the solution. So there are ways it could've happened but we just know to little =( ||

[thick bay]

Reaper ||I have a feeling that Mr Whisper was next in line to get Dreadgod dead but might have tricked people into not to or things went bad before they got the chance to test him.||

[safe knoll]

reaper all ||I don't see him being even considered. He was only a Truegold ||

[coral hatch]

WAIT A MINUTE

Cradle ALL and TLH until Knight ||The blue Titan, as part of its weird better powers, has a weapon that releases nine blue flying swords keyed to water that autonomously attack enemies. Lindon creates a weapon that's nine blue? flying swords keyed to the weeping dragon which iirc includes water||

Is there something here

I feel there's something here but I have no idea what

[fresh pivot]

there is probably something to it

||in the sense that many concepts seem to be so deeply embedded in the Way that they tend to find expressions in different ways in different iterations||

||for example, Karoshans seem like they're their own sci-fi race in Fathom, but really they're just Fathom dragons||

||that's likely because the dragon icon is just a thing that is deeply embedded into the Way||

||so when Lindon is touching the Dragon Icon on Cradle, he's touching on just the cradle representation of some deep Dragon concept that already exists in the Way; in Fathom instead of a Dragon Icon, it's found its expression through the Karoshans and their significance in the Aether||

[zenith escarp]

Convergent evolution reinforced by fate sounds kind of funny. ||Where is the Crab icon.||

[fresh pivot]

||so in that sense, if the nine-pointed Wavedancer was built from the corpse of the Weeping Dragon, it might just be touching on some multiversal rules of the Dragon Icon and its interaction with the Water Icon, that was similarly touched upon by the Aether Technician that built the Blue Titan||

that, or it's just Will being cheeky

[inner loom]

|| I agree with all of this 100%, but also Fathom has actual normal dragons not just Karoshans. Solar dragons are what infected Raion's titan. They are also so valuable that the Angler, who literally trades in judge level weapons, was willing to dive into Fathom while the Judges were fighting the Mad King + Vroshir + Class 1 fiends there, just to get one. Feel like that's something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. ||

[coral hatch]

I briefly considered (Cradle ALL, TLH until end of Knight at least) ||that since we don't know the timeline, and the Titans are repeatedly said to be absolutely beyond anything else, maybe TLH as a whole is post-Cradle (Invasion maybe fixed by Suriel like most of the Valley in Unsouled, for example) and they're based on some messing of The Way and the fact one Titan has a nine-sword water array, and another is basically "makes your sword sword-er" may be a wink. Hell, this is a much bigger stretch, but overwhelming power of Green == Ziel could also fit... Yellow is a support iirc which almost fits Eithan? White loses me entirely tho, but this was a fun exercise||

(Safely ignorable I lose my own point halfway through)

[coral hatch]

reread over. Pilot time

(Pilot prologue + C1 ||Ah joy we already begin deeply [expeletive removed]||

[opal wadi]

Finished Reaper with my friend

or maybe the book finished us

https://youtu.be/s52ShGmBK-k

Live reaction at us reaching THE MOMENT

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/absolute-cinema-raccoon-absolute-cinema-gif-17862327649353748812

[coral hatch]

Hmm I've been wondering

Willverse all ||I can't remember the exact details rn, was hunger madra native to cradle and the labyrinth just a way to try to harness and understand it, or did they MAKE it? And if the former, I wonder if that'll be the threat for the last book, an equivalent in Fathom of hunger madra born of so much Authority concentrated in the form of all devices on||

[robust estuary]

||iirc, the Labyrinth was just studying Hunger Madra/Aura||

[coral hatch]

Hmm so my idle wondering still holds some water

[safe knoll]

willverse all ||hunger madra and aura existed before they were trapped in the labyrinth. the remnant fridge Ozmanthus made from the freaky bone was hunger aspected||

[coral hatch]

Ok so (willverse all) ||since it's said the whole issue was born off monarchs that got too powerful and stayed and it made things worse, I do wonder if the concentration of authority from all zenith devices will cause some BIG issues for the last book||

[golden void]

Willverse All ||To be clear, Madra and Aura of all kinds are unique to Cradle||

||The story we're presented is that Hunger A/M was functionally non existent before the Monarchs started hanging around, and is a reaction to their Hunger for power and control.||

[coral hatch]

Yeah, what I'm wondering is (willverse all) ||if every Iteration would get a similar destructive power tied to too much power/Authority being active in the world at the same time without ascending. In Fathom it'd take another form, but my question is if the same "issue" arises in any Iteration where too much power is concentrated||

It's probably not it, but I do wonder

[golden void]

||what's the relative power level of the zenith devices compared to monarchs?||

[robust estuary]

||Oh that's always a fun question to consider||

[coral hatch]

||Unsure, but as Cradle is considered particularly powerful I'm not sure if it matters - but within Fathom, some cataclysmic event caused the Zenith Devices to get failsafes added against cooperation, and since then they've been almost entirely dormant, with one being a staggering historical find, two being infinitesimal odds, and 3+ being considered impossible. So my wondering stems from relative power to the rest of the Iteration||

[robust estuary]

||Cause like, the whole Iteration couldn't handle Lindon at his peak... but like, that's probably also true of the Monarchs as well, isn't it? After Ascending?||

[coral hatch]

||Varic broke the rules of the Iteration and is 7x the power a normal peak mage is. And he's involved with the pinnacle of magitech in the whole iteration (twofold if you consider the TKs, albeit I'm not sure of their status post Knight, only just started Pilot), so if ANYTHING will trip up the relative power of the iteration, it's them||

[zenith kayak]

Willverse all ||Oh no, the Zenith Devices are basically the 8ME again aren't they...||

[golden void]

aww, the Abidan Archive (aka Palanaeum) is having issues, so we can't look any of this up

[coral hatch]

Yeah been for a few months

They seem to have messed with the security certs

[golden void]

Willverse All ||I think Fathom and Cradle are roughly comparable in terms of "souls tying them to The Way"||

they're in the middle of switching to a new domain/host or something. Apparently the previous hoster has fallen out of the fandom or something (or just got busy)

[golden void]

||If they were the 8ME, there's no problem for the iteration||

||Could still be big problems for everyone else when there's no Sage/Herald weightclass equivalent||

[zenith kayak]

||There's no Hunger problem, but there's still a "There's only one Monarch-class threat wandering around" problem||

[coral hatch]

Anyways, in case it's not clear, I've been thinking about that last book a lot lmao

[zenith kayak]

Willverse all, Rampant Speculation ||Hmm, 8ME, but 7 Zenith devices... Calling it now, the final book will end with Varic (after becoming the eightfold archmage) binding his soul to an artifact created by the combined skill and might of his crew to create the 8th Zenith Device||

||Inadvertantly introducing Hunger Aether to Fathom thanks to his Curse aspect||

[coral hatch]

Oh my

No no go back I liked that

[zenith kayak]

Fine...

[violet apex]

Cradle + TLH ||this is really good speculation. But it doesn’t answer the question of why the Zenith Devices are all waking up now, since them waking up is what causes this threat. So the real question is: what threat is worth the risk of unleashing Hunger?||

[golden void]

||timey whimey wibbly wobbly||

... I have to go check something

That reference is 18 years old

[zenith kayak]

||Well you see, Will is Cooking, so it's only right for the Universe to be Hungry||

Willverse all ||If I'm going to put a little more thought into why the Aether might want to introduce a Hunger aspect... It could be for a power-level reset. Wherever Varic and gang go, they bring death and destruction and remove a top-tier threat. As seen in Cradle, controlled Hunger is very good at consolidating power and eliminating threats.||

[dreamy sorrel]

https://tenor.com/view/no-tako-stream-cheesey-is-awesome-gif-8445418027873538537

[dreamy sorrel]

Willverse all: ||Similar vein to an idea I had, except I went the route of making the Zenith Devices to the Abidan judges, meaning the 8th would be connected to the Reaper||

[opal wadi]

Willverse all
||They do have a fragment of the D'niss queen that had immense Death authority...||

[dreamy sorrel]

Willverse all: ||I need to revisit the idea now that we have more info on the Zenith Devices||

[opal wadi]

The Commander can't come soon enough

[coral hatch]

No. It can't

[opal wadi]

Come on Will I'm already on Dreadgod with my friend, soon we will end Cradle and start Last Horizon

we're gonna run out of content

Going back to theorycrafting

[coral hatch]

....Huh

Wait a minute

I just thought of a parallel I don't like

Willverse all ||Dark-skinned man, incredibly good at tracking possibilities, with a penchant for eye motifs... Surely not, no? Surely Varic isn't...||

Will I need a timeline. WILL

[opal wadi]

If Will makes timelines how he makes maps then...

[zenith kayak]

Cradle all ||There are 4 times that exist, 3 of them get visited, and only 2 of them really matter||

[coral hatch]

Last Horizon ||Pretty much Varic's past lives, zing!||

[thick bay]

||I still dispute this.||

[thick bay]

||In another series there is one that has similar issues but not the exact same.||

[robust estuary]

Wintersteel all ||God, there's two people coming up on My Favorite Part of the series and I am just melting with anticipation... Honestly surprised there hasn't been much Ruby discussion with this new set of liveblogs, that feels modestly consistent||

[thick bay]

Willverse all ||Tbh Ruby didn't last long enough. :(||

[robust estuary]

||Oh 100%, but she's still my favorite||

[lilac vault]

Up to Uncrowned + ReZero Arc 6 ||I can't wait for the Sword Sage to come back in a weird puppet body, call himself "Stick Swinger", and proceed to sit in a room with a stick and beat up anyone who comes in.||

||I am convinced that when we learn this mans personality, he's just gonna be Reid Astraea||

[lilac vault]

||Minus the womanizing||

[opal wadi]

||I'd like you to know that my friend was screaming when Lindon broke her heart, he was devastated, he loved Ruby from the moment she started showing up||

[robust estuary]

||Kindred souls...||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 8 ||I wonder why Suriel showed those specific Monarchs to Lindon, or if she just did it at random. Like why didn't she show him Malice or Sesh?||

||Oh also, another question. Is Reigan Shen the Beast King? Or is the Beast King not a Monarch at the tournament?||

[robust estuary]

||That should be cleared up soon, but I can answer now if you'd like||

[safe knoll]

||Wasn't it mentioned in the end of Underlord? A scene where each faction chooses their recruits?||

[robust estuary]

||I don't think so. At the very least, I don't remember a scene like that existing for anyone besides the Blackflame Empire team and specifically Lindon for the Akura team||

[safe knoll]

||There is. It's the final information request of Underlord, in the epilogue||

||Correction, second to last info request.The last is Orthos in SV||

Underlord all ||Northstrider walks the boundary between Akura territory and that of the dragons. He has no family and leads no sect. He is the Monarch of unbound sacred artists, those with no master or home. He goes into the Wasteland, where he seeks out the Beast King. The Herald might have an eligible student who can bring honor to the name of Northstrider.||

[lilac vault]

Ohhhhh

||I just sorta assumed he was a Monarch cuz he was holding against the dragons lmao ||

||I'm impressed a Herald faction can hold against a Monarch faction||

||I guess that explains why the Beast King isn't applying anyone into the tournament himself||

Uncrowned 8 ||wtf do you mean Charity has an identical sword to Yerin's?????||

[safe knoll]

||Not Charity||

[lilac vault]

||Oh the Winter Sage||

||I'm still at the point where I read Sage and think "Oh it's Charity"||

||Still, wtf||

[safe knoll]

Uncrowned up to 8 ||I mean, her master almost married her, so||

[lilac vault]

Wha

When was this established?!

[safe knoll]

in chapter 3

uc ch3 ||“...the Frozen Blade school?” Yerin’s eyes flicked to the Sage's sword against the wall. “They're going to be there?” “They're one of the larger vassal factions under the Akura clan, so I imagine they will be.” “So the Winter Sage will be too, then.” He peered into her eyes and for some reason grew more excited. “You know the Sage of the Frozen Blade, don't you?” “Like an arrow that missed my neck,” Yerin muttered. “My master almost married her.”||

[lilac vault]

Ohhhh right

[lilac vault]

Ohhhh I know why I was confused

||Because I thought that the pact of Ghostwater was started by the Monarchs||

||It wasn't, it was started by the Heralds||

||So it wasn't Malice who established it, it was Fury||

||Luminous Queen Sha Leiala???||

||Not Sha Miara?||

||Oh good I'm not the only one confused||

[opal wadi]

||The wasteland is full of freaks and monsters, we don't hear much about it but it's a place of very high Aura and thus very strong people, the heralds and sages and Archlords there are strong enough to keep other factions at bay||

[coral hatch]

Willverse all || “From everything we can tell, its nature is extradimensional.”

Yeah honestly I don't see it not being the vroshir and I hope it's at least done well||

Oh also I have a crack theory. The Pilot+ wild theory ||An alchemist is gonna save varic's sorry behind. He won't be happy||

[coral hatch]

Willverse all ||I think Subspace is skimming the Void so the threat from beyond Subspace has to be either a Vroshir or a Fiend, not necessarily THE invasion but definitely AN invasion.

I think my personal theory is that the Zenith Era was/included the invasion we see in Cradle (which is why the devices had their memory wiped) and this is far in the future (with time being a bit flexible between Iterations). Part of me wonders if we'll get a Reapers cameo in the last book. Varric is repeatedly mentioned as being a completely off-the-rails mortal so I do wonder if he'll end up nudged to ascending, and if it's a Fiend, it coming with a swarm of underlings like the D'Niss, with Horizon fighting the soldiers or "dragon" while we get broken descriptions of Someone (one of our bois) fighting the main Fiend is the only way I can think of including the Reapers without trivializing TLH||

This is all a crackpot theory for post Pilot btw

In case someone doesn't like reading theories

[safe knoll]

willverse all ||it's a shame that abidan archive is down, but I believe we had a wob that DNiss are fiends||

[coral hatch]

Willverse all ||That's kind of what I was thinking, as per descriptions. So this new threat being a Fiender Fiend (tm)||

[safe knoll]

willverse all ||maybe the more obvious theory of vroshir+mk fight the court of 7 is the reason the zenith devices awakened, but we'll still have a few more books afterwards. like the last trilogy of cradle ||

[golden void]

||what do we know about what subspace does to beings/things with no shields?||

[dreamy sorrel]

TLH all: ||Not much yet. It's hypnotic and subspace madness is people going deeper into subspace. We will find out more in the next book because Mel saw subspace through Starhammer||

[zenith kayak]

Did you actually finish The Pilot yet Kensa?

[coral hatch]

TLH all ||If you look at it too much you start seeing Things and some say you can even hear your name being called. Main cause for casualties acording to Prism is people simply getting siren called and diverting course into ¿?, but everything is conjecture or unreliable narrator||

Yes Sharf, last night

Well

This morning, almost

That's not good

[thick bay]

Cradle all ||Small thought, when was the first mention of a Sage? I am pretty sure Yerin calls him one really early on but most book readers don't catch it.||

[zenith kayak]

Cradle all ||Probably book 1?||

[coral hatch]

cradle all ||I think Suriel introduces Yerin as apprentice to the Sage of the endless sword||

[zenith kayak]

(I checked)

[opal wadi]

||What did you think of Curse Magic and everything going catawampus FUBAR||

[coral hatch]

||It'll only be solved by Alchemy||

[thick bay]

||No, clearly an alchemist is the reason everything is wrong with the world.||

[coral hatch]

Also, The Pilot ALL ||Do we think this is a fakeout (which would suck IMO) and if not, who's taking the chair next?||

same tag ||All I hope is that it's not his daughter - that'd feel crummy IMO. Part of me thought Parryl as an excuse to bring her to the fold, but I just don't see it (also two greens? Horizon would never stand for it). We don't really know many accomplished pilots UNLESS Varic goes for his first choice and gets his pathfinding master. A completely new character would need to be HELLA cool at this point for me to be good with it||

[opal wadi]

We speculated about this a lot, I think it would come down to
||Omega's daughter having a really intense and well worked arc to work, Varric's student the luck girl (a Luck based pilot that makes impossible moves and acrobatics would go hard, and it would kind of counteract the curse magic) or hear me out here, Benri.||

[inner loom]

Pilot All + theory || I think Mariala. Her good luck magic could hopefully balance out the curse magic and redefines Horizon’s magic to be decide other people’s fate rather than make other people’s fate worse. Of course, she unqualified rookie but that just means there will be lasting consequences to the Horizon being cursed problem. Also she’s half aetheril, which is the only race not present on the crew and a part of the iteration’s lore that still needs to explored. ||

[opal wadi]

Pilot All/Commander Speculation
||Varric would hate it, everyone would hate it, but Benri could just be a secret ace pilot, there's not much difference between piloting a ship and having a company if you think about it, and I think he's pretty cool||

[robust estuary]

TLH all ||Is there still any love for the vision theory? I can't call myself a huge fan, but it has sorta grown on me||

[opal wadi]

||What vision theory? ||

[robust estuary]

||The idea that everything so far is part of Varic's vision from the very beginning of the series, and he's gonna wake up back at the ritual and have to speedrun everything he's done so far, including finding and recruiting the others||

[coral hatch]

Actually I see this. Same Tag ||I'd considered Mariala but I thought you'd need to be an actual accomplished pilot for Horizon to consider you, but her line about her deciding a curse and a blessing are two sides of the same coin does point to her counteracting Varic. Hell, I briefly wondered if she'd take White Titan (the other mage titan) so this isn't that big a stretch||

[opal wadi]

Last Horizon all
||I still think at one point they're going to weld and ducktape every artifact together into a universe splitting abomination||

||Weld every Zenith Artifact to Horizon, make Horizon COMBINE with the Blue and Red titans and encase connect it all to Sola's armor as the core, giving her a trillion upgrade points from every adventure Horizon has accomplished and thus creating the ultimate weapon||

[coral hatch]

I'm not gonna lie, Nick

Last Horizon all ||The only reason I'm not expecting a Titan megazord is that Will made fun of the idea in a blooper||

Also, willverse all ||I'm gonna scare you all for a second. Imagine Cradle's world spirit. That is all||

[opal wadi]

||That's not going to be beefy it's going to be a monster ||

[coral hatch]

Oh yeah, last horizon ALL ||We all know Will is trying really hard to not end the conflict vs world spirits with a Definitely-Not-Death-Star, right?||

[thick bay]

||I didn't like it either, I want it to be Fate girl.||

||Everyone agrees with me on fate girl ||

[opal wadi]

TLH All
||I'm the only one that likes Benri as a Pilot candidate||

[thick bay]

||Maybe if the commander job was open, not pilot.||

[lilac vault]

Man I love being able to experience essentially Olivier 2.0 in Eithan lmao

I love Olivier so much, and he's close enough

[thick bay]

Olivier?

[lilac vault]

From Trails

They're very similar characters

[thick bay]

Oh

Which trials?

[lilac vault]

Sky

It's where he's introduced

Though he's in a lot of games

||https://youtu.be/f5bsXjL33Nk?si=iBWSv0hXJt48aidu||

Here's a video of him

And I can see the Eithan

||He's cryptic and serious when alone but perfectly nonserious when another person arrives||

[thick bay]

||Nah, he's Kral obviously.||

I tried the remake but they turned it into an action game. I like the old one better.

[lilac vault]

||I assume you say that just cuz he plays off Mueller similar to how Kral plays off Jai Long?||

[lilac vault]

It's still turn based

It has a mix

[thick bay]

Sure...

[lilac vault]

You can enter turn based at any point

And all boss fights are turn based

[thick bay]

||Here he's getting va'd by Matthew Mercer, in the animatic MM VA Kral.||

[lilac vault]

Ahh

Fair

NOOOO

I FORGOT ABOUT THE APP UNTIL IT WAS TOO LAAATE

[robust estuary]

Oh yeah, i got to meet Will at at my local barnes and Noble back when I was in Florida, I don't think I ever mentioned that to you

He was nice! Talked to a few members of his team, too, while I was waiting, and I got the inside scoop on some kickstarter plans

[opal wadi]

The secrets of Monarchs...

[dreamy sorrel]

Wintersteel 20: ||Ruby with the "Would you still love me if I was a worm???" question||

[robust estuary]

(For clarity, since I realize I forgot to specify, this was for a signing. I got a hardcover copy of The Captain, and I've been kicking myself non-stop ever since for forgetting my copy of Threshold)

[jade notch]

I heard somewhere that he will often do a independent signing the night before a con?

[lilac vault]

I wouldn't be able to do it unfortunately

My job is at such an inconvenient time

So when I'd be able to go down Wednesday, I would either be late for work or I wouldn't be able to get home after I was done

Cuz I don't have a car, I take the train

[hallow heart]

my engineer re read, "6 or 7" was used twice in the last hour, yes i am brainrotted

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle ALL atomic: ||Something occurred to me on this latest relisten of Wintersteel. When Lindon forms his contract with Little Blue, his madra changes to being more cleansing, and Little Blue's touch has been described as cleansing many times. You know who else has cleansing madra? Eithan. And she got the scale from Eithan all the way back in Blackflame! Even all the way back then we were getting info about Ozriel||

[jade notch]

||Remember way back in Soulsmith where Eithan thinks, "A transparent bead less than an inch in diameter. Not glass, but a barrier of…Forged madra? If so, it was so stable it wouldn’t dissipate for a thousand years. And seamless enough that even *his *senses couldn’t penetrate. It had to be a product of someone at least on Eithan’s own level."||

[violet apex]

||not sure I’m seeing how this connects to Ozriel?||

[robust estuary]

||The purifying of his madra are more to do with the fact its pure than its his, and when we learn about the different natures of oure madra, I'm pretty sure Eithan mentions that Lindon's been bringing his in a different direction than Eithan has (though idr exactly who has what kind)||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 9 ||Wow, uh. Yerin and Eithan being stranded ended up being a lot less meaningful than I was expecting||

||I imagine the plot purpose behind that other than to remind us that Sophara is still very angry is to make it so that Lindon can't talk to or do anything with Yerin or Eithan before the tournament||

||The latter is probably the primary plot purpose tbh, cuz they could do the former easily in another way if they wanted to. Same with Yerin meeting the Winter Sage||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 9 ||Ahh I see, this explains things. Sha Miara became a Monarch at such a young age because her mother's power transferred to her, and I'm betting they don't want people to know that Sha Miara is the queen, so they're still using her mother's name in public||

||Oh dear, did Sha Miara ACTUALLY join the tournament, is Lindon recognizing her||

||Yep, Northstrider picked Ziel||

||YOOOOOOOOOOO NORTHSTRIDER MAKING HIS PUBLIC REAPPEARANCE||

Uncrowned 10 ||Ahh, and this is how we're gonna get balls to the wall fights. Northstrider will save the life of the contestants if things go too far. This is how we'll get fights without certain people holding back. I also expect that Northstrider will let somebody die at some point, since he says that none will die unless he allows it||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 11 ||I'm surprised Sha Miara isn't in first. I figured she would either be first or in the middle, either dominating entirely or being hidden by the Court||

||Eithan jumping around at the bottom on purpose is so very Eithan||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 13 ||I just realized something. Sophara and the Gold Dragons are hypocrites||

||They're angry that Ekeri was killed by Lindon and they want revenge, mostly understandable except for the fact that their Monarch went through the opposite and that created his entire ideology. His brother killed someone, was punished for it, and he swore bloody death on humanity for it, wanting the strong to reign supreme and not need to coddle the weak.||

||And they all expressly believe in his ideology||

[thick bay]

||Tbh this is like 90% of the sacred artist on Cradle. ||

[lilac vault]

||Might makes right, unless it's against me and mine, then might makes you an asshole who needs to die||

||Charity is the only person who actually believes in the philosophy, apparently||

[dreamy sorrel]

Uncrowned 13: ||Don't forget the original Blackflames. The Dragon Conquers. If that's not might makes right, I don't know what is||

[lilac vault]

||I dunno enough about them. Did any of them swear bloody revenge for the sake of their fallen family and comrades? There's not enough to say||

||If you swear to make someone who killed the person close to you pay, if you swear to take your revenge, then that's not very might makes right of you||

||Charity is, thus far, the only character to lose someone they care about that doesn't swear to kill the one responsible (Under the assumption that Charity is the only Akura we've met that actually gives a damn about Harmony, which seems to be true thus far, other than Mercy who is a special case)||

Uncrowned 13 ||I am surprised Sophara isn't committing to a fight with Lindon||

||NOW LINDON CAN ACTUALLY USE THE POWER HIS REMNANT ARM EATS PROPERLY||

||PUTTING HIM AGAINST A BLACK DRAGON IS ACTUALLY THE WORST POSSIBLE MATCHUP SOPHARA COULD HAVE DONE||

||It literally would have been better if she just went herself||

https://tenor.com/view/re-zero-re-zero-hungry-re-zero-roy-roy-alphard-re-zero-gluttony-gif-348220949043427218

||And now Sophara is coming back lmao||

||Madam, what the HELL is your plan||

||HOW DID SHE GET GHOSTWATER||

LMAO

Uncrowned 14 ||THE PLAN IS TO FORCE SOPHARA TO PASS THE TEST JUST SO SHE LEAVES THEM ALONE||

Genius!

[opal wadi]

||She was there in one of the competitions a couple years ago, the Ghostwater thing happened every couple years until the world just crumbled outside in during the last one||

[lilac vault]

||Mmk, so she just got it from before. I see.||

||So wait, how does the Ghostwater work? I thought you took it and then it just buffed you up on the spot. But it said that Sophara's ghostwater ran out.||

||Is it actually limited time? If so, did she take her ghostwater and then just keep it for however many years she had it?||

[zenith kayak]

||It's a recharging buff that grants background processing power and slow-mo||

[jade notch]

Uncrowned 13 ||Ghostwater lasts a few seconds at a time, and basically is an enhanced state of mind where you can predict everything for a short while||

[opal wadi]

||It's a renewable resource, you have let's say 10 points of Ghostwater and they get used to increase your brainpower, it runs out but it recharges over time||

[lilac vault]

Mmk

||Was gonna say "Why has Lindon not done that" but then I remembered he gave the ghostwater to Dross, he didn't take it for himself||

[jade notch]

||What Dross can do is like, Ghostwater^10 if he has enough information to work with||

[opal wadi]

Up to Uncrowned mechanics
||I believe that how it works is that while everyone else uses Ghostwater to speed their reaction and stuff, they still have bodies that take part of that speed and distribute it, but Dross is pure Mind Construct so if he speeds his mind he speeds it considerably more, and all his calculations can then transfer to Lindon, they combine brainpower but Dross never stops making Lindon's brain just that bit faster, so it's like a constantly regenerating ghostwater that can learn||

[thick bay]

||We getting pretty lit rpg here, though I say this never read one. ||

[lilac vault]

||Yeah I didn't gather that it was renewable, because until now, we'd only seen what it can do in the moments after taking it||

||So I thought "Oh it's a perma-buff"||

Uncrowned 14 ||So when it said she had ghostwater, I thought it meant that she literally JUST got ghostwater||

Uncrowned 14 ||Oh, do the other Monarchs KNOW that Sha Miara is cheating lmao||

||Northstrider does at least||

Uncrowned 14 ||Pride and Mercy have been winning crowns by THEMSELVES for this entire hour, just giving them to the others?!||

No wait

I misread

||PRIDE was winning a crown by himself||

||He also failed. I'm shocked.||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 15 ||LMAO DID MERCY GET A SCOUTER||

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/it's-over-9000-it's-over-9000-its-gif-6159356195145880706

[hollow ferry]

I return to Cradle

Underlord Chapter 8 + Stormlight all || “to protect those who cannot protect themselves” Wrong book Lindin ||

[humble bluff]

Cradle general ||Reminder that little blue was supposed to turn into a spear before Brandon stole his idea||

[hollow ferry]

Same || Yep lmfao. So I’ve heard ||

[lilac vault]

I didnt know this lmao

[hollow ferry]

Underlord 9 || Never isn’t amusing how people perceive Lindin. Black and red eyes and snarling face. Bearing of a violent demon. A savage fixed on violence. Nephew must have met a horrible fate at this brute’s hand.

Meanwhile, said demon 99% of the time “Gratitude, this one does not deserve such kindness” “gratitude” “gratitude”… ||

Underlord 9 || It’s really neat getting to see Lindin’s progression from other perspectives. ||

[opal wadi]

||Also a lot of "Apologies"||

[dreamy sorrel]

||Splash in the occasional "Forgiveness" for spice||

[hollow ferry]

|| So he’ll reach peak power when he pulls them all together to fire off a “Grapologiveness” ||

[robust estuary]

Willverse lore general ||Just had a fun idea for an iteration that unfortunately can't work for lore reasons but could maybe be handwaved away with the right Abidan/Vroshir technology: Lone spaceship with a small enough population that everyone knows each other, travels through space/The Way/The Void, and arouses suspicion from Abidan and/or Vroshir individuals, who then secret themselves on board and have to pretend to be locals using some sort of magic or another||

No, I can't atop thinking about Gnosia, why do you ask?

[lilac vault]

Tha'n (Uncrowned 15)

||GRAAAAAGH SOPHARA KILLED HIM||

||Now it's personal!||

||THE DRAGON ADVANCES||

[hollow ferry]

Underlord 10 || Mira seems pretty strong 👀 And pretty badass ||

[robust estuary]

||Huh. Not how I would have guessed Meira is spelled||

[thick bay]

||I used to play a character named Mira, I was hyped.||

[zenith kayak]

Cradle all ||I'm up to Wintersteel in my reread, and it's kinda funny just how much WW is hammering home that the Silent King cultist is reminiscent of the Sacred Valley and the Wei clan's arts||

[inner loom]

Animatic tomorrow for backers and January 8th for everybody else!

[opal wadi]

Oh they're releasing it to people?

this is... good news but also bad news, I hope they managed to pick someone's interest

we need investors

we need
a show

[coral hatch]

Yeah this is either GOOD news (there's already an investor in talks or something like that) or BAD news (they're kinda giving up on secrecy helping)

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle all: ||We hunger for a show
And a hunger emoji||

[lilac vault]

To be fair, nobody can get access to the animatic anymore. So I think releasing it earlier is the way to go.

The secrecy by itself isn't gonna help anything anymore

And since nobody can donate to the Kickstarter anymore

There's no real incentive to keep it hidden very long

[maiden tangle]

Willverse General ||There’s not really a reason that couldn’t work. Tiny fragments of iterations coast through the void/way all the time, this could just be one of those that’s so far removed the other pieces don’t exist anymore.||

[robust estuary]

||The main issue there is that those fragments are usually pretty fragile, and prone to either self destruction or corruption, whereas I was going for more of a "this place has an actual history and is several hundred if not thousand yesrs old" kinda deal||

[maiden tangle]

Willverse All ||Kinda? But there’s definitely ways around that. Not to mention, there’s already precedent, Daruman takes around his home iteration with him into the battle for Fathom.||

[robust estuary]

||Right, and he's the Mad King, a being on the level of the Judges. I'm talking about an entirely self-contained system of normal people||

[maiden tangle]

||That’s probably gonna be harder, but if Asylum can manage to stabilize they could probably figure it out||

[robust estuary]

You do not need to ping me for a conversation I am avtively involved in, please

[maiden tangle]

Sure

[robust estuary]

Willverse all ||Asylum also happens to be an Iteration that the Abidan are very invested in keeping together, I have zero doubts that they were an active (if covert and distant) participant in it becoming more stable following those books||

[maiden tangle]

||They explicitly say they expected it to fall apart and were surprised it was able to stabilize||

Sorry forgot to click the unping

I reply so that the chain of spoilers is easier to follow

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 16 ||Okay so Reigan Shen killed the Arelius Monarch. I honestly thought it was Eithan||

[gleaming moth]

My Kickstarter books arived!

They said they were going to start shipping Monday but I didn't get a notice and was very surprised to see the box in my lobby today.

[dreamy sorrel]

Will's discord is holding a poll for when to stream the animatic on Friday if anyone's interested

[humble bluff]

Started randomly thinking about the commander today

[opal wadi]

Can anyone here generate an invite to Will's server?

I want to invite my friend there but I can't

[humble bluff]

No but I found it linked online https://discord.gg/tCg94qy

[opal wadi]

let's go

[spice socket]

Wills got a server

Is it. Very chaotic

[robust estuary]

Hmm. Maybe I will join, actually...

[spice socket]

I’m bad at participating in overly active servers

It’s why I barely show up in anything but here the general book channel and wheel of time lmao

[robust estuary]

For me its more a matter of whether or not I end up feeling like I enjoy being there

I'm in exactly two servers where I lurk, of I don't feel like actively participating I'm probably gonna dip

[thick bay]

This is the only public one that I use outside my personal discords.

[hollow ferry]

Underlord 13 || Very fun chapter. Dross upgraded with library knowledge. Geisha wants to now use Lindon and Dross for personal gain. Eithan is going to steal the Archstone from the emperor. Blood shadow said “woof”.

Oh yeah and Lindon confessed his feelings for Yerin somewhat. And Yerin threatened to skin Eithan with for interrupting her moment with Lindon.

I love these characters. ||

[lilac vault]

||Gesha. A Geisha is something else entirely||

[proud oar]

So uhhhhh wahoo and all that

There’s going to be a watch party on Friday in the Willverse server, one sec let me find the time (got voted on and will probably be these two times)

The first one (:druv:) has a lot of votes, and the third-to-last one (:drock:) has a lot of votes so it’ll probably be those two

I am quite hyped.
We’ll be able to download stuff on Monday so I might be waiting until then. Will see family (non-backers) next week so…I might even wait entirely for them. Would be difficult.

[hollow ferry]

Underlord Chapter 14 || I wonder if Lindon’s desire is just to be the strongest he can become or something. Current guess. “I wanna be the very best like no one ever was” ||

[jade notch]

Just be the best you can be
in the army

[hollow ferry]

I was wrong

[hollow ferry]

Underlord 17 || Dodgy has decided to FA. I’m sure he’s about to hella FO ||

[dreamy sorrel]

||Daji. It's a weirder one||

[proud oar]

The animatic is out to backers, just got the email 40 minutes ago

[hollow ferry]

Underlord 20 || Wow, he has to compete for the Akura clan. He’s going to have to fight Yerin next book 😭 ||

[opal wadi]

||No reaction to "And then Lindon pulled out another cannon."?||

||"You can't defeat me, Blackflame, I'm one whole stage of advancement above you." And then Lindon pulled out the seventeenth launcher construct out of his ass.||

[hollow ferry]

|| That was quite amusing. I think this was a really strong entry in the series. Not done with epilogue yet though, but this book really worked for me in particular ||

Underlord epilogue || Reaper’s Scythe. That definitely won’t be particularly relevant in the book titled Reaper ||

Underlord epilogue || Poor Yerin. Also poor Eithan like what am I chopped liver ||

Underlord Epilogue || 🐢 ⬛ 🔥 !!!! ||

Underlord Epilogue || Orthos + Lindon’s sister is such an interesting twist I am SO CURIOUS what that’s going to be all about.

Also Kelsa is in for one hell of a surprise. Alive? Lindon is uhhh… yeah you could say he’s alive ||

Underlord was so good

I need more

Luckily I have more

Three cheers for prior Audible sales

[opal wadi]

Hell yeah

[lilac vault]

||wdym, she literally just lost, she can't fight again|| Uncrowned 16

Uncrowned 17 ||ADAMA! WE HAVE THE SWORD SAGE'S NAME!||

[hollow ferry]

Oops. Accidentally clicked. Good thing I have 0 context

But I’ll know what’s up in the next few days

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 17 ||Mercy vs Yerin, oh boy||

[hollow ferry]

You can’t trick me this time

(You almost got me)

Two books in a row beginning with Un

[lilac vault]

||Yep, Lindon vs Sophara, let's do this thing|| Uncrowned 17

[lilac vault]

You'll fall for it again

They always do

[hollow ferry]

Nope

Not a chance

[lilac vault]

Lmao

[hollow ferry]

Soon I will finally surpass you

[lilac vault]

I'm honestly shocked I didn't overtake you by more

[opal wadi]

Underlord, Uncrowned, Unsteel, Unline, Unreaper

Undergod

Unbound

[hollow ferry]

Honestly same. Spent like a week on SoTF. And 6 days on WoTM

[lilac vault]

Especially since I'm going through Uncrowned faster than I think any other book in the series so far

[opal wadi]

Uncrowned is just a very tasty book

[hollow ferry]

This has been my progress so far

[lilac vault]

I haven't counted when I finish

Vut I can check timestamps since I said I finished them all

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned prologue || She’s already so shook lolol ||

[final quest]

Wintersteel I finished in a single day

[lilac vault]

WAIT I TOOK A LEFT TURN AND ENDED UP BACK IN WARHAMMER WTF (Uncrowned 17)

||WHY IS SHE TRAYZN||

[opal wadi]

||Trazyn wishes he was half as cool as the angler||

||Trazyn but if he was a lazy girl in sweatpants, truly peak writing ||

[lilac vault]

Time to binge the rest of Uncrowned

[golden void]

I don't think I can "go" to either watch party

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 18 ||Eithan got a cloudship, Mercy got a boom on archery from the best archer in the world||

||Ziel got a pill that will help him get some of his power back, and if he wins the Tournament then he will be able to get all his power back||

||ngl im pushing for ziel now lmao||

||Yerin got an Elixer from Arelius||

||I wonder if Lindon is gonna get something from Sesh||

||Oh no, he got one from Arelius too||

||Keep making Lindon more and more unkillable||

||OH GOOD! LINDON GETS TO FIGHT AN OVERLORD, OR MAYBE EVEN AN ARCHLORD!||

||We can't have Lindon's final fight be someone on his level||

||They have to be a step above, every time||

[opal wadi]

Uncrowned ||Underlord more like Underdog amrite fellas||

[hollow ferry]

Are the watch parties locked to backers? I would think so

[opal wadi]

Don't seem to be, I just joined a watch party notification

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 18 ||WHAT?! LINDON AND MERCY SWAPPED FIGHTS?!||

[lilac vault]

Uncrowned 19 ||YERIN CAN ACTIVATE THE SWORD SAGE'S SWORD?!||

||T H E D R A G O N D E S C E N D S||

||Sword Icon? 👀 Wuzzat?!||

Uncrowned 20 ||Lindon lost 👀||

||I figured, since this book is about over||

||I was thinking "how is this book almost done", but yeah if Lindon lost, then it makes sense||

||I wonder if we'll still see the rest of the fights. I hope we do.||

||ALL OF THE MONARCHS REFUSED RECRUITMENT TO THE ABIDAN?!||

||Tournament Arc part 2?||

||"Who's Dross?"||
The End
Of Cradle: Volume Seven
Uncrowned

BASED

JFIUASDHFOIHASDIFUGISADHFSADF

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/absolute-cinema-raccoon-absolute-cinema-gif-17862327649353748812

[lilac vault]

Bloopers ||LITTLE BLUE, NO||

||DON'T DO IT||

NOOOO

Lmfao

||JUISHFIAHSDFHIASDUF FURY DOING THE KAMEHAMEHA||

Wintersteel prologue ||Oooooh starting out with more info on the Sword Sage's death||

I wasn't gonna read but now I will

Oh

oh the font size is smaller

oh this is a big book

It's only 511 pages but they made the font size smaller

What is the word count of this book comparatively

[thick bay]

||My most favorite blooper 🗡️ ||

[lilac vault]

It's so good

||Of course Adama can do the Iai thing||

Wintersteel prologue + ReZero Arc 6||Adama isn't a murder hobo like Reid Astraea. I'm so sad.||

[opal wadi]

||This is the closest they've got to flirting openly this far in the series it's hilarious||

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel prologue ||The FATHER of the Dreadgods?!||

[opal wadi]

||Yeah where did you think they came from? When a Dreadgod loves another one too much they...||

[lilac vault]

That prologue was....

Oof

[opal wadi]

It's some info

That's when you have to lock in on the lore

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 1 ||OH BOY! ALL THE MONARCHS||

[opal wadi]

||And Lindon.||

[lilac vault]

||He may not be a Monarch, but he is a king ❤️ ||

[opal wadi]

Wintersteel 1
||That scene is like bringing the intern to a highly classified international military meeting.||

[thick bay]

Cradle all ||Lindon was just ahead of his time. ||

[lilac vault]

Finished ch 1

It's peak

[hollow ferry]

Don't suppose anyone could hop in VC and share screen momentarily? I want to double check that I can record the Discord screen share during the animatic watch party since I will have to be in a call for work during that time.

[opal wadi]

There's gonna be two screenings, but I'm sure you can screen record a screen share it doesn't have those screen blockers like some websites do

I'm going to try and record it too

[cloud zinc]

I may ask for copy

If that doesn’t cross lines

[opal wadi]

You may be right

[hollow ferry]

Yeah I’ll be at Riftbound tonight

Uncrowned 1 || The “Heaven’s above” from the archlord looking at Lindon’s cores while rattling about how splitting cores tends to lead to weaker cores ||

[opal wadi]

||Lindon traumatized that man, he realized life really is a fantasy novel and he met the protagonist||

[hollow ferry]

|| I’m not even done with the prologue lol ||

[golden void]

I was under the impression that the viewing party is just for people with the vimeo link?
in which case you can watch it any time by going to your backerkit (or the email from "Will Wight" yesterday) and grabbing the link

[hollow ferry]

Ahhh I thought they were doing a screen share. Vimeo link restricted would make more sense

[hollow ferry]

|| Not the defeated drinking ||

Uncrowned 1 || I wonder if Lindon beats Eithan to Overlord in this book ||

[hollow ferry]

Same || Probably not because it’s a tournament for Underlords only, right? Idk what the rules about advancement mid-tournament are ||

[thick bay]

||I think it explains it later.||

[lilac vault]

Oh yeah remind me. When I was reading Underlord, I was under the impression that ||some people went into the tournament at higher levels of advancement||

Did I just misremember that

[thick bay]

||I am not entirely sure when the books says what advancement that you can be, it's either in Uncrowned or Wintersteel. @opal wadi might be a better person because he has reread the series a lot more than me.||

[opal wadi]

||You need to be Underlord to enter, but can advance mid tournament and it's encouraged even, there's some other hidden rules but we're going to learn that later||

[ornate heron]

I think the viewing on the server is for everyone.

[hollow ferry]

Yeah I have it recording so I can watch after work

[hollow ferry]

Sheesh it’s a 2-parter

I guess I’m not watching this after work lol

In the meantime I have Uncrowned to listen to and Air Riders to play

Uncrowned 3 || Not Dross being like can I have a taste of your power and Charity actually giving him an archlord scale. Hot damn ||

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 2 ||WHAT DO YOU MEWN LINDON'S MEMORY OF SHA MIARA IS DIFFERENT||

||"I value you so highly I remember every word you've ever spoken"
Damn lmao||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 5. Might have been chapter 4 actually || Oh you know, just a herald giving you technique development tips. Casual Lindon Tuesday ||

[opal wadi]

||Remember when this man was begging a sacred valley yee yee ahh Jade for a path manual? now he's getting tips and tricks from Heralds ||

[hollow ferry]

|| I remember indeed. I feel like this book is good timing is solid to go back to Sacred Valley and show just how incredible Lindon's journey so far has been. Particularly for those who haven't gotten to this point in about a month ||

Uncrowned 5 || You know. Charity may be alright. Letting him talk to Yerin again at least ||

Uncrowned 6 || Long distance relationship. Wishing she was there. Cute ||

Uncrowned 6 || Challenging them all ||

Uncrowned 6 || Charity pulling Mercy through a fold in the Way. First mention I think of a character in Cradle dealing with the Way? 👀 ||

[zenith kayak]

Uncrowned 6 ||I think you catch a glimpse of that at the very end of Ghostwater||

[hollow ferry]

Ahh possibly. Can’t remember if there was in fact a direct mention for sure but there very well may have been

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 7 || Lmfao @ mercy stopping the show from starting back up to grill Lindon about “what exactly” him and Yerin are ||

I love these books

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 2 ||Oh, is Eithan fighting Sophara? I was anticipating Mercy vs Sophara.||

||Then again, Mercy vs Sophara feels like a very "final round" kinda deal||

||btw, I do think Sophara will ultimately win the tournament, but she'll try and use the prize to kill Lindon instead of either of the Monarchs and London and crew fights her to stop her from doing that||

||If Mercy is getting an easy matchup, if it's against someone actually important, it's either Ziel or Yan Shoumei. More likely, it's a jobber, cuz I think we still have a few jobbers in here||

[jade notch]

I was just looking at my schedule and I think I have two WW signing sessions somehow? I know I only clicked on one of them but it says both are on my schedule

So if you want one we can try to transfer it. Or I'll just show my ticket at the door and you can go in

[lilac vault]

Ooh that'd be cool

What times?

[jade notch]

Sat 10 AM and Fri 1 PM

[lilac vault]

The Friday one would work best for me. I doubt I'd be there by 10 AM

[jade notch]

I was wanting to keep the Friday one 🙂

[lilac vault]

Mm

It won't be able to work, then. I'd have to leave at 8:30 in the morning at the latest to make it, and I don't think my friends would be ready at that time. I'd be shocked if I was ready at that time

Thanks though

🙂

[jade notch]

Well does anyone else want the slot?

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 9 || Ooo, so winter sage made the swords. Is she building a wintersteel based weapon for Lindon in the next book mayhaps ||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 11 || First round not what I expected ||

Uncrowned 11 || Let’s build a home together Oh the children ||

Uncrowned 11 || I know they’re not children but they’re like babies lol ||

[lilac vault]

||They are in Cradle. That IS where they keep the infants||

[mighty totem]

cradle ALL + willverse general ||Do we know if the story of lindon will ever continue? It feels wrong to have ended where it did, with lindon having to bow to the judges. Knowing him, he's never gonna stop getting stronger until he is the strongest singular being

"the dragon advances"||

[dreamy sorrel]

||Are you referring to Threshold?||

[mighty totem]

||cradle as a whole, i think, but i was thinking of a specific moment in threshold where the titan judge is basically hostile to him||

||"no wonder the executors had turned against the abidan, lindon was on his first mission and yet he was contemplating betrayal already"||

It's just kinda annoying? if that makes sense?

for the lack of a better word, I mean.

||He worked so hard, and in threshold with the anagi side-story you feel the power eminating from him, and when he ascends... it's back to being the underdog. I know he won't stand being pushed around, I know that he's going to square up against the judges eventually, it just pains me that there arent books about it||

cradle all ||On top of being tired of everyone's bullcrem and not letting others toy with him anymore, something mentioned by several characters near the end of the series (even yan shoumei in the side story i mentioned), lindon is also just a good guy that wouldnt let people like gadrial stay in power imo||

[thick bay]

||I think we might eventually get an avengers type thing maybe.||

[hollow ferry]

I showed my gf the first 10 minutes or so of the animatic. Stopping it now because I know if she gets too much she won’t read it, but I think I’ve got her hooked!

[mighty totem]

is it out for the public?

[hollow ferry]

No, I recorded the watch party yesterday for my own viewing

Since it was happening during a work meeting

[mighty totem]

there was a watch party?

😭

Sad! I missed it

[hollow ferry]

Apologies

I think it is open to the public in February

[opal wadi]

January!

[violet apex]

Cradle all ||personally I'm okay with Lindon and the gang's journey from here on out just being an "and the adventure continues" situation. We don't need to see his entire life story||

[safe knoll]

cradle all +willverse general ||I don't want to see another series fully focused on the gang, but I wouldn't mind seeing them and new Reapers in prominent roles down the line. Like if Will ever writes a series focused on the Abidan and the Vroshir and such||

[opal wadi]

Cradle All/Willverse general
||Imagine when we get the eventual Abidan series, we follow some new people, get new adventures and when things are dire a hole in reality opens up and a man with a white hand suckerpunches the big bad, hard edit style. "Apologies."||

[thick bay]

Willverse all ||At the end of TLH Lindon shows up and recruits the ship. 😎 ||

[opal wadi]

Willverse all/TLH
||Can you imagine what Lindon can build with Fathom materials? Thought conducting alloy? Wait... WAIT, THOUGHT CONDUCTING ALLOY? WINTERSTEEL? IS THAT JUST WINTERSTEEL OH MY GOD||

[maiden tangle]

||Wintersteel is more "will conducting alloy" which is technically different||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 15 || Blackflame duel! Blackflame duel! ||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 15 || Omg. That’s so messed up ||

Uncrowned 15 || She killed him. Out of just pure spite ||

[opal wadi]

||The Dragon Advances...||

[final quest]

Can you ping me when you hit chapter 3
Chapter 3 of wintersteel is my favorite single chapter, ever, I have a vested interest in that one

[lilac vault]

wait no slow down

ur catching up

u cant do that

[hollow ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/gohine-hohino-no-hohineee-gohineee-gif-17792172174678204487

[hollow ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/roadrunner-meepmeep-looney-tunes-bye-see-ya-later-gif-5406949548728434925

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 2 ||Okay lotta info. Becoming a Monarch requires creating your Remnant and then completely fusing it with yourself. You can apparently skip Herald? Northstrider becoming a Sage manifested an Icon, same thing Yerin had. And Sage is apparently a not normal Archlord, presumably due to the aforementioned Icon||

[lilac vault]

Chapter 3

Oooh ||Eithan fight time||

[robust estuary]

Oh might get to be present for this, still have six minutes on my break...

[lilac vault]

I'll be spending a bit of time not reading, since I'm heading to get food

[robust estuary]

😭

[lilac vault]

So I won't be reading for a couple minutes until I'm settled

Oh ON your break

I'll read all I can

[robust estuary]

Its only three now, its too late 😔

I leave at 3 at least, so less than two hours before I'm home. Then I will see...

[opal wadi]

||Fusing with your remnant is what makes you a Herald, it's the perfect union of body and spirit, Monarch happens when you get both an Icon and become Herald in whatever order (some start as Heralds, others as Sages) which is completely broken as you can see given that Monarchs are the top dogs of the world.||

[lilac vault]

Yeah I wasn't finishing in time anyway lmao

Wintersteel 3 ||I like how Eithan is talking like he might fight Yerin, even though she's right there so he clearly isn't fighting her||

||IT'S TIME FOR EITHAN TO STOP MESSING AROUND||

[lilac vault]

||Oh wait no, it's Mercy, Miara, and Sophara||

||I thought Yerin was one of them, I forgot about Miara||

||Time for Eithan to beat up a Monarch ig||

[lilac vault]

Food came way sooner than expecting

Still before the main event though thankfully

So I shall read when I'm done

[lilac vault]

Continuing

Wintersteel 3 ||Interesting how Eithan named an ability Mantle. Almost certainly intentional to invoke the Mantle.of the Abidan Judges||

AURA

||BRO JUST CASUALLY SMACKS DOWN ONE OF THE STRONGEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD AND SAYS HE TOOK TOO LONG||

https://tenor.com/view/sung-jin-woo-gif-12908384644153191582

The Path of Aura Farming

||Eithan ONCE caught Malice's eye? When? Why? It implies he no longer caught her eye.||

Many questions

||CHARITY DIDN'T KNOW WHO SHA MIARA WAS?!||

||I just sorta assumed that everyone Sage and above knew. Clearly all the Monarchs and Heralds do, I just figured that the Sages would.as well||

||LMAO SHE JUST YEETS FURY AWAY||

||Bold to assume that Eithan.will take 20 years to hit Overlord. Even if he wasn't a protagonist, I'd still say he would hit it in two years MAXIMUM, and that's only if he isn't a protagonist||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 17 || Announcing the 1v1s ||

Uncrowned 17 || This is going to be Lindon vs Yerin isn’t it… ||

[lilac vault]

||Why does it sometimes say North-strider instead of just Northstrider?|| Wintersteel 3

||Also, lmao, Yan Shoumei in the same sentence as Sophara? That girl is getting her ass kicked the moment she's in a room with a main character||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 17 || Oh it’s mercy vs Yerin. So Yerin vs Lindon will be book 8 ||

Uncrowned 17 || Oh snap Lindon vs the dragon ||

Uncrowned 17 || Lol Dross is like welp you gave it the ole college try, but alas luck was not on your side. That’s rough buddy ||

[lilac vault]

||When you said the dragon, I thought you meant the Blackflame and I was like "didn't you already do that?"||

[robust estuary]

||smh, not even remembering Sopharanatoth's full name||

[hollow ferry]

|| The one that I am not even attempting to spell. Sephoranitoth or whatever ||

[hollow ferry]

|| That ||

I actually wasn’t that far off, huh

[lilac vault]

Sephirothnatoth

https://tenor.com/view/sephiroth-gif-19906850

That but dragon

[robust estuary]

||Next you're gonna tell me you don't know how to spell Seshethkunaaz either 😔||

[lilac vault]

Even i can't spell that one

And I'm reading the print version

I barely know how to PRONOUNCE that

[robust estuary]

Can't believe the disrespect being thrown at my favorite villains...

[lilac vault]

Well MAYBE dragon names shouldn't be completely incomprehensible!

Isn't that right Xisisrefliel

[final quest]

Wintersteel 3 || "With a sharp blade, he cut off his good humor, his sympathy, and his plans for the future." ||

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 3 ||Sophara can't advance. That's good.||

Banger chapter

[final quest]

This chapter SLAPS

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 18 || Lindon vs Yerin now instead ||

Uncrowned 18 || How dare they ||

[lilac vault]

lmao

||It had to happen.||

||I went into this book going "Yo can't wait for Lindon vs Yerin" cuz that's how tournament arcs go||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 19 || “Information requested: How to drag Lindon out of self-pity. Beginning report”

I burst out with a laugh at that ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Big same. But I wasn’t ready for the twist ||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 19 || PEAK. I NEED TO KNOW THE RESULT. THIS CHAPTER IS PEAK. I NEED THIS ANIMATED. MY GOD. BEST CHAPTER OF THE SERIES SO FAR BY FAR. ABSOLUTE PEAK. ABSOLUTE CINEMA. I’M GOING STARK WILD HERE ||

Uncrowned 20 || He actually lost. I’m kinda surprised 👀 But this will make things interesting. He deserves to lose here and there. Builds character. Also to be able to go toe to toe with Yerin in the matter of a few years from unsouled and untrained entirely is impressive as all hell ||

[thick bay]

||But I called Marketh or w/e Sephiroth ||

[lilac vault]

||Li Markuth wishes he was half as cool as Sephiroth||

||Bro showed up, beat up some infants, and then got smacked by Suriel and sent to time jail||

[thick bay]

||He was pretty cool till Suriel came. ||

[lilac vault]

||The longer the series goes, the lamer Li Markuth is lmao||

||Oh no he tried to take over the place where it's impressive if you reach Jade||

||Come on, bro, show some AMBITION||

||At least step to a Monarch||

Wintersteel 4 ||This is a very funny dynamic. Pride thinks Lindon wants to get with Mercy and is grudgingly approving it, Mercy is hardcore shipping Lindon and Yerin, and Lindon and Yerin are too dense to realize that they're in love with each other, much to Mercy's eternal exasperation||

[hollow ferry]

Uncrowned 20 || “Who’s Dross?” ||

One hell of a book

Dayummmm

[lilac vault]

Peak

Now stop!

u cant catch up!

[hollow ferry]

I mean my progress today has been sluggish as hell because I kept stopping to play Kirby air riders

[robust estuary]

||That scene, of Pride trying to get Lindon to spit it out and confess to Mercy, while Mercy is trying to get him to confess to Yerin, is (part of) why I still kinda ship them together, Its just such a hilarious chain of people trying to get Lindon to hook up with other people crushing on him||

[thick bay]

||Meanwhile I personally have been trying to ship Mercy with someone else. 😂 ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle general: ||The Dragon Advances||

[safe knoll]

up to wintersteel 3 ||in skysworn, the Akura he visited to get Malice's help said the Monarch had a vision of him||

[lilac vault]

Ohhh right

[thick bay]

||Probably met him.||

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 4 ||Poor Therian Nills||

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 5 ||I really hope that Mercy is just hiding in the corner with her head in a newspaper on this date, making sure that Lindon and Yerin do it right||

||That would be so funny||

||I love that Little Blue is getting into the fights lmao||

||She's so cute||

[humble bluff]

https://tenor.com/view/screaming-baby-screaming-angry-baby-mad-baby-raging-gif-7603945332654572706

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 5 ||I'm betting Sophara advanced already offscreen, damn the consequences, because she is that confident in her surefire victory||

||Yeah she did lmao||

Oh nvm

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 6 ||LMAO BYE RED FAITH||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 2 || Yerin being all excited about the fight is cute. Lindon being in the monarch meeting is wild ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle general: ||The reaction aura is strong here||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 2 || Super cool scene @ advancement to monarch of northstrider ||

Wintersteel 3 || Eithan asking for help is so wild. Also the way Eithan talks here about revealing too much and seemingly being fairly confident if not entirely confident in his ability to win. Such interesting stuff going on rn ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 3 || Dang Sephira madra channels fractured a bits That’ll probably be relevant later ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Whoa ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah that was wild ||

[opal wadi]

||Yeah it's getting expanded a bit more later but Sages and Icons can do stuff that Heralds don't and vice versa, it's when you can do both at the same time that you break the game and become Top Dog||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 3 || Seems like Lindon has a way to go yet we only have 5 books left. 🤔 Particularly given what Sephira just experienced. But of course Sephira isn’t loaded with Main Character power, so… ||

[thick bay]

||I mean I've always seen it as internal vs external.||

[opal wadi]

Cradle mechanics, slight spoilers, Wintersteel 7 and onwards
||Yeah, Sages can use authority externally because they can bend the universe and Heralds have so much authority over their own bodies that things without willpower can't even damage them, that's why only people at Overlord (barely) Archlord or above can potentially fight Heralds, anyone below that just doesn't have the required willpower development||

[safe knoll]

up to wintersteel 3 ||I mean, even when the books introduced Fury I didn't truly get what Heralds are. That one offhand mention of a dream tablet by a Herald soulsmith in Skysworn made me go ???|| Until the following two books elaborated on it in detail

[thick bay]

||Unstoppable force vs immovable object.||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 4 || Mercy dragging Lindon kicking and screaming out of his own ass when it comes to his relationship with Yerin ||

[safe knoll]

Min Shuei explains some of it in Wintersteel chapter 7, Id label that spoiler box that way

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 4 || The expediency of the yes from Yerin followed by an even greater expediency when Lindon was like “is my intent clear?” Like about damn time ||

I love these books

Wintersteel 4 || Mercy is a goated wingwoman ||

Wintersteel 4 || Lindon’s first date’s tab being picked up by a Monarch’s family. Meanwhile back in sacred valley is sister is probably still trying to wrap her brain around Orthos telling her all about Lindon’s journey to true gold ||

Wintersteel 4 || Lol, poet and philosopher trying to pretend to be an animalistic brute ||

Wintersteel 5 || “The sight of her clubbed him over the head”

I sure know how that feels. Hilarious description though ||

Wintersteel 5 || Oh awko taco. This’ll be fun ||

Wintersteel 5 || ||

Wintersteel 5 || Poor, somewhat salty Lindon ||

Wintersteel 5 || He really could stand to remember that a few years ago he was beating up children and was thrilled to be doing that much. So to go from that to one of the top 16 underlords of his generation in the time he has is really quite impressive ||

Wintersteel 5 || Wight has done a great job at building up Sephira as a very menacing threat for the tournament. Commendable ||

Wintersteel 6 || Red faith attacking the winter sage is a pretty cool scene ||

Wintersteel 6 || Northstrinder absolutely yeeting red faith out of the city with a punch is incredible ||

https://tenor.com/view/aplausos-clapped-leonardo-dicaprio-clap-slow-clap-gif-12389001

[lilac vault]

Peak

[hollow ferry]

This series is peak

Can already see why Nick was excited for a friend to read this and why another mentioned this being their favorite of the series

This is clearly going to be a very fun book

Alright time for sleep

Halfway through chapter 6

Decent progress today, though I admittedly should have gotten quite a bit further had it not been for Air Riders

[safe knoll]

I come bearing messages for your waking, Spooky
Wintersteel general
||"Duck's golden eyes flicked before settling on SpookySpren. "Your opponent asked for his last words to be delivered to you"
Spren felt a pang in his heart. Last words. So Neon had expected what happened to him.
"He said 'The dragon advances.'" ||

[hollow ferry]

I lied

Wintersteel 6 || Lindon straight up getting tutelage/a demonstration from a monarch that will significantly boost his ability to advance once he masters that consume technique.

Monarch lore dumps OP.

Also “when we meet again, you will show me what you learned”. Did Lindon just become an unofficial semi-kinda-pupil of a monarch ||

[lilac vault]

By which I mean, of course, that you passed me

[hollow ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/baby-cute-go-cheering-rage-gif-16641949

It’s okay you have the next 6 and a half hours to advance further

And even then I’ll only get a little more listening in before my work day. So you’ve got some time

But then there I’ll be once more

[lilac vault]

I definitely won't lmao

I will datch up for. A few minutes

You will be a book ahead of me soon enough

By next week for certain

[hollow ferry]

Oh yeah for sure. I checked my reading history for each of these books and it has been 2-3 days per book. Underlord was the longest read at 3-4 days if you don’t exclude the week long break for Strength of the Few.

So unless something happens I’ll likely have the series finished within the next 2 weeks

Granted a few of these last few books are a tad longer

[thick bay]

The books do get a Lil longer.

[hollow ferry]

A smidge

Wintersteel 7 || Little blue hugging yerin’s cheek ||

Wintersteel 7 || Casual advancement to overlord. How very Eithan. Also the idea that he could be Archlord in a month with a little hunting. Lindon and Yerin still have some catching up to do. Going to be very fun when they’re all on the same level for the first time ||

Wintersteel 7 || Yerin admitting she is not immune to cute baby rabbits and wants to hold it ||

Wintersteel 7 || Winter sage seems blinded by her feelings for the late sword sage. I assume that Yerin will progress a bunch on her sword path and she’ll end up becoming her own thing with the mix of the blood shadow + the sword path, rather than being a copy of her late master. Which winter sage undoubtedly views as tainted ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Wintersteel 7: ||The Winter Sage sees Yerin as Adama 2.0 because she hasn't processed the grief in a healthy way. That's why the sage should check out the sponsor of this video Better Help...||

[mighty totem]

That's not his name stop making stuff up

[violet apex]

???

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 7 ||Oh no she made AI storytellers||

||TFW you're born a tree, gain sentience, spend your life doing good, get murdered, and then your ghost gathers itself together and becomes one of the most powerful individuals on the planet||

||She has a connection to the Silent King. Interesting.||

I love her

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 9 || Lindon going absolutely FERAL over scoring points sends me. Picturing him grabbing Pride with both hands and shaking him with a crazed look in his eyes ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 11 || Instead of stealing from our team, why not steal for us ||

Wintersteel 11 || This man’s thirst for points knows no bounds ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 11 || Commenting on how he doesn’t need an unprofitable fight ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 11 || Omg the blood shadow escaping while Yerin sleeps, kidnapping a baby rabbit to hold it and bandage its injured leg, while also eating advancement resources, and then when confronted telling Yerin “you got to hold it” is incredible ||

This book is peak

Wintersteel 11 || Seeing them bicker is fun. She’s going to be besties with her blood shadow by the end of the series, isn’t she ||

Wintersteel 11 || That is until the blood shadow tries to get in on the action with her and Lindon one day ||

[robust estuary]

||I fell in love with Yerin's Blood Shadow a lot (Going as far back as Skysworn, when we first get to really know anything about it), but this moment was when it really took off (that and when it winked at Lindon in Underlord)||

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah this moment was great haha. The wink was good too ||

[lilac vault]

Lmao (Wintersteel 7)

[lilac vault]

||Its very funny that the Sage of cold stuff is the second most bubbly person on this planet||

||And the most bubbly person in the world is the heir to the Queen of Shadows, the person whose name literally means hatred||

[robust estuary]

||This was not unintentional on Will's part||

[lilac vault]

I didn't expect it to be lmao

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/bunny-sleepy-gooba-owa-owaowa-gif-2311503198775714764

[thick bay]

||In a way, it is subverting the trope.

I actually consider her overly emotional. ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 12 || Invincible power armor, eh? ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 13 || I am dead. “What if we allowed you to marry her.” (Charity speaking to Lindon about Grace)

“We would like to act before you develop too much attachment to either of them” (speaking of Yerin and Mercy).

Uhhhhhhh yeah aboutttttt thatttttt 👀 ||

Wintersteel 13 || Oh she already knew he was into Yerin. It was a test ||

Wintersteel 13 || I also still stand that the fight with Moran or whatever his name was (really old Underlord in the broken tower or whatever it’s called again who hadn’t been actually challenged by or in danger from another Underlord in 20 years) is another example of Will doing a fantastic job of shifting POVs to really show Lindon’s progression and advancement. It’s so effective relative to just staying in Lindon’s POV. It really sells the progression fantasy and he wields those POV shifts expertly. I think it’s one of many things that really makes the books work super well ||

Wintersteel 13 || Like… seeing someone and getting insight into their background a bit and then seeing them just get demolished by Lindon + getting to be in their head while that happens is so good ||

[opal wadi]

||From Lindon's POV he's trying to limit test his side project and make some points while doing so, there's stakes but he's got most of it under control, from the enemy's POV they just met a monster that HAS to have burned their entire future for that fight alone because they just can't imagine someone fighting like that without paying an extremely heavy price ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah, it’s amazing. This book is peak ||

[robust estuary]

Traveler's Gate also has a lot of pov shifts that let you see the main characters from an outside pov, because its got a tritagonist setup and they've all got secrets and insider info about the goings-on around them, and its just as much fun there

[hollow ferry]

Good to know!

Wintersteel 14 || Eithan’s entrance 😂 ||

Wintersteel 14 || Oh my god. Not him rigging his clothes to cause him to explode at the touch of blood madra ||

Okay, this is the best book of the series

Can I give it a 6/5 now?

Wintersteel 14 || This is so ridiculous. I love it ||

[opal wadi]

https://tenor.com/view/daft-punk-epilogue-gif-20475095

[violet apex]

WS 14 ||Northstrider’s reactions sent me.
“I did not call for a clown”
“Really? I could have sworn I heard my name”||

[safe knoll]

wintersteel general ||Min Shuei and Charity are intentional subversions of their tropes||

[safe knoll]

Ws 14 ||Northstrider is just wonderful in these two books. ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 15 || “Only when sephara’s eye socket looked like a vase of flowers “ ||

[hollow ferry]

Will cooked so hard with this book

Wintersteel 16 || “We thought the increased security this time would teach you a lesson”

“I did learn quite a bit, gratitude” lmfaooooo ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 17 || Poor Mercy 🙁 ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 18 || The cocky overlord like want to play our game and Lindon’s like hell yeah. And then he sucks the silent servant dry and the games are over. Lmfaoooo ||

Wintersteel 18 || Pride giving him the veins. Has been fun seeing Pride grow to begrudgingly respect Lindon and accept that he is in fact the main character ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 20 || Ruby ||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 22 || Ruby telling Lindon “we can talk now”, but I don’t think she wants to talk to him ||

Wintersteel 22 || I think Yerin would not be happy to see Ruby is attaching herself to Lindon’s hip and nuzzling up against him so much ||

[robust estuary]

||Is this the part where I finally say Ruby is my favorite character in the whole series and has been since Underlord? Because she is||

[hollow ferry]

|| Good to know! ||

Wintersteel 23 || Each of Mercy’s “Uncanny” whispers lol when Ruby does something Yerin-ish ||

Wintersteel 24 || Ruby tried to kiss Lindon ||

[robust estuary]

||And he turned her down 😭||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 25 || OVERLORD HERALD YERUBY ||

Peak

Wintersteel 25 || Lindon is in for one hell of a surprise.

Eithan may have predicted this who ever knows with that man. I hope he’s shook too though ||

[golden void]

Wintersteel 25 || RIP Ruby, merged too soon ||

[opal wadi]

||Time to see Sophara get kicked around like a deflated ball||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 26 || ARCHLORD EITHAN ||

Wintersteel 26 || WAIT. SAGE? UNCLEAR.

Maybe not sage, “different matter entirely”. Unsure if just not trivial or not yet accomplished. Time will surely tell ||

[opal wadi]

Things are happening

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 26 || Holy wow Lindon started to tap into the way? I think? ||

[hollow ferry]

Peak is happening

Wintersteel 26 || Crusher turned and ran Lindon meanwhile is like “SPIRIT FOOD”. Also Lindon is just sweeping through these Uncrowned now 👀 Just tearing through relentlessly||

[opal wadi]

||Crusher is basically like the monster carps from Ghostwater but on turbo steroids, a giant mass of life and blood and pure strength, and Lindon is very hungry you see||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 26 || Just finished the chapter. HOW IS THIS ONLY BOOK 8 OF 12!? Holy hell. Such PEAK ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Lol yeah it was hilarious ||

[opal wadi]

This chapter has my favorite quote in the series
||I'm here to punch a hole in the sky.||

[hollow ferry]

Kinda glad my breakfast made me feel sick this morning because it made me have to lie down and take some time away from work, which is perfect for listening to a book

[hollow ferry]

|| Not my favorite, but definitely a good one ||

Time to wrap this up before a meeting

Wintersteel 27 || “I am the end” ||

[opal wadi]

||Devoured... Pure madra devouring... Whirlpool... I am a whirlpool...
That's it! a bottomless pit! Emptiness... Endless... THAT'S IT!
I am the end||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 27 || “kill me like you killed my”

“Lindon blasted dragons breath through her chest exactly like he’d killed Akari”

I actually laughed 💀 ||

[opal wadi]

If you're asking, yes
||Lindon did the thing||

[hollow ferry]

WINTERSTEEL 27 || THE BADGE. EMPTY. UNSOULED. THE CALLBACK! ALSO UNDERLORD ICON, OVERLORD HERALD, AND AN ARCHLORD. OUR SQUAD MY GOD ||

[opal wadi]

||Void Sage babyyyyy||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 27 || ZEAL IS IN FACT JOINING THE SQUAD.

Power rangers fortress assembled.

YERIN KISSED LINDON AND HE KISSED HER BACK! ABOUT DAMN TIME!!!!

THEY GOING BACK TO SACRED VALLEY!?||

Peak

Book was peak

My god it was PEAK

I have no words

No notes. Absolute perfection

https://tenor.com/view/absolute-cinema-raccoon-absolute-cinema-gif-17862327649353748812

[opal wadi]

It's so peak

[opal wadi]

||Ziel, also known as Sleepyhead, Nap King and Depression Man||

[hollow ferry]

I think that may have been one of the most fun books I’ve read all year

Wintersteel all || That escalation of conflict at the end and the absolute non-stop progression of it all. SO MUCH HAPPENED! ||

[gritty socket]

Wintersteel is an unmitigated banger

[hollow ferry]

Help I can’t stop

Bloodline 1 || “You’re a sage yourself now, call me charity”

Group’s collective jaw drop ||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 2 || Dross asking why Lindon didn’t kill Daji

“My name isn’t Mercy” ||

https://tenor.com/view/ohhhhh-gif-20235380

Same tags || That’s cold ||

Bloodline 2 || Second mention of threshold I’ve heard in the series ||

[lilac vault]

Mon-arch (Wintersteel 8)

[hollow ferry]

I apologize to inform you that there is basically no chance you surpass me again. I eagerly await your reactions to the peak you will soon experience

[lilac vault]

Yeah I coulda told you that yesterday lmao

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 3 || Dross is about to jinx this whole operation with the whole “could be worse, there could be 2 dreadgods” comment ||

Bloodline 3 || Also so hyped to see Lindon return to Sacred Valley ||

Bloodline 3 || Wait a minute. Did the guy in unsouled not immediately get restricted to Jade?

I’m so curious now about the mechanics that got him there. Was he a sage? A herald? A monarch? Surely not a monarch. Who was he again? ||

[opal wadi]

||According to Will he ascended at around Archlord with some planning and luck, but after ascension he became much more powerful to the point I'd put him ever so slightly above the aveage Monach but not so much that he'd split the wold in half, he thought himself capable of fighting the Dreadgods. The supression field didn't affect him much maybe because most of his power now comes from different sources and the scripts aren't advanced or stong enough to nerf him ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Oh I forgot he was an ascended dude ||

[thick bay]

No, they haven't reached the peak yet.

[mighty totem]

just went through your reactions and I am very very disappointed that there are no mentions of (wintersteel) ||Monarch fury||

:(((

[opal wadi]

||I love BREAK it's so peak, you're like "Wait... WHAT?" my friend was laughing at just him fighting until I paused and told him "You do know he just did a Sage command right?" and he paused, and started going crazy||

[mighty totem]

i was in a bus and I gasped so hard that people looked at me funny

[lilac vault]

LMFAO (Wintersteel 9)

I said it before and I'll say it again

This is the FUNNIEST character trait

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel all || I love monarch fury. It’s just that I only had so much time to finish the book before my meeting and of all the wild stuff that happened, that was one of the least wild of the wild (still super awesome and wild though and the fight + his moments were super cool) ||

Bloodline 5 || Elder Rem hating Lindon and all from the Wei clan and being like I shouldn’t have treated you nicely unsouled.

As if everything that happened to heaven’s glory wasn’t stuff they brought down upon themselves through their backwards ass ways. Rem was nice to Lindon back then though and Lindon did rob him blind so like that part is justified. But everything else? Nah ||

Bloodline 6 || The dream remnants in the heaven’s ascent or whatever ran from Lindon

I so love the contrast from when we were last here ||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 6 || Kelsa has spotted Blackflame Lindon ||

Bloodline 6 || Omg not Lindon throwing the arrow back through the elder and leaving a CRATER.

And it’s the first thing seen by Kelsa of new OP Lindon lol ||

Bloodline 6 || Lindon is just showing off now I swear ||

[opal wadi]

The aura farming book

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 7 || This isn’t fun anymore. Poor Lindon 😢 ||

Bloodline 7 || Oh it’s even less fun than I thought 2 seconds ago. He broke down and wept ||

Bloodline 7 || Emotional ping pong particularly after Wintersteel ||

[opal wadi]

Bloodline general safe for spooky
||This book is frustrating, on purpose, Will really nailed down how frustrating Sacred Valley is to normal people, why the Sword Sage by the end wanted to just kill everyone because they act lower than animals, and Lindon is a better man than me because if it were me half the valley would be ash and ruin by the first two days ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Oh yeah I mean it’s great so far. Just… our poor MC ||

[long gorge]

Bloodlines || such a painful read like ugh I reallywanted him to go in a murder frenzy||

[hollow ferry]

Alright, I’ll aim to finish book 9 tomorrow. About 4 hours left.

[lilac vault]

https://tenor.com/view/leblanc-le-blanc-arcane-leblanc-league-of-legends-arcane-gif-4890440236806663789

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 9 || Sage of Twin Stars. Badass name ngl ||

Bloodline 9 || I kinda love Ziel ||

Bloodline 9 || Lee clan matriarch ||

Bloodline 9 || Jai Long is kinda funny with his extreme distrust ||

Bloodline 10 || Oh this ignorant, cocky iron ||

Bloodline 10 || Lmfao the wood cracked against Lindon’s cheek ||

Bloodline 10 || “He couldn’t hurl an iron in the sky for doing as he’d asked”

But he totally could ||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 11 || He really should just eradicate heavens glory at this point.

Ugh, I’m part of the problem now ||

Bloodline 11 || Oh they’re helping lol. Supposedly? ||

Bloodline 11 || Oh… ||

Bloodline 11 || Yeah, eradication would be best at this point ||

Bloodline 11 || Yeah…. Sacred Valley can all rot ||

Bloodline 11 || Like I can see their perspective but also they can rot ||

Bloodline 11 || Making the first elder walk using authority. Hell yeah. Crippling the patriarch spiritually. Hell yeah.

I want to see the patriarch weep at all he has lost ||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 12 || “You’ve done a bad thing Elder Ram”

Eithan is so fun ||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 13 || Last book I had thought about Yerin using her prize from the tournament to save sacred valley for Lindon, but honestly? Now? I think Sacred Valley should just burn.

Yerin asking at this point after everything about using her prize for that though speaks to her character and does make the gesture even more powerful ||

Bloodline 13 || Reagan Shen. WHY? What is his plan? Obviously he’s trying to do something crazy. But just what that is exactly I couldn’t say.

Involves the 5th Dreadgod/father of them. How are dreadgods birthed or made again? I can’t quite recall. Does he want to become one? Surely not, that wouldn’t make sense. Or at least gain the power of one? Maybe. 🤔 ||

Okay. That’s all for this morning. Will finish the book after work

[thick bay]

Cradle all ||We do find that some of them there are really cool though. ||

[robust estuary]

My fancy copies of Skysworn through Underlord shipped 🥳
They're going to my mom's place in Florida because Kickstarter wouldn't let me change which state they're shipped to for tax reasons and I don't want to ever speak to my previous roommates 😭

[mighty totem]

Can I interest you in some "Heroes Wanted: A Fantasy Anthology" ? It has a ||Ziel|| side story :3

[hollow ferry]

Duly noted

[mighty totem]

the ebook is free

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 10 ||I think when Yerin becomes a Sage, she's gonna be the Sage of the Blood Sword||

[lilac vault]

LMAO (Wintersteel 11)

[lilac vault]

NOOOOOOO

Wintersteel 11 ||THE BLOOD SHADOW ATE THE RABBIT||

Now I understand how she feels!

||Spoke too soon, it's okay!||

[opal wadi]

||SLANDER, SHE WOULD NEVER||

[opal wadi]

Dreadgod reread
||We've been a bit on and off with this one because scheduling, but my friend is liking it so far but my guess is that he thinks this isn't going to be as peak as Wintersteel or Reaper.||
||He's not ready for Four, the other Four.||

Dreadgod
||"Do you have any idea how strong the other three will become?"||
||Lindon:||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 15 || Not his mom being like what the hell do you see in my son of all people. ||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 16 || Two dreadgods and not even on the book called Dreadgod yet ||

[opal wadi]

||It could be three!||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 17 || Current speculation is that Dreadgod book is either the threat of awakened Daddy Dreadgod, or Ronald Reagan Shen Dreadgod edition ||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline 17 || “I advance”

As do I, through these books. I will finish this book before midnight so I can log it as having been finished in a day. Why? Because I can ||

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline all || Elder Whisper going to tell Lindon how to kill the dreadgods eh? 👀 Interesting stuff.

Enjoyed that book quite a bit. Really cool stuff going on and the return to sacred valley was really well handled imo

And with yet another book down, I advance ||

[opal wadi]

||What do you think about Dross dying||

[hollow ferry]

|| I currently believe it to be a fake out. This may be denial ||

[hollow ferry]

@opal wadi Reaper Prologue || Why would I be screaming? We already know Azriel left the bead. It was in the message, wasn’t it? ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Bloodline all: ||Why? Lindon's carrying around Dross's corpse after all||

[opal wadi]

||Ozriel, but isn't it interesting having a whole book for this man's backstory.||

[dreamy sorrel]

Beat me to it Nick

[hollow ferry]

Bloodline all || It said he isn’t really dead and that he may end up retaining his personality. So he only really is dead if he ends up with a new personality when he recovers ||

[dreamy sorrel]

||Yeah, probably more accurate to say Dross is in a coma...||

[hollow ferry]

|| That feels like a bit of a spoiler. I didn’t piece together that the book was going to be dedicated to providing his backstory ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah… he’ll be fine, I’m sure. He’s part of the core squad. There are rules around this stuff ||

|| I recognize he may not be fine ||

[opal wadi]

||Well the book is called Reaper and there's like only one character named that||

[hollow ferry]

|| But one can hope. Or be grateful for the time we had with Dross and enjoy whatever Will has cooked up for Dross 2.0 ||

[opal wadi]

||Bad End: Dross comes back speaking like chat gpt||

[hollow ferry]

|| “You’re totally right! That is the bad end. I’ll make some adjustments to my speech to sound less like chat gpt - totally” ||

Sorry, forgot an em-dash

[thick bay]

||He was already chat gpt, but he hit 500 messages so he died. 😭||

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle general: ||So I'm finally making my Yerin Magic deck. Now to figure out what to add. Swords obviously, but what else? How do I represent Yerin's story?||

[thick bay]

||Wouldn't she be fire black? ||

[dreamy sorrel]

||Listen, it was hard to find a good color combo! Black red didn't have any cards I was happy with||

[opal wadi]

Cradle ALL
||Blood, swords, and the power of friendship! and monster slayers! TO KILL MONSTERS||

[thick bay]

||I'll stand on Lindon being Blue Green though.||

[opal wadi]

Cradle ALL
||I love "To Kill Monsters." goes so hard as a revelation, that's what she will do, what she will use her strength for, To Kill Monsters so no one will ever have to suffer or be alone again.||

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle all: ||Don't forget clones. For Ruby||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 1 || Ronald Reagan Shen wants to take control of all 5 dreadgods and use them as a weapon. That sounds about right. While also being even nuttier of a goal than expected.

Nice. That will surely go smooth as a sword down the throat||

[dreamy sorrel]

Reaper 1: ||Don't give Yerin any ideas||

[opal wadi]

||"I'll try to wrangle these four creatures that each is as strong as a group of Monarchs, surely I can manage this and this will not backfire in any way."||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 2 || That opening Ozmanthus section of the chapter was dope ||

[pseudo sedge]

||look, surely you swirl a wine glass enough times and the creatures will be like yes, this guy||

[hollow ferry]

|| It’s always ego and hubris ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle all: ||Today is the day hunger aura is strong in the US. Thanksgiving, the day of hunger||

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 13 ||"Consider yourself as you are now. What is the nature of the will that drives you? What principles guide your madra?"||

||Dude I will be so happy if Lindon's Overlord revelation is "I just really want as much stuff as I can get"||

||"I want POINTS!"||

Wintersteel 14 ||Eithan vs Yan Shoumei, eh.||

||I'm starting to really like Shoumei now that I'm learning more about her||

Wintersteel 14 ||Why do I feel like Eithan had something to do with Ziel being offered that reward||

||Ziel could obtain the power ups of advancing to Overlord and Archlord TWICE over, and that feels like a very Eithan move||

[lilac vault]

||OOF, Ziel's loss is rough||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 3 || Lindon finding out that he is now the patriarch of a sect Oh Eithan, never change ||

Oh yeah this book is now my namesake kinda

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 4 || I don’t remember his father being this much of a prick in Unsouled ||

Reaper 4 || Ugh I hate him so much ||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 4 || “He understood the truth that London had been forcibly advanced. But he couldn’t help but think of it as a waste. What could someone else have accomplished with those same resources?”

I want to punch this man. New least favorite character maybe ||

[safe knoll]

welcome to the club

[hollow ferry]

|| I hope to see him consistently, intensely humbled ||

Reaper 4 || Naru Wan kicking Eithan so hard he goes flying and then immediately requesting a blank dream tablet to record the memory Love it ||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 5 || Little Blue slapping Kelsa around like it’s nothing and then being like “Are you sure this is okay?” is hilarious ||

[coral hatch]

I averaged a book a day in my first read

[hollow ferry]

Yeah I’m slow lol

And only so much free time as well

[coral hatch]

Nah I was insane

Was going through a really stressful time so all my free time was cradle pretty much

[mighty totem]

I binged cradle during my university commute

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 9 || Hmm I wonder if Ozriel somehow is subject 1. Probability of that seems low ||

[mighty totem]

the first 4 books took almost a year to get through, I only listened to them on long, inter-city bus rides

book 5 made me way too interested so it replaced music for me

[hollow ferry]

Yeah I think I really got back into reading heavily back in college when I was commuting an hour to and from there.

Though Audible says I joined in 2014 so I guess I must have done a little audiobook listening back in high school

[coral hatch]

I did that with half of critical role campaign 2

I had 2hs minimum of commute every day mon-fri so I listened to it during my commute

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 15 ||First round of Sophara vs Mercy was a win for Mercy. I expect the second will be a Sophara win. I'm not sure who will win the third, but dramatic stakes dictate that Sophara will win the third. If Sophara loses here, then Yan Shoumei is the final boss.||

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/minion-fight-gif-1359602100105919268

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 15 ||Yep, Mercy lost. Now it's up to Yerin to beat her||