Willverse

[lilac vault]

||I don't think she will||

||I said this before but I think Sophara will win, and Lindon will have to help in beating her because she's gonna try killing him with Penance||

[thick bay]

||In Yerin we trust. 🫡 ||

[mighty totem]

that actually gives me an idea, I can listen to the d20 series now

I was trying to find something to replace cradle for a while (as an audiobook)

[hollow ferry]

Less progress today than I would have liked.

[opal wadi]

The dragon sometimes takes a break

[thick bay]

The dragon.... advances in another direction.

[boreal oasis]

so, Willheads, would Plotweaver work well for a Willverse ttrpg?

[robust estuary]

I'd certainly be interested to see, because the website definitely makes it sound like it'd work...

[lilac vault]

||Yerin got a Devil Fruit!|| Wintersteel 18

||What did Reigan Shen give Yerin?||

||If Northstrider's is the last, then where is Shen's?||

||I assume Malice didn't give her one because she's sponsoring Yerin||

[hollow ferry]

My gf has begun Unsouled!

Can’t wait for her to get to Unsouled all || Lindon beating up children ||

[lilac vault]

LMAO

Wintersteel 18 ||NORTHSTRIDER GAVE YERIN A HYPERBOLIC TIME CHAMBER||

[lilac vault]

Ah I needed patience

||Oh snap, the Redmoon Herald was the Sage's blood shadow? Did we know that before?||

[lilac vault]

ABSOLUTELY SAVAGE (Wintersteel 19)

[opal wadi]

||I find that entire exchange hilarious, they trolled her hard. Northstrider was like "See that thing? that's what your sister died trying to get, your dead sister that died, and the thing that let you go as far as you have was crafted by me." and Charity was like "Here's a statue of your dead sister, the sister that's dead, yes that sister."||

[lilac vault]

||If Sophara wasn't such an asshole, I'd almost feel bad||

[robust estuary]

||"Your dead sister that died" is gonna stay rolling around in my head for the rest of my life, incredible rhythm to it, and hilarious on its own||

[lilac vault]

||Northstrider gave her something she already had, mind||

[dreamy sorrel]

Wintersteel 19: ||IIRC Sophara didn't have ghostwater before. Ekari visited Ghostwater, and you don't need it to advance to underlord||

[hollow ferry]

Wintersteel 19 || Nah I’m pretty sure there was a bit about Sophara having it but not knowing it was from Northstrider? I should know, this was only a few days ago. ||

[final quest]

Wintersteel 19 || Sophara got some ghostwater as a mental enhancement from a different round, I think it was her gift from shen at some point, it was mentioned in here fight against mercy, and northstrider knows that she has it so that's the bit ||

[lilac vault]

She did

||She used it against Mercy||

||And yes, she didn't know it was from Northstrider until he told her||

[jade notch]

Wintersteel 19 ||Sophara already had a drop of Ghostwater before the tournament started. She received a second one from Northstrider as her prize||

[zenith kayak]

Wintersteel 19 ||Lindon was planning around her Gw time in round 2||

[hollow ferry]

Unsouled all || My gf feels bad for Lindon currently since he’s on his way to Heaven’s Glory and was told life is going to get much harder, and she suggested I stop talking about punching 8 year olds in the restaurant because people may overhear me and lack the proper context ||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 19 || Shen fight was cool.

Grim Destructor Dross is uhhh… yep…

Genesis 👀

Part of me wonders if Ozriel created the dreadgods as part of that final try to lift up his ancestors mentioned at the start of the book. Still doubt that though. ||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 23 || So yeah was wrong about the dreadgods. Anyways I forgot to mention earlier but can we talk about Lindon’s sister trying to start a relationship with the man who cut off his arm ||

Reaper 23 || Yeah he’s trying to become a Dreadgod. This will go well. Book 11 seemingly going to be dealing with repercussions of this ||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 24 || Fascinating… Ozriel cloaked so he is still alive seemingly. Though he miscalculated a bit because mad king did in fact get a threatening weapon. Oops. ||

Reaper 24 || Lindon taking control of the labyrinth is pretty dope ||

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 24 || Marble light went out. That’s…troubling ||

Reaper 25 || Oh snap, mad king is coming and now Malice is recognizing she should care for her daughter and her safety. Flip of a switch. Dang ||

Reaper 25 || This is a very cool escalation of threat level ||

Reaper 25 || The collective panic ||

Reaper 25 || “I’m proud of you Lindon” ||

[opal wadi]

🍿

[hollow ferry]

Reaper 25 || Is this going where I think? Is Eithan actually Ozriel? ||

[pseudo sedge]

Reaper 25 ||wdym he's just a silly little guy||

[opal wadi]

Reaper 25 ||He did said he is the best janitor in existence||

I think spooky dead

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/absolute-peak-absolute-cinema-peak-peak-game-absolute-gif-974229005675599505

[hollow ferry]

I must move to you-people to properly expletive

[opal wadi]

https://tenor.com/view/fire-writing-gif-24533171

[hollow ferry]

But first I am going to finish this

Actually

Reaper 25 || “You ruined everything” ||

[opal wadi]

@hollow ferry Reaper 25 BIG ATOMIC SPOILERS ||If you recall, Eithan says something when he's properly introduced in Soulsmith, he looks into Lindon's pocket and sees the marble, and what does he say?||

||"That was created by someone on Eithan's own level."||

https://tenor.com/view/the-universe-tim-and-eric-mind-blown-mind-blown-meme-mind-explosion-mind-explosion-meme-gif-18002878

[hollow ferry]

Safe for me I presume?

[opal wadi]

yes

Safe for you

[hollow ferry]

But god damn this man sure knows how to cook

[opal wadi]

not for anyone else trying to peek

[robust estuary]

Reaper 25 ||My favorite is the moment back in Underlord when Eithan reveals he's on the Blackflame team by asking Yerin how old she thought he was||

[hollow ferry]

|| OH. MY. GOD. ||

@green junco Don’t you dare click any spoilers

READ THE BOOKS. JOIN THE PEAK

[zenith kayak]

Don't make me wish we had a spraybottle emoji Cosmic!

[hollow ferry]

I don’t know if any other books have ever had me gesturing wildly in the air while listening but Wintersteel and Reaper both have had me doing so

Wintersteel involved a lot more wild gesturing

But this chapter also provoked wild gesturing

Testament to how god damn hard Will Wight cooks

My god

This series

[zenith kayak]

Reaper 25 ||Per your musings in YP, I'll gladly agree that Wintersteel as a whole is better than Reaper, but that's mostly because I feel like dungeoncrawling is a poor fit for Cradle, while a tournament arc is bang-on. This chapter is definitely a very high high though||

[green junco]

I WASNT GONNA DX

I was just peeking 🫣

[opal wadi]

Walk as thou on a minefield

[green junco]

Also ill read cradle, I will! But eepy you and nick HAVE to read red rising 👀

[hollow ferry]

Yeah this is a really freaking big minefield

[hollow ferry]

I will be reading red rising next year when the red god release date is a month or two away

[coral hatch]

What is cosmic doing here

[green junco]

https://tenor.com/view/eevee-jumps-gif-2696845723667273642

[coral hatch]

HAWAY with you til you start reading

( Hi cosmic 🙂 )

[green junco]

Fine fine~ I shall return (hi sweet pea )

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah I wholeheartedly agree. Tournament arc + the cascading escalation at the end of Wintersteel was so incredibly well done. I could truly see those events at the end happening and it was peak ||

God this series is goated

Reaper 26 || Oh dang I’ll miss the dynamic with Eithan in book 11 ||

Reaper 26 || Lindon is hungry for that advancement and power haha ||

Reaper 26 || Lindon was hand-chosen and trained by probably the most powerful being in the universe Lmfao ||

[thick bay]

||I remember back then, asking yall how old he was, Yall avoided answering. ||

[opal wadi]

||Two, actually||

[hollow ferry]

|| Very true lol ||

[lilac vault]

What the hell is happening

Lmfao

[opal wadi]

DO NOT CLICK

NOTHING

[lilac vault]

Ohhh I know what this is

It's when the Grim Reaper from Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy shows up!

https://tenor.com/view/grim-adventures-of-billy-and-mandy-grim-billy-and-mandy-coffee-need-coffee-gif-4138803929491374695

[thick bay]

I listened to these books while walking and at some points I had to stop walking and put a react in here.

[thick bay]

Reaper 25 ||Ghostwater was my favorite book. It felt like half way a tournament and halfway a crawler.||

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/spraying-disinfect-lilo-and-stitch-lilo-stitch-gif-16694753

[hollow ferry]

Totally valid haha

2 books remaining

Plus a short story collection

It goes so quickly

[thick bay]

I read up to Iron Gold.

[green junco]

Im not gonna hijack this place for my propaganda but do know it's great

[thick bay]

Yeah this channel is for us you propagandize you to get you to read it and talk about reaper ||spoilers|| that you can't click yet.
And even make small references that you wouldn't even get until you get to that part like... Yall remember the knife?

[hollow ferry]

@green junco Cradle books are short reads!

We can propaganda too

[green junco]

Ive seen 👀

[safe knoll]

reaper all ||from Soulsmith||

[hollow ferry]

Oh my gosh

[safe knoll]

reaper all ||also, now that you've finished reaper you can read/listen to the spoiler scenes Will wrote later. the audio is on Travis Baldree's youtube channel, or we can link it to you||

||https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbFjBrY9jBErctZuWeXU0ggDQf-3w2Hmk&si=1Ls_ohGzG1JYz5RU||

[zenith kayak]

Reaper all ||My personal headcanon is that he was specifically able to conjure the Broom Icon during that debate because it turned it into a clean sweep.||

|| (I don't remember when exactly it was briefly mentioned (it was definitely before Reaper All), but the Arelius Patriarch reached Sagehood (or at least touched on an icon) during a debate that was so devastating, it directly lead to the suicides of some number of the participants.)||

[safe knoll]

||the circumstances and location are important for manifesting an Icon, so yeah||

[safe knoll]

||it was mentioned in Unsouled, in info report by Suriel iirc, and in Oz's flashback in Reaper||

[cloud zinc]

i'll do this trade

[green junco]

Where did you come from 🤣

Sure lets do it, ive won!! 🤩

[cloud zinc]

https://tenor.com/view/game-changer-dropout-sam-reich-ive-been-here-the-whole-time-gif-25231055

[cloud zinc]

once you start reacting to cradle red rising goes into my kindle library or onto my physical shelf

or i buy them at dsnx

either works

[thick bay]

||The thing is, he really is lying here. He isn't the last of the line, he was the start of the line.||

[thick bay]

||Wasn't that the thing we're pretty much anything could be an icon he argued? And they all crashed out?||

[thick bay]

And once you get to Iron Gold, I will start it and we get the mods to make a Red Rising thread.

[hollow ferry]

Today is Dreadgod day

May just listen to the book all day. We will see

[mighty totem]

I am so excited for you to get to a very specific fight in waybound

ACTUALLY WAIT dreadgod has a really cool one too

oh man this series is too good

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod prologue || This is so interesting 👀 ||

Dreadgod prologue || On one hand I totally understand why they’re pissed. On the other I like and empathize with Eithan ||

Dreadgod 1 || This is going to be really interesting I feel, as they can no longer lean on Eithan for help ||

Dreadgod 1 || Oh no, Evil Dross continues ||

Dreadgod 1 || Eithan is the superior version of himself. This is all making Eithan’s comments about being with Lindon and Yerin and everyone the happiest he has ever been hit much harder. He’s so different, though you can see little pieces of Eithan still in his old Cradle version of himself ||

[safe knoll]

he's my favorite tbh

most of his quotes go hard

[hollow ferry]

Same tags || I think he’s fun for sure. Poor Lindon though ||

Dreadgod 2 || This talk of this couple going on a tour and just traveling and stuff feels so out of place relative to everything else in Cradle so far lol. Like the idea of people in this world just saving up money to go on vacation my brain doesn’t compute What do you mean everyone isn’t a sacred artist trying to advance and dealing with mundane murder ||

[safe knoll]

dg2 ||the welder lady is from Emriss' lands. if there were "civilized" lands on Cradle, they would be on Everwood ||

[lilac vault]

LMAO ||SHOUMEI THINKS NORTHSTRIDER IS HOT|| Wintersteel 20

LMAO ||BIG RED||

||They shoulda did that||

Wintersteel 21 ||Oh I bet that the third round will have Yerin be defeated but Ruby will be allowed.to keep fighting because it's more human than Crusher||

||LMAO Yerin just throwing shade on Malice to her face||

||Yeah, Malice is saying the same thing I thought. Yerin can't become the Sage of Endless Sword because she's too different. She will become the Sage of the Blood Sword||

||YERIN IS GONNA DO THE TELEPORT BEHIND U THING|| Wintersteel 22

||Yerin talking about how unfair it is that Sophara gets a mini-Monarch, and yeah Sophara clearly got the big advantage, but Yerin's is certainly useful in combat and she isn't considering it||

||LMAO RUBY JUST LEAVES BY HERSELF||

||Lindon gets his own built in harem with Yerin and Yerin 2||

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 23 ||I think Yerin's revelation is that she isn't Adama. She has been trying to live up to his legacy all this time, and Min Shuei is trying to turn her into a copy of him, and I think she'll get to the point where she snaps and says that she isn't him and that's how she learns ||

Yep

Literally one page later lmao

[robust estuary]

||I love how far in advance you can see the Lord revelations. The Underlord ones stand out most, especially on a reread, but it really is possible to call them all||

[lilac vault]

||I never had an idea for the Underlord ones||

||Yerin's is the only one I've actually figured out and I did it a single page in advance||

||No clue on Lindon's||

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 2 || This Kerani silent king scene is super cool. The dead body. The other woman not seeing it and stepping on it. The horror of it is dope ||

[lilac vault]

How many years has it been since Unsouled

Two?

[hollow ferry]

I believe something like that yeah. Not many

Dreadgod 2 || Grim Destroyer Dross is amusing.

But yeah the horror vibe of this scene is super sick. Honestly I think I dig it more than the majority of the plot of Reaper. Like the Eithan reveal was dope but I’m more excited about the plot of this book than the labyrinth crawl ||

[robust estuary]

Six, it was released in 2019

[lilac vault]

In universe

Not in real life

[robust estuary]

Ah, yeah

[zenith kayak]

Wintersteel General ||So, there was like maybe a month between leaving SV and the end of Soulsmith, and a full year between that the start of Skysworn.||

||Then I wanna Ghostwater took place over the course of like a month? And Underlord was like 3 months, with training at the Akuras and the leadup to the tournament being another like 6, so it's probably been around 2 years since Lindon met Yerin.||

[lilac vault]

Wintersteel 24 ||Its time for the BIG MOMENT||

[hollow ferry]

I think you mean 24

[dreamy sorrel]

Dreadgod 1: ||I'd argue less evil and more goth Dross||

[lilac vault]

Yes

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 1 || Yeah I roll more with “Grim Destroyer Dross” ||

[lilac vault]

FOCUSONDDINDICJENFNF

||YERIN DID THE THING GOKU DID TO CELL WHERE HE TELEPORTED UNDERNEATH HIM AFTER CHARGING THE KAMEHAMEHA|| Wintersteel 24

https://tenor.com/view/goku-ssj-full-power-vs-cell-gif-5475913177167311200

||Damn, Round 1 is a loss for Yerin||

||Wow, round 2 is a loss too|| Wintersteel 25

||Not going so hot||

[zenith fossil]

🍿

[dreamy sorrel]

👀

[lilac vault]

||There is no such thing as an Overlord Herald. Until now.||

PEAK

||IF YOU START AT THE SAME TIME AS SHE DOES, THE BATTLE WILL BE TOO SHORT||

||AURA||

||Once again, if Sophara wasn't such an asshole, I would almost feel bad for her||

||FURY WHAT|| Wintersteel 25

||BRO JUST CASUALLY ASCENDING||

Wintersteel 26 ||DID YOU FORGET MY NAME||

||THE SEISHEN KINGDOM IS WORKING WITH REIGAN SHEN||

||DID EITHAN ADVANCE TO ARCHLORD WHEN WE WEREN'T LOOKING||

||HE TOTALLY DIIIID||

[zenith fossil]

Peak

[hollow ferry]

Peak

[lilac vault]

Peak

||LMAO CRUSHER JUST LEAVES||

||Well Shoumei is alive. That's good. We get more of her||

||I'm shocked they killed Grace||

||"I'm here to punch a hole in the sky"
GOOD CALLBACK||

||SIX HUNDRED AND FOURTY FOUR||

||Yerin, stab him|| Wintersteel 27

WHAT

||WAIT DID HE GET AN ICON?!||

||THE SAGE OF THE END?!||

||And Sesh is dead, just like that. I expected him to be a far greater threat.||

Savage

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH (Wintersteel 27)

||AND NOW LINDON GOES BACK TO SACRED VALLEY, ONCE AGAIN AS AN UNSOULED||

That's awesome lmfao

[thick bay]

||Not the aura, that's cheating he's all about aura farming ||

[lilac vault]

||JAI LONG IS BACK||

[thick bay]

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

[lilac vault]

||Ziel is joining along with us!||

I FINISHED WINTERSTEEL, PEAK ENDING

That ending was NUTS

||We never learned what Yerin got from the Monarchs||

[hollow ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/peak-its-so-peak-praying-hands-praying-black-guy-gif-9969548697603007069

[golden void]

||I don't think she's asked for it yet?||

[hollow ferry]

|| This is correct ||

[hallow cypress]

https://tenor.com/view/it's-just-so-peak-peak-panda-peak-panda-it's-just-so-peak-gif-10789048890486755182

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 4 || Lindon lording over Jai Long. The contrast to earlier books is so wild. Especially when you think about how only a few years have passed in these books ||

[lilac vault]

WAIT (Wintersteel full)

I SAID THAT AS A JOKE LMAO

Something I'll say for this series

And I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not

||There is a serious amount of protagonist-centric morality here.||

It's probably fine, it's just something I find myself thinking about a lot

||Like yeah logically, I know that our guys are the good guys. The Dragons killed a lot of people, the Dreadgod cults were actively trying to kill good people on orders of men who don't care about them, they are by all rights the bad guys, but it still feels a tad bit odd that I feel bad for them but the characters don't.|| Wintersteel full

Probably just overthinking it

[robust estuary]

||I felt the same way in Wintersteel, it was part of what led to it being my least favorite of the series (Though my reread put Ghostwater and Bloodline in the running to potentially dethrone it). Everyone felt like they were just... being really crappy people in an unfun way, with Eithan striking a deal with Reigan Shen, and Lindon's obsession with points, to detriment of the wellbeing of his allies and friends, to Yerin... well, Yerin was pretty innocent, but I loved Ruby so so much, and I felt like she got done really dirty, especially wrt to the names Charity and Min Shuei floated for her when they all decided she needed a name. Notably, the other two books have a chance of dethroning it as my favorite in part because this was more fun on my reread, not just because the others didn't shine as bright||

[lilac vault]

||None of those I had much of a problem with.
Eithan threw because he had faith in Yerin and Mercy, and because he got important things out of it (namely instant Archlord ascension), and Malice allowed it (Plus, it doesn't feel as severe because realistically, I have very little reason to care for Malice as a person. She's probably just as bad as Seshethkunaaz, but because her daughter is one of the MCs, she is given more love by the narrative than Sesh).
The points thing is basically just a gag. They never really showed it as too detrimental to the party, outside of that small scene with Grace in Lindon's tent where Lindon immediately agreed to lighten up a bit. The thing with Lindon that had me be more "Ayo wtf" is him just sucking up people with his arm and permanently crippling them. Especially with that one dude near the end of the book that Dross tossed out "By the way, this guy actually hated Sesh and adopted eight human orphans". Lindon doesn't really dwell on that.||

||As for the Ruby thing, that's fair, but I think the difference is that we ARE supposed to feel for Ruby a lot more. We're not supposed to agree with Min Shuei's, or even Yerin's, feelings about her||

||Ruby being assimilated into Yerin at the end is treated as somewhat sad, though it's slightly toned down because there's aspects of her still in there. But the idea that Ruby has been fighting all this time to be her own person, she finally gets that, and then she chooses to give it up because it's not what Lindon would want.||

||But yeah, the thing that gets me is, other than humanizing Yan Shoumei and Calan Archer and then not really doing much beyond that granted i get it, i get why lindon wouldnt care, he didnt know that side of them and they were actively trying to kill mercy; plus yan shoumei is still alive is showing Lindon as an absolute demon, eating people and crippling them for life, and then not really dwelling on the morality of it||

||It's just hard to know how much of this is valid because, by and large, Lindon IS a good person, and he is mostly acting in self defense by people who are actively trying to kill him. Even when he was point hunting, all of the people he was fighting were people who WOULD kill him in a heartbeat if given the chance||

[safe knoll]

Wintersteel all || Calan Archer and Lindon are a lot alike. Lindon would fit very well into a Dreadgod cult, if he didn't have Eithan and Yerin. And yeah, Lindon eats people's souls, but the book pretends that it's fine because he doesn't kill them. Jai Long and Jai Chen how weak and crippled people get treated on Cradle ||

||Then if you think about the points a bit longer, you realise how messed up they are. The whole gamification of war thing. Very Cradle. But still messed up||

[safe knoll]

||and he was. It kind of shows how terrifying Pennance is. Yerin just deleted the most powerful sacred artist on the planet ||

[lilac vault]

||I mean tbf, most of the points being awarded were for scripts or for the masks of the Abyssal cultists. Fury didn't even say to kill them, which is showing a lot of restraint for Fury.||

[safe knoll]

||Fury didn't reward kills because if his side went to far, the enemy Overlords, Archlords, and Heralds would've wiped out Akura golds||

[lilac vault]

Out of curiosity, how big of a role do the Abidan get in Wight's other works?

I assume that his other works are in the same multiverse under the perview of the Abidan, yeah?

[inner loom]

Answer || Yeah they all take place in the same multiverse. The role of the Abidan varies depending on the series. In Traveler’s gate they have 0 screen time and 0 impact. In Elder Empire they have very little screen time but big impact, in The Last Horizon they have no screentime (so far) but the amount of impact they have is unclear (there are popular theories, some people disagree with them) ||

[lilac vault]

||So basically this is the only one with any amount of screentime for them||

[inner loom]

|| pretty much yeah ||

Also Will has mentioned that his next book (standalone) will begin with || the main character getting isekaied by a member of the Abidan ||

[golden void]

Wintersteel all ||I think heat already knows this, but the names Charity and Min Shuei suggested for Ruby are all nicknames the fandom were using up until this book||

[lilac vault]

I did not know that

Lmfao

[robust estuary]

It was painfully obvioua to me at the time and is probably the nadir of Will's humor for me. He's a bit hit or miss but usually he hits for me

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 9 || Lindon scheming is very fun ||

I foresee myself probably putting this book over Reaper personally but we shall see

[opal wadi]

It's part of what I call the sprint arc
From Reaper to here the story just speeds up and sprints to the finish line

No time to stop we advancing

[hollow ferry]

Makes sense

Also my gf started Soulsmith last night

[opal wadi]

The best part of going over Waybound with my friend is that I GET TO SEND THE FISH

I'm so hyped

[robust estuary]

The fish 🕶️

[hollow ferry]

I am curious

Going to try to finish Dreadgod tonight

[spice socket]

One of these days I will go back to last horizon

But not today

I fear I have not felt this amount of momentum to read HWFWM in like 3 books so my time needs to go to that lmao

[humble bluff]

<> B(

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 9 || And they were crawling across the floor slower than a couple of…
“Snails”, orthos thought firmly.

Lmfaoooo that one is so good ||

[hollow ferry]

How We Flirted With Manatees?

(Genuinely curious what HWFWM actually is)

Oh wait, he who fights with monsters?

[opal wadi]

He will find wistful marmots

[hollow ferry]

Haughty Walruses Fabricate Willful Manipulations

[spice socket]

Tbh that might have been more interesting than books 4-6 of monsters

[thick bay]

He Wei Findon Wills Manifestation.

[spice socket]

That’s a sale I can’t argue with

[dreamy sorrel]

Blackflame all: ||This has the same energy as Eithan with the broom||

[zenith kayak]

Reaper all || @hollow ferry so now that you've finished Reaper , I've gotta ask: How long until you commission a version of your PFP with a broom instead?||

[hollow ferry]

Same tags || Oh man….

That’d actually be fun but also entirely difficult to explain without a major spoiler ||

[robust estuary]

Reaper all ||I bet you could do a minimum-spoiler version; "Ozmanthus Aurelius is a character who became iconographic of the concept of death on his homeworld, and before that had created an image for himself that leaned heavily on death via the metaphor of cleaning up trash, to the point he used a broom as a weapon"||

||Or you could even just say "This is an in-joke that would take time to explain and is also spoilers, but trust me it makes sense"||

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 14 || He really writes kaiju fight scenes super well ||

Dreadgod 14 || Just the way he conveys the absolute mass of power ||

[lilac vault]

Picked up Bloodline

The font is back to normal

Wintersteel was so long that they had to decrease the font size to fit it all

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 16 || Jai Long died Poor Kelsa and Jai Chen… ||

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 17 || Consume ||

[hollow ferry]

Same tags || This chapter better get a blooper that involves void sage Lindon saying “Om nom nom” in place of consume ||

Dreadgod 17 || Dross could have gone back this whole time. He just shifted his personality 👀 ||

Dreadgod 17 || information requested: How to rid the world of the silent king ||

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 18 || This is so awesome. Absolute peak. Lindon stopping Northstrider’s attack. Lindon being like “Four dreadgods, not 3”. Ugh, so good. Emriss helping him kill the Silent King. Dross is back. Love this series||

Dreadgod 18 || All of the monarchs vs Lindon is freaking bonkers. Wight’s ability to continually escalate the story is top notch ||

[pseudo sedge]

My spoiler free review for Dreadgod was:
||"He can't keep getting away with this!" I say, as Lindon somehow finds another progression step I wasn't aware was possible.||

[zenith kayak]

Dreadgod all ||I'm, uh, not so sure that's a spoiler free review...||

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 18 || The dragon herald remnant is terrified of “dreadgod of possibly monarch level power question mark” lindon and that is honestly pretty hilarious ||

[hollow ferry]

I am resisting the click. Soon™

[thick bay]

Dreadgod ||I am pretty sure that the Dreadgods have the powers of a monarch.||

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 19 || It seems like Lindon isn’t quite a monarch yet but maybe has the power of one now ||

[violet apex]

This is definitely not spoiler-safe for this server lmao

[pseudo sedge]

Edited, though the genre is progression fantasy so like...it could be assumed he keeps doing it

I felt it was safe enough to be untagged on goodreads/storygraph

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 20 || Gesha groveling to Lindon only to 180 and start scolding him is peak Gesha ||

Dreadgod 20 || The boldness. Monarch heist ||

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod 23 || Okay but Empty Ghost is a banger of a name ||

And that’s a wrap. Nearing the end of the series now. One book to go, and then threshold

[zenith kayak]

Did you stop to smell the roses read the deleted scenes?

[opal wadi]

||To clarify, Lindon is currently in the mid of Dreadgod levels, so strong enough to match any monarch in a 1 v 1 easily, only a bunch of Monarchs working together can match or potentially kill him now, he matched Northstrider's full powered blow equally||

[hollow ferry]

Oh I forgot about that. I’ll have to check those out

[hollow ferry]

|| Pretty wild ||

Dreadgod all || Yeah I think as a whole I enjoyed Dreadgod more as a package than Reaper, but Reaper did have a higher high ||

[hollow ferry]

Playlist says there are spoilers for end of series. Going to play it super safe and wait until I’m finished finished to check those

[zenith kayak]

Dreadgod all ||I could double-check, but I'm pretty sure the "Spoilers for the end of the series" are only really up to Reaper. Either way, the important part is to remind you they exist, so my job here is done!||

[hollow ferry]

|| Very fair! I’ll be done with Waybound and Threshold in a matter of a few days though so it won’t be a long wait 🙂 Saved the playlist on YouTube and adding a reminder to trigger this weekend in case I forget ||

[opal wadi]

I'm on like chapter 3 of Waybound with my friend

we're almost evenly matched

you will surpass me because I depend on my friend's time

[robust estuary]

Dreadgod all ||Notably, the extra chapters were released before Waybound, so if anything they influence it (Though I'm also quite confident that Reaper is the more accurate label for them)||

[zenith kayak]

||There might be some that came out after Threshold, IDR how long this batch of LBs has taken||

[lilac vault]

Oof (Bloodline prologue)

Bloodline 1 ||Mercy dad mention! Will we ever learn anything else about him||

||Fury ascension||

||"Anothe Monarch staying in Cradle causes all sorts of problems. Especially now."
But you just yeeted a Monarch from existence. One Monarch for one, that sounds pretty fair to me||

[thick bay]

Bloodline ||I think some of it might be political?||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 1 || Drosswater ||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 5 || Lindon chasing Shen through the way using the Penance arrow was pretty sick ||

[zenith kayak]

Bloodline 1 ||Yeah, it's largely a politics thing. If each faction only has 1 Monarch, they're strong, yes, but not snowball-over-the-opposition strong. At the end of Wintersteel, Fury was soloing what, like 3 Heralds at the same time? A Monarch's power is closer to a Sage times a Herald than a Sage plus a Herald.||

[robust estuary]

||There's a lot of moments in Waybound I adore, but that one always stands out (Not my favorite though. That one is... later)||

[safe knoll]

up to Bloodline 1 || wasn't it 4 Heralds and a Sage? 2 Heralds from Abbysal Palace, Xorrus, and one from the Silent Servants. And Silent Sevants had a Sage||

[zenith kayak]

Bloodline 1 ||Could be, and I wasn't counting Xorrus since she kinda got jumpscared to death by his ascension||

[lilac vault]

||Did she die in that first attack?||

[zenith kayak]

||It's not 100% clear (we don't see a Remnant, but our perspective was distracted), but IIRC Fury Breaks her then reels her in. If nothing else, I doubt she survives the initial follow-up.||

[lilac vault]

Fair

[safe knoll]

||idk, she's a Herald on the same path a Sesh, I felt like she just dissolved into sand and went to fight. It's not like a single attack from a new Monarch can kill an experienced, old Herald||

[robust estuary]

That definitely needs to be tagged, even sans context

[lilac vault]

Yeah, tag this

Question. As of Bloodline, ||...is Mercy the weakest protagonist? I feel like she is, which is wild to say. Granted, maybe it shouldn't be surprising, because she's the only one still Underlord (well Lindon technically is but he's also a Sage now).||

||Eithan has never really left the position of the strongest protagonist, Lindon and Yerin have always been about equal, and then Mercy has sort of jumped around. She started as the weakest, then she became second to Eithan once she got her powers back, and now I think she's back to being the weakest||

[hollow ferry]

Dreadgod all || I like how everyone is collectively gaslighting aneonfoxtribute by saying the 1 monarch thing is purely political ||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 5 || It’s a really good moment. Very strong visual with Shen being like I’m so smart and prepared and I’m safe now and oh what the hell there’s the arrow glad I have this abbidon shield, I’m safe now oh god Lindon transported to the arrow, time to tactically run, but totally not like prey runs from a predator, surely not swish wineglass ||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 8 || That is quite the force they have attacking poor old sacred valley ||

Waybound 8 || This is so badass ||

Waybound 8 || Wild chapter ||

https://tenor.com/view/it's-just-so-peak-peak-panda-peak-panda-it's-just-so-peak-gif-10789048890486755182

[orchid merlin]

This needs spoiler tags 🙂

[spice socket]

Onward

The Pilot Speculation || I cannot wait to read the love story for the ages, Lemon and Omega||

[hollow ferry]

Did I forget to spoiler tag something? 👀

[opal wadi]

No not you

[ornate heron]

My apologies folks I just woke up and didn’t see the requests for tags

And sorry for not tagging it in the first place

[dreamy sorrel]

Knight all: ||Clearly their ship name is Citrus Crusaders||

[spice socket]

|| I’ve just been calling them E.V.I.L. (Every Villain Is Lemon’s) from SpongeBob||

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 2 ||So Dakata wasn't in on the attempt to kill Mercy. I respect that was just Daji, cuz I don't think Meira was in on it either||

||Did Mercy advance to Overlord? I thought she was still Underlord when she fought Sophara||

[opal wadi]

||She hasn't advanced, she's coping by being weak by having her book constantly active on the Overlord power up||

[lilac vault]

Mmk

||My name isn't Mercy|| Bloodline 2

SAVAGE

LMAOOOOO

https://tenor.com/view/bromance-sig-curtis-alex-louis-armstrong-fullmetal-fma-gif-18194534

||Yerin and Fury be like||

[thick bay]

||I said most of it was political, realistically they are right, one monarch gone means people were okay with that amount of monarchs.||

[violet apex]

Dreadgod ||true but Fury wanted all the Monarchs to leave Cradle so it makes sense that he might want to lower the total number of Monarchs if possible||

[opal wadi]

https://tenor.com/view/tiger-tiger-woods-big-dog-salutation-what-up-gif-2478767235926945002

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 10 || The fight against Northstrider was badass. And the dross oracle fakeout? Seeing Malice genuinely scared of Lindon is so cool/wild.

Will really feels like he’s just completely taking the gloves off this book and really leaning into the power fantasy, and he does so incredibly well. ||

[opal wadi]

||The POV of the Monarchs this book is like a horror movie, Lindon has become the monster and they're the prey. ||

[spice socket]

The Pilot prologue- 1 || oh good, Omegas daughter is gonna come try and kill him. And Benri is hanging out with Solstice.||

Starting right at 100 mph as is tradition

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 3 ||Eithan just did the most CONVINCING "Hey, look over there!" trick I've ever seen||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 16 || Orthos and Little Blue be people-ish and DRAGON SAGE TURTLE MAN ||

Waybound 16 || Little herald blue. Also lol the two of them with the authority hand squeezing competition ||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 17 || Larian groveling for him to make her a bow from a Dreadgod of her own

Can we acknowledge how wild it is to see monarchs begging Lindon for stuff and fearing him. Our little unsouled from 12 books ago ||

[golden void]

||technically, these are heralds/sages begging for stuff ||

[hollow ferry]

|| You know I was thinking about that when I wrote that message but I was like ehh it’s close enough to right ||

[safe knoll]

Just walked out of a shower with one of the most shower thoughts thoughts I ever thought of (in the shower).
Willverse general ||Imagine an Iteration that operates sort of like reality is a simulation story, like in Off to be a Wizard. An Iteration's rules run on actual magical "code" that can be manipulated by inhabitants. People can teleport by writing programs that rewrite their position variables, walk on water by rewriting weight and surface tension, manifest things into existence by writing their parameters in a struct, and so on.||

||so criminals and hackers don't just write malware to get into banks or steal personal info, they can hack the world as a whole. "today sky is raining meatballs" kind of thing||

[robust estuary]

||What happens when some tries to do something that just fundamentally does't work, like a logic bomb, or that would destroy the world with how it changes things?||

||(This is meant to be a constructive "yes and" sort of query, not an attempt to find holes in the idea. If my spaceship iteration idea from a bit ago didn't clue you in, I love weird Iteration ideas)||

[safe knoll]

||reality throws an error or permission denied at your soul ||

[robust estuary]

||I bet that error feels like walking right into a chest-high wall you didn't see||

||Like, not painful, but damn, its really hard not to react to it physically||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 19 || Dayummm Ziel with the kill on the weeping dragon is such an epic moment. Such a badass moment for him.

This book has had a lot of badass moments so far already ||

[robust estuary]

Waybound 19 ||That, I think, is my favorite moment in the book except for something later on I like for entirely different reasons||

[safe knoll]

||depends on how ambitious you were, I think. I imagine it as an authority adjacent mechanic, except everyone has some authority by default. But here, if you mess around too much, the world will fix you||

i kinda want to try writing a story like that...

[robust estuary]

Incredibly visceral phrasing on that, 10/10

Willverse all ||God, imagine somebody on Judge or Class 1 Fiend level showing up and yoinking the whole dang thing, turn the entire iteration into a transforming weapon/tool||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 19 || KILL.

As the support uses his runic manipulation to twist time to send the death arrow at light speed through the kaiju

Yeah, Will even made the support of the party a badass with an awesome moment (I am classifying him as a support at this point because he’s Mr stand back and spawn shields on folks) ||

[robust estuary]

Willverse all ||Now imagine that this doesn't kill everyone inside, it just warps their world in strange and unpredictable ways, and there's a story following a group's trials to break it free from whoever grabbed it||

[robust estuary]

Waybound 19 ||I mean, he does have a very large hammer||

[thick bay]

Threshold ||Wasn't there that reality iteration?||

[robust estuary]

Okay thinking about my Willverse fanfic idea (which I might actually be able to turn into a campaign of Paranoia??? Which is wild considering my older idea for a Willverse ttrpg campaign, I might even be able to combine them) is making me really wanna hop back into Gnosia, so I may just do that

[safe knoll]

Willverse all ||I imagine a twist where the protagonists felt like hot stuff for messing with local reality and then finding out that this whole time their reality was a tool that was actively being used ||

[robust estuary]

||I can't for the life of me think of what kinds of effects this iteration's wielder would have on the iteration itself but I know it'd be sick once everything clicks||

[golden void]

I think you might might like the webcomic Unsounded, ||The entire world runs on the "Khert", which governs all the usual physical laws. (spell)wrights can instruct the Khert to reallocate aspects. For example they can cut you by taking the sharpness from all the grass blades in a field, and assigning it to a gust of wind. You have to be careful though, because if you take too many vital aspects, the Khert will decide that the object (maybe you) is no longer valid and reclaim the parts. You can also overload the Khert if too many people are casting spells, called a "Khert fire", and it's about as bad as it sounds for the fabric of reality itself to be on fire.||

[safe knoll]

I'll check it out, thanks!

[golden void]

of course, I've said absolutely nothing about the story

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 20 || “It’s every parents’ dream to see their little boy grow into such a fine young Dreadgod”

“You’re not my parent”

“yeah but I don’t like yours so I choose to replace them” ||

[spice socket]

Man I love Benri man

the Pilot 6 || “By all the worlds, I hate alchemists.”||

A vibe Varic

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 24 || “There’s nothing noble about doing everything yourself. You just have to do your best to honor the help that you’ve gotten”

I actually really love this line, as someone who has always struggled with guilt over all of the privilege I’ve had throughout my life ||

[opal wadi]

This book made me love Benri a lot

He's just so funny to read

[lilac vault]

Oof (Bloodline 3)

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 4 ||Yerin STILL hasn't gotten her gift from the Monarchs||

||I expected her to get it before we left||

[safe knoll]

same ||one of the better showcases of how utterly terrifying dreadgods are, imo ||

[thick bay]

||I have a feeling that Will just hates Alchemist ||

[safe knoll]

He does. He mentioned it in one of his latest streams

[thick bay]

Slight Willverse ||He mentions other mcs also hating alchemy. ||

[lilac vault]

I love her so much (Bloodline 4)

[hollow ferry]

Chapter 26 || I know Shen won’t be dead from that, but the whole fact that Lindon just handled him quickly as an aside is pretty funny. Granted I’m sure Shen won’t go down that easily because plot ||

Chapter 26 || Alright yeah didn’t quite expect him to come back that soon ||

[inner loom]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2B_2mADi7ac

Will having fun with his good friend Brandon Sanderson

[thick bay]

I forgot that dragonsteel was even going on.

[lilac vault]

Speaking of Will, his panel starts in 6

I'm ready for it

[ornate heron]

We do like it when characters earn power through pain

He’s right

[orchid merlin]

Wisdom from Will’s emotional damage panel

[uneven berry]

"Or Clifford the Dead Dog. That's also bad."

[lilac vault]

Cannot believe someone has already made this a meme

[orchid merlin]

Oh I was ready

[opal wadi]

quotes that go hard

[acoustic echo]

Someone write this in the archive: ||Will Wighr says that the Phoenix have both a therapist and pharmacist sub division||

||And Will said that the judges have not been to group therapy but they should||

[thick bay]

I am trying to think what they were talking about here.

[orchid merlin]

We ran into him randomly

[thick bay]

Cradle ||Someone needs their emotional support Dross therapist.||

[tawny kiln]

damn, now missing out on that is something I regret

[thick bay]

In the first picture Will is giving me "Child not knowing what to do with their hands while taking a picture" energy.

[robust estuary]

I've gotta try to make sure I get to more conventions

[boreal oasis]

somebody poke about Elder Empire updates plz

[hallow cypress]

A wild Glam appears in #1404905613674283041 . 👀

[thick bay]

No don't, we don't want it.

[acoustic echo]

Glam was sitting with me and Taln and co in the event lol

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 32 || I want more Larian. She’s fun ||

Waybound 32 || All she wants is a bow Lindon. Is that so much to ask for? After she so graciously gave him his bow back? ||

Waybound 32 || Can I please, please have a Larian novel?

Lindon just gave her her new bow and she just yeeted her old one and called herself its mama ||

Waybound 32 || Ahh yes the mighty Heron ||

[thick bay]

Slight Last Horizon ||She vibes me the same vibes as a Last Horizon character.||

[hollow ferry]

I’ll probably do Last Horizon early next year

Nice having some shorter books to help pad my numbers for annual books read

[thick bay]

It's good. A lot of people here also like it.

[hollow ferry]

I’m looking forward to it, given how fun Cradle has been

[opal wadi]

me and friend are starting it once we're done with Cradle

[thick bay]

Weirdly it actually is even more fast paced.

[opal wadi]

It's got a different type of beat but it's fun on it's own way

also every character is a menace there

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 33 || I love Mercy ||

[opal wadi]

||Ziel and Mercy were late-ish additions to the main cast but I love them so much, Mercy's just an unending ray of sunshine and Ziel is depression man that still tries and we love him for it||

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 34 || “Lee Marcouth. You killed me once before. Gratitude.”

Loving this section. Very fun stuff so far seeing Marcouth pov and knowing what he doesn’t know ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah, I am quite fond of Team Avatar as well ||

[opal wadi]

||Markuth, and it's hilarious how Lindon can wipe the floor with someone from the heavens even with all his esoteric outer dimensional nonsense there's nothing he could do against overhwelming power||

[spice socket]

Every time I see Will he looks exactly like I imagined him

[opal wadi]

Very Will Wight shaped

[hollow ferry]

Waybound 35 || Anthropologist begging Ziel to write them a new tax code Will Wight has an interesting brain ||

[hollow ferry]

|| The fact that Lindon just had absolutely no trouble with Markuth is amazing. A footnote compared to the dreadgods ||

[opal wadi]

||Well he is very good at writing things, but I don't think you can make a tax code in runes||

[opal wadi]

||That's why I said a while ago that Markuth was probably on the mid to high Monarch levels, according to himself, might be true, but end of series Lindon while still in cradle is like five Dreadgods stacked together in the size of a man, he's very metaphysically dense, an absolute unit if you may||

[hollow ferry]

|| I love that he was like, do you have a monster I can fight? Please?

And she’s like, here’s a pen. I hate my job so much, thanks ||

[hollow ferry]

|| The payoff of the series is really payoff-ing ||

Waybound 35 || Uh oh, anti-abbidon world ||

Waybound 35 || Fury! ||

Waybound 36 || God I love these characters. I love this series. I am so sad it’s coming to a close so soon. Just Threshold, deleted scenes, and an animatic left after this. And then there’s more Willverse. But… I will miss these characters.

Love the reunion and the pride and joy Eithan feels upon seeing Lindon again. Mercy tackling pride and having to restore him because she’s a monarch. Fury taking pride to train. Such a fun series. Nearing the end of this book now. Few more minutes ||

Waybound 36 || He brought the whole god damn labyrinth. Because of course he did ||

[opal wadi]

||One of the funniest scenes in the entire story, of course he was taking everything he could fit and then more||

[humble bluff]

There's one bonus spoiler scene in particular that's

[hollow ferry]

Waybound epilogue + stormlight || Idk about spelling but the pronunciation of their son is the same as Kaladin’s father

Cute epilogue. That poor kid lol. All the training all the time. Parents don’t know how to have fun any other way

Also excuse me but fate of the reapers yes please. More please ||

I’m not ready for it to be over

Next up, threshold. Tomorrow

What a series

[humble bluff]

||It is lirin yeah. Kaladin is canonically lindon's grandson||

Cradle + stormlight ||Syl is little blue's granddaughter too, that's why she turns into a spear||

[hollow ferry]

I’m very glad to have read this series

[thick bay]

||I still ship them together.||

[thick bay]

||Five Dreadgods in a trench coat.||

[hollow ferry]

So uhh. Cradle all || Where’s my The Grave slice of life sequel series? ||

[opal wadi]

||Did you notice the puns?||
||From the cradle to the grave...||

[spice socket]

Oh Sonuva

https://tenor.com/view/face-palm-oh-god-why-ugh-gif-11669669

I did not realize the puns

[hollow ferry]

Damn

[opal wadi]

And also
||"I am the end." The end.||

Some days Will is hilarious

[hollow ferry]

Yeah that was pretty good. Cradle all || Plus a good tie back as well ||

[opal wadi]

I like how despite having some ups and downs, the story closes in a satisfying way, not something you can say for all stories in the modern era

There's been some turbo stinkers

[hollow ferry]

Cradle all || Listening to Dross Tells a Story and the Blackflame one is great.

“Lindon meets a turtle and learns to set himself on fire” - Yeah that’s Blackflame. No notes ||

[jade notch]

I’m 1st in line for will wight signing lol

[spice socket]

damn thats cool

i think i like varic more than lindon

[orchid merlin]

Niceee xD I was almost late, I had it in my head that it was 2 instead of 1 pm

[jade notch]

I compulsively check my schedule and time

[spice socket]

I am not

Last Horizon general || I am not unconvinced these people arent going to end up villains. The crew I mean. Lmao.||

[opal wadi]

Cradle/Last Horizon general
||I feel like, outside of the blooper, if you put them on a room they'd activate their techniques and instantly go "WHAT IS THAT?" and spent ten hours talking magic system theory and they'd walk out with Varric being able to do a full body enforcer technique and Lindon with a pinnacle spell||

[spice socket]

Oh for sure

They’d be buddies in my head

But like

Varics got that sarcastic pessimism to him

And well that’s just. Me

So I feel naturally inclined to him

Plus he’s wise enough to not act publicly superior when he’s been correct the whole time

But he’s smug enough to internally monologue about it. Which like

Mood

[lilac vault]

Question

Was Will actually inspired by Syl when he made Little Blue

[thick bay]

No, I don't think so?

[spice socket]

i think its one of those weird parallel evolutions

like toedscool and wiglet in pokemon scarlet and violet

which is one of the least helpful ways ive ever contributed to a conversation in here

[zenith kayak]

Per what we've been told, it's a wild coincidence

[hollow ferry]

Threshold || Northstrider story ||
|| Very fun one. Also he took one look at the ghost judge and was like “pretttttyyyyy” ||

[robust estuary]

||I gotta reread that one apparently because you're not the only one that took note of that, but it flew completely over my head||

[hollow ferry]

|| Huh, interesting. It’s anything but subtle, that’s for sure.

The oracle codex is like “warning you have lost objectivity” after he describes some of her physical traits and then he’s like “I mean yeah I’ll check out the other judge sects and see what I can learn but I’m totally 100% joining the ghosts” ||

[robust estuary]

||I read it as just him being awed by what she was capable of, and realizing in that moment that moment that he forgot some of the beauty of those kinds of workings from being top dog for so long||

[thick bay]

If anything, they just Navi enjoyers.

[thick bay]

||He's a true simp at heart, first Malice then Ghost lady.

Strangley not Will's most simpest character though.||

[zenith kayak]

Threshold ||Northstrider Story|| ||My read is it's a full-force crush. He's fallen for every aspect of her.||

[hollow ferry]

|| Ahh yeah that’s very much not the read I got haha ||

[safe knoll]

Threshold ||Northstrider story|| ||He absolutely developed a crush on Durandiel, but her appearance isn't really the important factor here. Cradle has enough super hot people for him to be moved by it. He saw her as a kindred soul. ||

||A relevant quote ||

||Repairing this world would require great power, but power alone would not do it.
It would need knowledge and insight, but not only those.
It required a firm hand, a strong mind, a bold heart, and an artist’s touch. Even then, there was no one to guarantee it would work.
Only such a challenge was worthy of Northstrider.||
||And then he saw Durandiel as all of those, but more. ||

[robust estuary]

||Maybe I'm just too aro for it, but that still just reads as him realizing how much he loved this kind of work, and how little he got to really stretch him muscles in that area since hitting Monarch||

[jade notch]

Will wrote ||The Dragon Advances|| in my copy of Waybound

[dreamy sorrel]

Threshold story 4: ||Both can be true. Nothing says Mr. Strider can't have a crush and want to flex his muscles ||

[hollow ferry]

Threshold || Harness ||
|| Pokémon trainer Ziel ✅ ||

Threshold || Harness || || Fake Pokédex lolol ||

Threshold || Harness || || Mewtwo has awakened ||

[opal wadi]

I skipped Harness just so I could have one last Cradle story I haven't read

[hollow ferry]

Threshold complete

Cradle complete

Just have the animatics left now

[thick bay]

Yeah, me too. O.o

[violet apex]

||look again at the iteration number for that world||

[hollow ferry]

|| Beautiful ||

[humble bluff]

Did you read the KS bonus scenes

[hollow ferry]

The ones on YouTube?

[humble bluff]

Yep

[spice socket]

ah hm

maybe i should have looked if threshold was on a good sale for audible

dang

[thick bay]

Threshold ||The funny thing is at the start of the Ziel story I was making Pokémon jokes because of the evil corporation, but then Will just leaned into it so hard that even other people could realize what he was doing. ||

[hollow ferry]

Yeah I did, save for the bloopers

[hollow ferry]

Sale isn’t over

[humble bluff]

Reaper all ||Fun fact in the text version, this line was split on a page break||

[spice socket]

Hmmmmmm

[spice socket]

A final two books purchased

[opal wadi]

My friend, whomst I am listening to Waybound with, recommended Cradle to someone else and that other person is already on Soulsmith

this thing spreads like a living wildfire

[spice socket]

https://tenor.com/view/dozens-of-us-there-are-dozens-of-us-dozens-arrested-development-arrested-development-dozens-gif-18162954729757007693

i usually keep this in reserve for gentleman bastards memes

[thick bay]

Nicks created dozen of us.

[spice socket]

like a zombie

[hollow ferry]

Oh yeah I should see how much time war is

[spice socket]

like 6.19

[hollow ferry]

My gf isn’t yet convinced (she thinks it feels too cartoon-y so far) but she’s on Blackflame and told me she’d read through the end of Wintersteel

[spice socket]

thats an impressive amount of leeway

i have to hope my wife gives wheel of time that much grace

[hollow ferry]

It’s solely because I insist it’s peak and that it gets better + some of her complaints so far get addressed + the books aren’t long. I did tell her it’s okay if it ends up not being her thing and she drops the series before that

[spice socket]

last horizon could be more her thing

though some part of me is surprised a series with so much decapitation content could be seen as too cartoony

[dreamy sorrel]

You know, I don't remember who got me into Cradle. I started around when Reaper came out and I put it down for a while because I want the biggest fan of Unsouled. I very distinctly remember listening to it on my flight to Japan though

[hollow ferry]

She wants to specify specifically stuff like DBZ

[spice socket]

Mmm sure

It is a bit anime

But that is what the evolution of progression stories are I suppose

They became Shonen anime

I know what she means now

[hollow ferry]

Yeah. She also thinks book 1 takes itself a bit too seriously

[opal wadi]

I know I got at least two or three people here into the series, my mission is complete

[thick bay]

I need to read that, I stopped after like the third.

[hollow ferry]

You played a big part in getting me finally. In that I forgot it existed when the forums started and then your mentions here and there got me to finally start it

Even though I had the books for a while because people were constantly talking about it here pre-forum

[hollow ferry]

I also need to give WoT a read one day. Might be next year’s big series

[opal wadi]

And turns out I was right, this series is peak

It's just... it's like a tasty hamburger, it's not high cuisine nor is it slop, sometimes you just crave something that's tasty and an all rounder

also it has layers

[thick bay]

Because burgers have onions?

[spice socket]

Ogres are like onions

No wait

[opal wadi]

Dragons are like pickles

[humble bluff]

Imagining someone who gets into cradle because they think bloodline is actual BL

[opal wadi]

For some reason just by title names I imagined what story would have a name like that and in my brain Wintersteel sounds like a name for a sort of magic school on a snowy mountain

[spice socket]

I mean if pride and Lindon weren’t cowards

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 4 ||I wonder if there is a specific reason why Eithan knows as much as he does, or if he's just that smart||

||YEAH LINDON! THAT'S WHAT I'M ASKING!||

||So yeah he is just crazy intelligent||

||I don't half wonder if Ozriel had something to do with that||

[hollow ferry]

Cradle all || Is this what it has felt like for you all this whole time?

I feel… powerful ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle all: ||I found a picture of Dross!||

[thick bay]

Cradle all ||When I was reading it, I was able to guess the main plot points.

I still stand by my idea that Eithan was provoking Dish-o on purpose so that he would open the door on purpose so that Makiel would wake up the dreadgods.

Now when anyone gets close to Ghostwater or Reaper I grab the 🍿.||

[opal wadi]

||They don't call him a generational talent just for the nice hair, he is just that cracked once a century type guy||

[spice socket]

The Pilot 21 || sorry Solstice and Prism, any cause that advances clear space capitalism is evil to the core. ||

You’re gonna have to be blown up

[inner loom]

The Pilot 21 || But Benri advances space capitalism and he's just a silly little guy! ||

[spice socket]

I only have one silly little guy quota and it’s ||omega||

[spice socket]

Oof the propaganda machine is powerful magic indeed

[opal wadi]

||so Raion doesn't count as silly little guy? well he's a big silly guy but still, adjacent||

[opal wadi]

We're like halfway thru Waybound and my friend just told me "I want to relisten to the series again."

he's a true fan now

we did it

[dreamy sorrel]

Have you reached the fish?

[opal wadi]

Not yet

We're about to reach (Waybound) ||BURN||

[dreamy sorrel]

Please post the fish when you get there

[hollow ferry]

Oh yeah wait what is the fish

I don’t remember anything that comes to mind for that

[hollow ferry]

Which scene was that again?

[robust estuary]

Oh yeah the fish, I was gonna mention that

[hollow ferry]

I mean… I think that’s a 100% valid reaction

[opal wadi]

I DIDN'T SHOW YOU THE FISH

[hollow ferry]

YOU HAVE FAILED ME

Do not advance past go, do not collect $200

[opal wadi]

Waybound all ||Northstrider after his past self calls him pathetic once:||

[opal wadi]

Waybound
||when Lindon channels Blackflame and Pure Madra on the black and white technique as he uppercuts the Weeping Dragon||

[hollow ferry]

|| Oh yeah that was hella badass ||

[thick bay]

Waybound ||Don't skip when a Dreadgod uses an ICON or the moon gets blasted!||

[spice socket]

https://tenor.com/view/termina's-cage-gif-2702795870681820605

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 5 ||I am STILL baffled that Yerin hasn't gotten her reward from the Monarchs yet||

[robust estuary]

||Lotta atuff going on||

[hollow ferry]

Cradle all NUCLEAR NOT SAFE FOR NEON || My gf has proposed a theory that Ozriel is Eithan…

She is on Blackflame chapter 13 or so.

I’m impressed. I asked her why and she said because he kind of appeared from nowhere and Ozriel disappeared. I said he didn’t appear from nowhere, he came through the portal from the Aurelias homeland. And she had asked like well then why didn’t they know he was an Underlord, etc. I told her RAFO ||

Cradle all nuclear || She definitely doesn’t know she’s right. But dang, book 3!? Really!? ||

@opal wadi You need to see this ish

[lilac vault]

😲

[hollow ferry]

You uhh… didn’t actually read that, did you?

[lilac vault]

No lmao

[hollow ferry]

Oh thank god

[lilac vault]

Yeah I only learned that Yerin murders Lindon!

Very small stuff

./s

[opal wadi]

Cradle all atomic
||You can totally predict that twist too early but it's insane, just don't say nothing and try to gaslight her into a half truth, that he is a DESCENDANT of Oz||

[hollow ferry]

Cradle all nuclear || Yeah that’s why I was like he came from the Aurelias homeland portal and then rafo’d the stuff regarding Cassius ||

[hollow ferry]

Cradle all nuclear || She was just like wait did they just kill Eithan. Chapter 17 or so of Blackflame. They just trapped him.

I was like “I mean you did say he felt like a deus ex machina and I did say that gets addressed. And I mean he’s only the 11th ranked Underlord and Dai sho is ranked 8th, so I guess we’ll see” ||

[spice socket]

lmao

[spice socket]

The Pilot General up to 30 || I have from the beginning been an Omega truther, I think unfortunately he is the perfect and only pilot they need.||

[thick bay]

Cradle ||She beat me ||

[spice socket]

I saw spoilers for that so I recuse myself from competing

I blame the death of spoiler decorum on the internet

[hollow ferry]

She thought things got better in the second half of book 3!

There is still hope

[opal wadi]

I made this joke to my friend when we were finishing Blackflame
(Blackflame spoilers, of course)

[hollow ferry]

Cradle all nuclear || She said her suspicion that Eithan is Ozriel is growing or that he has met Ozriel because he pulled out the Ozriel marble. I guess end of book 3 cliffhung the details because she doesn’t know the details about his relation to the marble yet ||

[opal wadi]

||Under other circumstances I'd never say this, but you need to gaslight your girlfriend. ||

same tags, atomic spoilers
||Press a bit on the fact Eithan is Ozriel's descendant, and string her along that line of thought||

[hollow ferry]

|| I am going to have to remind myself to show her this line of messages when she finishes Reaper (if she gets that far) ||

[opal wadi]

||It's the diabolical path we follow here when someone gets too close to the truth before they're supposed to, we make them ascend or swear an oath. ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Yeah I’m keeping pretty quiet until she hears about the marble details. I think that’ll mislead her and help assuage her suspicions since she now mentioned the marble making her think of alternatives to him being Ozriel ||

[hollow ferry]

|| Ngl I’m hella proud of her. Because that’s one hell of a thing to catch ||

Same tags. Nuclear || Of course I’m sure not telling her that until she finishes book 10 ||

[lilac vault]

HELL YEAH HE IS (Bloodline 6)

[opal wadi]

||Brother is here||

[lilac vault]

ouch (Bloodline 7)

[thick bay]

Slight Exp 33 ||Nick, he who guards the truth with lies.||

[spice socket]

Do it

It is incredibly satisfying to gaslight your loved ones about the plots of books

[jade notch]

One of the best scenes

[spice socket]

Bloodline is such an odd book

Full of a lot of frustrating interactions. But really cool ones too. But also there’s that one scene

Bloodline General || where Yerin like slams that one dude to the ground and puts her foot on his chest and my only considered commentary was “this probably awoke something for someone”||

[spice socket]

The Pilot 38 || oh no. Solstice has created a pet iron king ||

The Pilot 38 || THE WORLD SPIRIT OF FATHOM?!||

Jfc

Same tag || the world spirits of fathom and Zikeros. Sheesh||

Pilot 38|| I would spam clones all the time I can’t even be mad||

https://tenor.com/view/bye-rocco-elmo-gif-24661497

Pilot 38 || but in all seriousness, rip Benri. Gotta be up there with Sebarial for my favorite problematic capitalists.||

|| ANOTHER FRIGGIN CLONE OMFG||

I love this man.

Incredible.

|| in the mean time, he would enjoy being dead||

A vibe.

What a roller coaster

[spice socket]

Pilot 44 || Et Tu Veshran?||

|| Raion is just the best||

[spice socket]

Smh

Pilot 45 || prism. You have placed my 3rd favorite character in a disturbing sub space hypnosis. You gotta get destroyed now||

[opal wadi]

||I love Benri, at first he seems like an idiot that thinks he's too smart but when he pulled the contingency plan for a contingency plan for another even bigger contingency plan you can do nothing but appreciate the grind, he's just built different||

[golden void]

HoB 18 + TG all ||"this girl isn't a princess, right?" "Uh, no" Simon, if only you knew||

[thick bay]

https://tenor.com/view/matrioska-loop-bored-tired-russian-gif-7433508

[spice socket]

I forgot about Mr fischoeder from bobs burgers

Him sebarial and Benri are entertaining enough to survive the revolution

[spice socket]

Sonuva

The Pilot ending || Jfc I had been waiting 4 books for the “everything goes wrong” moment but I was not expecting it to go THAT WRONG||

|| her name is an anagram of palpatine?! Lmao||

Oh yay I can finally google things

Jeez now I really need commander

[thick bay]

Have you read all his books though? 😏

[spice socket]

I’ll get through EE at some point

If I’m lucky I’ll procrastinate just long enough for the rewrite

[opal wadi]

||I love how this book ends with everyone losing, nobody wins nothing, they all lose and everything goes to hell one way or another except for like one faction and two people||

[spice socket]

Horizon general post The Pilot || that friggin evil zenith bacta tank||

Last horizon general || a criminally short page for Lemon.||

[golden void]

oh, the wiki's back?

and so's the wow's!

[spice socket]

Okay googling has been incredibly unsatisfying

But at least I can read the wiki

[opal wadi]

yeah the wiki's not in a good shape

[golden void]

in its defense, it just came back from the dead

[thick bay]

||Technically some people really lose. ||

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 8 ||Which Iteration was Limit? I know I've seen it before||

He's so cute lmao

[zenith kayak]

Bl 8 ||Limit was the world Suriel spent some time fixing up where she discovered the people vault in like book 2||

[lilac vault]

Mmk that's what I thought

[opal wadi]

||He's so chill while Jai Long thinks this is a plot to kill him for revenge lmao||

[lilac vault]

Absolute goobers (Bloodline 8)

[opal wadi]

||I really like Depression Man too ||

[spice socket]

Literally my favorite character in the series

[thick bay]

Bl ||Wait, is this how the books shows that Dross is speaking? ||

[robust estuary]

||Yup||

||Same for the Presences||

[lilac vault]

It's actually very cool because when we met him

||He talked normally. Then when he actually became Lindon's Presence, he changed to the brackets||

||There may have also been a time in between where he talked in italics?||

Idr

[thick bay]

||Huh, as an audio book reader I never saw this, thanks.||

[opal wadi]

The text actually has a lot of little quirks

bracket, bold text, italics, etc

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 8 ||I hope Little Blue gets to throw down, since she's going with Orthos||

Bloodline 9 ||I love how every character is some flavor of minmaxed lmao||

||Ziel presumably getting twice as many Advancement buffs later on||

[hollow ferry]

Animatic part 1 || Omg the kids are so tiny ||

[thick bay]

||It's a trap to make you feel bad ||

[orchid merlin]

How did yall enjoy the last horizon series? Haven’t tried it yet but thinking bout it

[humble bluff]

I like it, would recommend

I need the next book to come out already

[inner loom]

I really like it! I enjoy it just a touch less than Cradle, though it does some things better

[robust estuary]

It took me a few tries to get into it, but there was a very specific line I crossed where it almost immediately flipped from "Only my least favorites parts of pulpy scifi and fantasy" to "An interesting story with fun characters"

[dreamy sorrel]

Bloodline general: ||Without getting into spoilers, the pacing on Horizon reminds me of Bloodline to the end is Cradle. Sometimes it slows down, but mostly gas||

I really enjoy The Last Horizon though

[sharp umbra]

I am here 😩

[golden void]

You're stuck here now

[sharp umbra]

We'll see

[safe knoll]

Did you lose a bet to Nick or what?

[sharp umbra]

I did

Well I didn't lose a bet

We made a deal

a few months back

and he's finally fulfilling his side of the deal so I'm now 25% into Unsouled

[safe knoll]

As much as I hope you'll enjoy it enough to join the hive mind rest of us, it doesn't seem like your kind of book tbh😅
So feel free to feed us some reactions while it lasts

[sharp umbra]

Will do! Nothing much to comment so far

[hollow ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/chill-out-calm-down-relax-the-office-michael-scott-gif-3637463

Oh yeah my gf is apparently now 5 chapters into Ghostwater as well

[humble bluff]

Let's gooooo

[opal wadi]

There's a guy there that's literally me
That's all I really need to say

[orchid merlin]

That's all I need to hear

[opal wadi]

You're gonna read his introduction and be like
"Damn, that's Nick."

[opal wadi]

Speaking of my side of the deal, time to continue, yesterday I was so tired, had to do some construction around the house

[humble bluff]

Nick, I've always though of you as a blue wizard with a cape

[opal wadi]

No, not that one

[orchid merlin]

which chapter will I meet him in? 👀

[opal wadi]

Tho I am a little bit ||Varric||
||I also hate my dad.||

[orchid merlin]

ig I should turn of automatically showing spoilers if Imma be in here

[opal wadi]

Like very early on, once the story properly kicks in he's one of the first to join the main group

[spice socket]

I like last horizon a bit more than cradle

[spice socket]

Hey that’s also why i identify with Varic

[opal wadi]

I love both but they're different sauces cooked by the same chef

[spice socket]

A good point

If I reread cradle I’d probably end up going back and forth

[dreamy sorrel]

What's his side?

[opal wadi]

The Devils

[dreamy sorrel]

By Abercrombie?

[lilac vault]

Speaking of other Will stories

After I finish Cradle

What should I read

[dreamy sorrel]

Last Horizon

[opal wadi]

the one, and so far it's been really entertaining

[golden void]

you read Threshold, right? (The post cradle anthology)

actually, you could save it for later, as a treat

[orchid merlin]

The captain 5 ||”they believe they have found the last horizon”||

https://tenor.com/view/thats-it-yes-thats-it-that-right-there-omg-that-thats-what-i-mean-gif-17579879

Now I’m no expert but I think that’s gonna be important

[golden void]

Crimson Vault 4 (TG2) ||So much bell ringing is happening ||

[lilac vault]

No I have not

[orchid merlin]

Captain 12 ||Lmao Shirax beating this poor dude in a tea battle||

Peak

[opal wadi]

||My future wife.||

[orchid merlin]

16 ||I love Raion, so glad he got picked ||

||Love him immediately accepting the engineer position ||

||Guessing each book is each crewmember’s grand quest? Or maybe just their pov||

[opal wadi]

||Cough*||

[orchid merlin]

Is he you Nick?

[orchid merlin]

I figured

[lilac vault]

They know each other so well (Bloodline 9)

[opal wadi]

||The fun thing is he completely reverse engineered that quote just from his knowledge of how Eithan talks, he wasn't there for the Jai clan fight, that's insane||

[lilac vault]

||Yeah I recognized that lmao.||

[lilac vault]

Oh &*$# (Bloodline 12)

[lilac vault]

God these people SUCK

||Shout outs to my GOATs the Kazan Clan||

||The only reasonable people in this god forsaken place||

[dreamy sorrel]

Bloodline 12: ||Are you going to tell me the main cast isn't reasonable? Because you're 100% right, they're storming crazy||

[lilac vault]

||They probably get their kicks by beating up children||

||Lindon and Eithan DEFINITELY find enjoyment in beating up children actually||

||And I don't mean "50 year old assholes who are as strong as a toothpick", I mean actual toddlers||

[thick bay]

Bloodline ||Do we ever learn more about the girl that Eithan traumatized?||

[lilac vault]

Who?

[violet apex]

||It was ONE TIME!||

[lilac vault]

||Didn't Lindon beat up multiple children in the first book||

[violet apex]

||I was referring to that as one incident||

[thick bay]

||I don't remember who it was, I remember that he traumatized some girl trying to train her and she ran away or something? It was before Lindon.||

[lilac vault]

Ohhh right

Yeah that did happen

That was offscreen, I was trying to think of something onscreen

[fresh pivot]

||I don't believe you, Raion wouldn't be caught dead in green||

[zenith kayak]

||Nick confirmed for colorblind Raion?||

[orchid merlin]

Captain 45 ||”is the iron king really dead”
Me: hmm well we have like 3 more chapters and an epilogue left so probably not ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Captain 45: ||I mean, the next book is called The Engineer, and you don't have one so... or could be about finding the engineer to get next book||

[opal wadi]

||Like an undead cockroach the iron king is really hard to get rid of||

[lilac vault]

Oh

I just

Realized something

Bloodline 13 ||The four Dreadgods are based on the Four Guardians, obviously. There's the Phoenix, the Tiger, the Dragon..... But the fourth one is wrong. Here it's a Titan, but in reality it's..... A tortoise.||

||Is Orthos going to become a Dreadgod once the Titan dies||

||Because it's specifically a BLACK Tortoise||

||I recognized that the Dreadgods were based on the Four Guardians before, but I only just now thought "Hmmm why is the fourth one a titan, I don't think that's what it is in real life, what is i-oooooooooooooooooooooh!"||

||Interesting. The key to the Western Labyrinth is an arm just like Lindon's. That surely has no meaning||

[opal wadi]

||Look at the cover of the book, and look at the Titan||

[lilac vault]

||Oh does it have a shell on its back||

[opal wadi]

Bloodline general
||I think that's the one Will took the most liberties with, it's a big rock man with a tail, but also a massive turtle shell on the back||

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 16 ||Malice and Northstrider fighting together 👀||

||Can't wait for Monarch Lindon vs Reigan Shen||

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 17 ||Is Lindon about to casually advance to Overlord||

[lilac vault]

Bloodline 19 ||Goodbye forever, Wandering Titan!||

||All that effort, the entire climax of the book, just to make bro walk away||

Bloodline 20 ||Damn, Ozriel, you better have a damn good plan lmao. Cuz you really screwed up on this one.||

||Oh boy, Cradle is vulnerable now. I guess we have out next goal now that the Titan is gone. Get strong enough to beat up Daruman.||

Bloodline 20 ||They keep talking about Mercy being an Overlady that I'm starting to wonder if she literally DID just advance offscreen and it's not just her book buffing her||

[violet apex]

||you, uh, realize that Daruman is at roughly the same power level as an Abidan Judge, right?||

[lilac vault]

||I expect next book will be fighting a low level Vroshir, to show us the level of power we should expect from the greater universe, and then we fight a bunch of high level Vroshir in the book after that, and then obviously we do Daruman himself as the final boss||

[lilac vault]

||Stronger considering he beat up two of them at once||

||The dragon advances||

||I hope Jai Long and Jai Chen join our merry band now||

[lilac vault]

Oh wait actually

||Next book will be Lindon fighting Reigan Shen||

||And THEN we fight a Vroshir||

||And THEN Daruman||

Bloodline epilogue ||Both Lindon and Reigan Shen are going into the labyrinth. Yeah, they're gonna fight each other over Subject One.||

||DID LINDON JUST FIND THE SWORD SAGE'S VOID KEY||

[opal wadi]

||Void Space, but yes (the one inside the sword sage's soul) ||

[lilac vault]

The End
Of Cradle: Volume Nine
Bloodline

Peak

Bloodline full ||I like how Fury ascended only for the Abidan to almost immediately pull back||

||Bro never even got to do anything||

[safe knoll]

bloodline + reaper first 2 chapters(?) ||iiirc, it was not his soulspace, but a void space unanchored to a key. Yerin mentioned in the beginning of Reaper how she wasn't allowed in there and you can't visit a soulspace ||

[safe knoll]

bloodline all ||they're still fighting, just focusing on defending a much smaller stretch of the way ||

[lilac vault]

||So is it possible to advance further than Monarch? And is it just impossible to do in Cradle? Or are even the Judges effectively Monarchs, but they've just honed their skills to the point that they make the actual Monarchs look small?||

[thick bay]

||I think it is a big fish small pond thing.||

[opal wadi]

||It's possible to get stronger than a monarch outside of Cradle, but so far Monarch and Dreadgods seem to be where the upper bound of the power stop, if it's possible to go beyond that while on Cradle we don't know, once you ascend you get much better resources from other worlds, like the most average meal out there might have the spiritual weight of an Archlord level elixir or things like that.||

[thick bay]

Cradle All ||What was Shens whole goal anyways? Control the Dreadgods and the whole iteration? ||

[opal wadi]

Cradle all
||Yeah, he was trying to cook with gas, become subject one, get the labyrinth, eat everyone and become sole ruler of the iteration.||
||If only it wasn't for those meddling kids and their turtle.||

[safe knoll]

||There are no additional advancement stages after Monarch. Monarch is the natural pinnacle of the power system of Cradle. There's even an argument that Archlord is the peak stage, but that will be explored a bit in Reaper ||

||You can advance as a Monarch, though. ||

[thick bay]

||I... Actually disagree with this. I don't think there is a pinnacle. There was a whole talking about how there isn't an end. It was fairly really early in the book though.||

[lilac vault]

||The power system of Cradle, yeah, which I gathered||

||But clearly it's not the pinnacle of power, because the Monarchs were still bowing to Abidan, and Suriel can do more than Malice can||

||So there are more advancement levels beyond Monarch, they just aren't accessible from Cradle?||

[safe knoll]

||You will see a bit more in later books but "power" of a person isn't really the same thing as advancement. Think about how Elder Whisper kept Adama's voidspace open despite being a gold. In general terms of this multiverse, though, there is no pinnacle of power.||

[humble bluff]

Cradle ||I would not say there are advancement levels, personally. I would say there is more power to be gained, more insight to be learned, and all that||

[jade notch]

||I wouldn't call them advancement levels any more at that point. There are many ways to gain more power, and they don't really map to the advancement levels any more||

[safe knoll]

Cradle all, magic ||Archlord is the peak stage because that is the limit of what a person can accomplish relying purely on Cradle's energy system. There is no such thing as Monarch/Herald soulfire. Sage, Monarch, and I would even say Herald, use deeper multiversal principles rather than Cradle's regular magic system ||

[thick bay]

||I think there are other ways of advancements, they just haven't discovered them yet.||

[safe knoll]

Cradle all, nsf for neon ||You mean something like the Dreadgods?||

[thick bay]

Cradle all ||I believe the Dreadgods are actually monarchs.||

[jade notch]

Cradle all ||The Dreadgods are consequences of the Monarchs but individually are more powerful||

[opal wadi]

||In words of will, the Dreadgods are Heralds but done so wrong they loop back in the opposite direction and become much more powerful||

[thick bay]

Willverse all ||I am more thinking about like....how in the last horizon, people seem to tap into people believing in them/friendship/etc, a different kind of using authority.||

[thick bay]

||The dreadgods are also sages, the weeping dragon uses icons.||

[safe knoll]

Waybound all ||I remember the Weeping Dragon using a command of some sort, but I was still uncertain if they had any connection to the Way||

[orchid merlin]

Last horizon all ||Guessing Omega is sticking with the crew since he’s on the cover of book 4, oops||

||Also book 3 will be incredible I can feel it||

[opal wadi]

Book 3 has one of those certified Will Wight scenes that go hard

So far in Last Horizon I'd say my favorite books go like this
The Engineer>The Knight>The Captain>The Pilot
Not that they're bad but I enjoyed the others a lot

I'm impatiently waiting for The Commander

[spice socket]

Hm. I need some more stewing time on the pilot

But I think it might be my least favorite too

I really liked it

And I liked the ending a lot

But idk

The pilot general || I know enough about wills style that I can say I think that. The disjointed, hard to follow way the book is put together is meant to make it feel like an Omega book. As well as sort of putting you in the position of the characters where you seem to follow random threads until Solstice reveals themselves and you gain like “ah hah this is the true story” but while that concept is cool it does still make the story….wonky. To read||

The Knight I think is my favorite

So The Knight > The Enginner > The Captain > The Pilot

[thick bay]

The problem that I have with tlh, as I pretty much read it as a whole thing, it is actually hard to separate each book from each book.

[opal wadi]

||I think the reveal that Omega followed the trail to the end just for it to be something as absurd as it was, is a sweet bit of ironic comedy, there was no one he could shoot to end the organization, there was no shadow council, it was literally something so far out of his scope there was nothing he could do from the very beginning ||

||But in the end he did it, he helped bring them down, their own egos blinded them and now there's two dead planets||

[spice socket]

|| and one really really powerful evil wizard and ship||

|| horizon turned into a star destroyer with knives taped to it||

[opal wadi]

The Pilot All
||I want to see what Horizon's Worldslayer cannon does now with the addition to curse magic, with enough power it can probably end a world in a hit since it can just curse the planet to death on top of slicing a chunk of it||

[orchid merlin]

The captain all ||oh hell yeah we got space bloopers||

https://tenor.com/view/one-peak-one-piece-one-piece-cry-its-so-peak-gif-13413926760013023520

||lmao Lindon cameo ||

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle all/ Captain bloops: ||Just gotta to show how powerful Lindon is at the end of Cradle||

[opal wadi]

||Lindon absolutely atomized Varric because he can act faster, but with prep time Varric is like Batman I bet he could hold off Lindon for a while ||

[cloud zinc]

||a while being probably a solid 3 seconds||

[opal wadi]

||I said enough prep time never said how much, give Varric unlimited resources and a year and he can probably kill Lindon, imagine an absolute burial channeled with planet sized runes ||

[safe knoll]

||thing is, Varric would have to hide his actions in Fate for that whole year because otherwise Dross would just do the Presence thing and see a coming threat in the future ||

[opal wadi]

Willverse mechanics
||With a hypothetical ritual of this magnitude I'm sure Varric would be smart enough to do something like "seal the fate of the ritual" in some way, the aether is very fate sensitive in a way Cradle's magic isn't until you reach the high ends ||

[thick bay]

||Maybe if he can get all the stars and planets to align again.||

[spice socket]

Well now I wanna see it

[thick bay]

||Doesn't that just put him in the void? I think he could escape that.||

[dreamy sorrel]

Cradle all/ Captain bloopers: ||What would happen if you put Lindon in hyperspace? As in, a space with extra space compressed||

[safe knoll]

Cradle all/ Captain all ||Absolute burial is very Ghost-like. It seals the target in a pocket space without time, iirc. So, in principle, once you're sealed there, you can't get out. If it was just a pocket space, like Terminus Mundi, Lindon could Open/Release his way out of there.||

[ornate heron]

Cradle all/Captain all ||I think that peak Lindon presented in the main story would probably be able to teleport out of there but depending on the power of the spell it would take him varying amounts of time||

[violet apex]

Same tags ||he might be able to just Consume the spell honestly||

[ornate heron]

Good point

[safe knoll]

cradle all/captain all ||I've no doubts about Lindon eating or teleporting out of the normal version of the spell, but I've don't really know how to evaluate a hypothetical supercharged Burial crafted by Varric specifically to target Lindon. It could be powerful enough||

||also, if Varric found out about Lindon's origins, he might specifically target the Hunger nature of Lindon's power base. In similar ways we saw happen on Cradle ||

[spice socket]

last horizon and cradle all || I wonder what Lindon would feel like in the Aether to Varric? I wonder if it’d be like the iron kings did.||

[lilac vault]

Reaper 2 ||LMAO THE BROOM ICON||

||The apple did not fall far at all with Eithan||

[violet apex]

||he wasn’t kidding when he said his line began with the Broom Sage||

[thick bay]

Cradle ALL/DrWho ||Small thought, Eithan reveal actually gave me the same vibe as Tenant regeneration. Someone who doesn't want to go/change but is forced to? ||

[inner loom]

Writing update from Will's brother

[opal wadi]

Will is hard at work damn

[thick bay]

TheLesserWight?

Will's finally going to traditional route, AW look at him our author is growing up.

[boreal oasis]

Yuss Elder Empire

[hollow ferry]

So apparently my gf is on Wintersteel

Oh she just finished uncrowned today

Looks like she’s only on chapter 4 of Wintersteel

But she has been liking the last few books more

[opal wadi]

The Wintersteel prologue kicks hard

[thick bay]

Cradle all ||How's Project Gaslight Gatekeep Girlfriend going?||

[hollow ferry]

Cradle all || Lmfao I’ll ask her more about her thoughts later tonight when she gets here. This week we haven’t really talked about the series much at all. But she has certainly been making some steady progress!

I know when I asked her thoughts about the end of Ghostwater, she mentioned she thought that harmony somehow made it out/couldn’t just be gone

It was like 3 am when we were messaging about how we both screwed up by not yet being asleep and she was like, but book. And I couldn’t remember what she was reading so I was shocked when she said Wintersteel ||

[hollow ferry]

Cradle all || Remind me what happens in the prologue? A lot of stuff bleeds together for me ||

[opal wadi]

||We get Sword Sages POV going into the labyrinth and dying||

[hollow ferry]

|| Ohhhhh yeahhhhhh ||

[lilac vault]

Reaper 4

https://tenor.com/view/meme-bob-esponja-gif-2904459546447199840

[opal wadi]

||WHEN WILL YOU FINALLY UNDERSTAND, OLD MAN ||

[lilac vault]

https://tenor.com/view/how-many-times-do-we-have-to-teach-you-this-lesson-old-man-hi-there-young-people-spongebob-old-man-old-man-spongebob-gif-5749776374374436142

Peak

Reaper 5 ||What happens if you open a Void Key on a moving cloud ship? Would it remain stationary with the ship, or would it get yeeted into the distance?||

||It would probably remain stationary but I'm curious||

Similar vibes to ReZero, ||and Subaru having a reputation for being the mage surrounded by children||

[hollow ferry]

Wait

Her name is spelled || JARAN!? ||

[lilac vault]

His name

||Jaran is Lindon's father||

||Seisha is his mother||

I assume you thought it was ||Yaran?||

[hollow ferry]

Ohhhh yeah

Okay, thanks lol

I clearly didn’t read the whole photo

[lilac vault]

Anyway ||how is Jaran still a worse parent than Malice, when Malice publicly shamed her daughter for a very reasonable loss that her enemy, if his descendant has the same loss, said that he would have been proud of her regardless||

[lilac vault]

||Especially since Sesh had way more to lose because Sophara was his only method of winning the tournament, she was his only representative still there, and even if we include Reigan Shen's people as well in a Sesh win condition, Yan Shoumei was the only one who stood a chance on his side.||

[jade notch]

||You mean Yerin?||

[jade notch]

Best scene in the books

[jade notch]

||Malice is like, an actively bad parent. Jaran is a passively bad parent||

[lilac vault]

||No, they were confused about Jaran's name||

[jade notch]

||I saw that but I thought you were trying to correct it to Yerin?||

[lilac vault]

||No, I was saying that I assume the name is pronounced "Yaran" and that's how they thought it was spelled||

[dreamy sorrel]

Blackflame general and beyond: ||Eithan should probably listen to these guys
https://youtube.com/shorts/s4416Mw3v1w?si=qnN0_E3hqJCE79fM||

[spice socket]

|| “Skill issue”-Eithan Arelius hair flip ||

https://tenor.com/view/flaunting-my-hair-glinda-wicked-hair-shake-universal-pictures-gif-3437325453184738414

[opal wadi]

||"There's only so much skill can do against overwhelming power." ||

[south pendant]

Doesn’t Eithan just use normal sized ones?

[opal wadi]

Yeah for most of the story

General
||they're described as big fabric scissors but never too large, just the kind you'd find on a tailor's shop. ||

[hollow ferry]

Gf update : Cradle all || So she’s still on wintersteel. Last night I asked if she still thought Eithan was “that other guy” and she is doubting it now/saying that the book seems to suggest he may not be. The Cradle Anti-Spoiler Gaslighting Campaign is working.

She’s going to be so smug when the reveal comes though ||

[opal wadi]

||I pressed a bit on the fact Eithan was the second once-in-a-thousand-generations genius that was going to surpass the God of Turbo Death||

[spice socket]

Oh that’s fun, they tell you what books you should read up to

First Uncrowned King || aw lil baby true gold Reigan Shen||

[spice socket]

Ah man I can already tell I’m gonna enjoy these short stories

Almost acronymed this short story…bad idea

First uncrowned king || man it’s been long enough that I can enjoy how big of an ass Reigan Shen is.||

[mighty totem]

-# you should see commentators in Fate: Unlimited Code tournaments

[spice socket]

Lmao

[spice socket]

Anagis regret || “it is the curse of the truly gorgeous, I can never escape attention from anyone who’s seen me shirtless.”||

https://tenor.com/view/such-an-icon-sure-certain-convinced-supportive-gif-13498798

[spice socket]

Testing Northstrider || leave it to Northstrider to be an overachiever to the end ||

[robust estuary]

My special editions of Skysworn, Ghostwater, and Underlord have arrived 😤
At my mom's place because I moved to a different state since buying them and I couldn't send them to another than my initial shipping address for tax reasons

[spice socket]

Oh wow nice

I want physical copies of the books

I only recently saw some at Barnes and noble for the first time but I was poor

Paper backs admittedly but still

[spice socket]

This one is. Fascinating

[spice socket]

A Bloody End || “Bleed and bury me who has been calling my name?!”
Me: …omg what a long con. Incredible.||

[spice socket]

Cradle and last horizon general humor || is Akura Fury the brightest timeline version of Omega||

[inner loom]

Cradle / Last Horizon general || I think Raion is the potara fusion of Fury and Mercy ||

[spice socket]

How is travelers gate

[inner loom]

I had a good time with it. It’s more traditional fantasy than Will’s other works. It has a lot of cool ideas but it also suffers a bit from being Will’s first books

[spice socket]

Ahhhh word

Willverse question || is the void discussed in things like Cradle supposed to be the same thing as Subspace in last horizon or is Subspace in Last Horizon actually The Way and the void is something yet untouched||

[spice socket]

|| Stronk Icon ||

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-squarepants-strong-buff-ripped-gif-24036188