r/Iteration110Cradle

Was listening to Wintersteel with my son today, and we were learning about Sages and their Icons. That led into a discussion about types of aura, and finally my son asked "If you had a sharp enough cheese, would it generate sword aura?"

Why didn’t Northstrider just revert himself to pre-Consumed state after fleeing from Lindon and The Weeping Dragon? After resting first of course. He could restore the contestants of The Uncrowned King Tournament to full strength and health, and surely he has more Authority over himself than he does over some (relatively) random Underlords.

I have always gotten the impression that the community as whole tends to dislike Naru Gwei. He's old, brooding, limited in his thinking, assumes the worst of many of our favorite characters and would happily kill them all over the possible threats they *might* represent.

I myself have always had an affection for him, instead. Sometimes inspite of, and sometimes because of, those same qualities. Naru Gwei is a cop. While ACAB absolutely applies here, he's also a soldier, in a political system he is tasked with defending snd maintaining. It's what he does, snd he's good at it. He's effective at his job. I've always had a soft spot for people who are just doing their jobs the best way they know how.

He might be a mean old coot, but he's a mean old coot who puts the empire and the Skysworn above everything. I like the way he rationalizes how to deal with Lindon and Yerin. I love how much he hates Eithan.

I myself love Eithan. He's fantastic. He's wonderful... but he's a gremlin and a troll. Of course Naru Gwei is going to hate him. Eithan doesn't fit into his neat little picture of order. Eithan defied him , recently. Eithan is the one who pushed Jai Daishou to extremes!

I love how curmudgeonly he is. I love how unclean he looks because he doesn't give a damn about appearances, only doing his job. I love how Will writes him and uses him in the story. If there was an ugly old man with wings plush of Naru Gwei, I think I'd buy one.

I wouldn't want to hang out with him. We could never be friends. I don't think I'd actually enjoy meeting him, but I kind of want to? I think he's probably my favorite pseudo-antagonist/ally in the story. Anyway, I just wanted to discuss Naru Gwei for a moment during my reread.

Lindon just got permission to join the Skysworn. Gwei is hoping he, Yerin, and Mercy will all die in the fighting. I love that he's going to be so disappointed but I adore how Will writes the way he comes to this conclusion.

What are y'all's thoughts on Naru Gwei?

Started soulsmith 3 days ago but i am stuck at just the beginning for the last 3 days it is even slower than Unsouled as i finished it in 5-6 days. The fight between yerin and the remanant was bad and i am readinh when they are searching for water

Such a slow start

Thyresia Geldonna, Fourth Executor of the Abidan, sighed as she exited the vivid blue portal of The Way and descended to the surface of Sanctum. This last mission had been... taxing. It felt like it had been decades since she had an easy one. She could check her presence for the exact answer, but she was certain she didn't want to know. What she wouldn't give for a meteor impact or a plague, or even just a nice villain to destroy.

A voice sounded in her head, interrupting her brooding.

"Executor Alpha Four. Sector Control has detected your presence in Sanctum. Present yourself your debriefing immediately or you will be found in contempt of your oaths."

Thyresia sighed again and whisked herself away towards the stout grey building that housed the limited physical needs of the Executor Program. It's diminutive nature didn't insult her nearly so much as the gaudy gold of the Hall of Justice did, but the slight was certainly intentional. The years since Evarin had gone rogue had certainly made the Court's dissatisfaction with her and her colleagues apparent.

Colleague, she mentally corrected. It was just her and Daruman left. Phestos had left to resume control of his home Iteration off in the remote branch of the Way he had ascended from, Charisse had quit, and Evarin had destroyed his last assignment—before being destroyed in turn. Within the safety of her own mind Thyresia could admit that she couldn't blame any of them for their decisions. Not anymore.

If her home had been in a more distant branch of the Way, she might have considered returning there herself. She didn't necessarily desire to be worshipped as a Goddess the way she was certain to be were she to descend nearly four centuries after uniting her people, but it certainly had an appeal when compared to her current treatment.

The pair of Hounds waiting to debrief her radiated contempt and irritation. Whether at her failure to immediately appear within the building upon her arrival or just in reaction to her appearance at all, she didn't care. Her unpredictability within Fate meant the debrief teams needed to be on call at all moments, even when missions could last years at a time. It was the consequence of the decisions they had made after Charisse, the restrictions they had placed upon them. They were welcome to be as grumpy as they liked.

Her two handlers of the day didn't speak as they went to work strapping her into the complex artifact that would extract her memories of the nine local years she had spent on Iteration 614 for dissection and examination. She didn't break the silence either—she had nothing to say.

One of the Hounds vanished further into the complex, her presence in his grasp. It would be scanned of all data on the fluctuations of Fate engendered by her actions in order to bring the network as a whole up to date on prediction indicators. Thyresia would have to purge it of manipulated directives when they returned it, as she always did.

For now, she closed her eyes and tuned out the world and the buzzing and humming of the constructs. It could take hours or days for them to pick apart and critique every decision she had made and to confirm that the new track of Fate Scour had landed on was up to their standards. Not that she particularly cared for their judgments.

Her opinion was unfortunately not considered as the Hound monitoring her memories began questioning and berating her regarding her actions of Scour. Part of her mind remained focused, answering the interrogation with the calm and poise befitting an empress, but the rest drifted.

A thread of Fate opened to Thyresia and she watched with pleasure as a version of herself speared the odious man through the heart with her trident before flinging his body onto the street outside. She particularly enjoyed the look of shock on his face in this future and committed it to memory before dismissing the vision. Dozens of additional possibilities opened up to her mind as she considered all the ways she could shut the odious man up for good.

She always cut off the visions before they progressed too far. This was her secret little game of stress relief, and it would spoil the fun to watch herself get captured or killed by one of the Judges. In front of her, the Hound continued his "evaluation" of all her many supposed inadequacies and mistakes.

It was hard to take a pencil pushing Hound like him seriously, he wouldn't have survived a tenth of the missions she had been on and would have failed on half of any he did survive. It was easy to judge a decision from the safety of Sanctum and from the perspective of hindsight, it was a different story in the moment, when billions of lives were on the line.

Another thread of Fate opened up where she ripped his spine out and flung it through a portal to land at Makiel's feet. Before her, the man continued his supposed debrief without a flicker of recognition or acknowledgment, as those like him always did. It was the reason they distrusted her and the others so much. Blind spots. They had all become blind spots in the Abidan's sight and they hated it, Makiel and the Hounds most of all.

"Is something funny Alpha Four?" He asked suddenly. "Because my calculations show that you could have stabilized Iteration 614 within a mere three months local time. While you were busy playing around, an additional 500 million people died on Iteration 324, and I don't think that's a laughing matter."

The ghost of a smirk that had graced her mouth at the obliviousness of her minder twisted into a sneer. Scour had been full of corruption of the mortal kind. Its leaders boldly marching their world towards its certain destruction just for the sake of just a little more power. Each of them intending to ascend beyond the consequences of their actions at the last possible moment. It had been a delicate balance to bring its people out of the oppression they had grown used to. Executing the powerful had only been the start. The systems in place were simply too entrenched for that to be enough. If she had left so quickly, the world would have tipped back to the edge of oblivion within half a century, rather than the six millennia of stability she had established.

She pulled more of herself back into her mind, not trusting her ability to keep her stress relief grounded in mere possibility if she had to address the man with the full weight of her emotions and thoughts. What remained relayed her reasoning with calm and cool logic.

The Hound made a sound of disgust anyway.

"This is why they're replacing you relics. You're sloppy and inefficient and dangerous. There are a thousand of the new guys, all of them tied directly to Makiel and the Hounds by binding constructs. No more unexpected deviations, no more surprises, no more treason. Just order."

Internally, Thyresia was intrigued, but nothing of her thoughts showed on her placid face. The Hound scoffed again, before continuing.

"You know, they aren't even going to be called Executors anymore. That name will die with you and Alpha Five. The Vroshir will be everything that you lot never were, and the Way will be better for it. Just you wait."

I'm primarily referring to Lindon, but also Mercy to a lesser extent. They were younger than Sophara, and went from Underlord to Overlord(and Lindon to Archlord) in a much shorter timeframe than she did. Yet her spirit was collapsing from the quick advancement, while they suffered seemingly no consequences. Was there any explanation?

Eithan advanced from Overlord to Archlord rapidly too but there's any number of explanations for Eithan being able to get around it

Edit: Thank you everyone for the answers, they're all very good

The Points Sage could change a cup into a bowl, or any other item worth an equivalent number of points.

Im going through my annual relisten of Cradle on audible. I got through the first 3 books and they had the bloopers that got added. Skysworn didn’t have any, but that’s cause I thought skysworn didn’t get any bloopers. Now I’m on ghostwater and there aren’t any bloopers. Usually the bloopers count as a different chapter but there is no chapter for bloopers. I checked underlord and uncrowned and they don’t have bloopers either. Does anyone know how to get back the bloopers on audible?

Spoilers, of course.

Am through my bajillionth listen of Cradle as my go-to comfort series and felt compelled to mourn the biggest bummer deaths. The higher up on the list, the more unfortunate it feels to me partially because the plot effect if they did survive seems quite marginal. Further down the list, plot has much greater potential for change if they didn't die, but still a bummer for other reasons, including those plot potentials.

I'll update per suggestions for those not on my mind:

1. Seishen Kiro - definitely on the wrong side and it's not like Lindon really could help it in the moment. But this dude was quite alright and honorable, just boxed into a corner by powers far above him. I also feel for Mira as well as their overall relationship regardless of what therapy they'd need even if Kiro didn't die. Frankly, more than any other person on this list, having him live and just move on to me seems the least consequential to any of the plot happenings / stakes / character development. Ex: I could easily see Daji still attacking Lindon and betraying them with Reigan Shen even if Kiro was alive.
2. Akura Grace - done dirtier by being off-paged + was pretty cool to Lindon from the get-go. Reasonable stakes and circumstances though.
3. Jai Long - mainly cause of Kelsa's and Jai Chen's trauma.
4. Renfei - admittedly great twist setup for the stakes Lindon has to overcome and a huge ramp up in tension near the start of Ghostwater. She was uncool to the Big Three, but was warming up over time.
5. Akura Douji / Courage - see Akura Grace but they were way more fodder-ish and treated Lindon like the scrubs they are
6. Naian Blackflame - only some dragons advance
7. Tiberian Aurelius - probably the most major plot changes and would be interesting to see how the politics play-out. The guy is just cool with how he was portrayed both in terms of path and demeanor. Also, while sure we're talking about Eithan, it is an indicative character trait for a Monarch to listen to an underlord.
8. Makiel - The entire court is pretty much balanced against Ozriel, but there is much potential with a Makiel that has adjusted to the reformed Oz.
9. Timaias Adama - Cries and condolences. He did right by Yerin. One of the best plot "inconsistencies" paid for by his death to a bunch of jades and irons (and hunger attacks and Subject One and THE suppression field).
10. Daruman - Oth'Kimeth could've died intead. A nice fanfic in my head has him rehabilitate freed from chaotic influence then joins the Reaper Division as a powerful, experienced being with an actual support system of Eithan + the entire group (especially Little Blue).
11. Mu Enkai - the dude could've ascended after killing some monarchs + dreagods.

To close it out, I'm not at all suggesting the series would be better with any of these folks alive. In fact, it'd be worse for it with the lack of dramatic stakes for at least some named characters. Big exception to Kiro though. The biggest of bummers.

... ship Lindon x Yerin?

Like, were there other ways she considered shifting Lindon's fate, but she wanted them to end up together, so she pushed Lindon towards her instead?

I mean, she obviously didn't ship Lindon x Jai Chen, since she broke them up retroactively.

Just completed unsouled finally in 5 days, it was okay only got little interesting after Suriel came, Yurien was average till now

Will give it 4/10
Didn’t have that much hype moment, the only thing that i truly liked was the interaction between Surion and Lindon

Action was okay, the power system is still totally confusion, lets see how it go ahead

Hi y’all,

A couple friends and I are putting together a D&D-style campaign with a Cradle-inspired sacred arts system. I’ll be the GM, but it’s been a while since I read the books, so I’m trying to refresh my understanding.

How does someone actually learn an established technique in Cradle?

Is it basically a combination of:

1. having the right madra/aspect,
2. cycling or moving that madra through the correct channels/pattern,
3. shaping it with intent or visualization,
4. then releasing or applying it in the correct way?

For example, if someone were learning a sword madra Striker technique, would the process be something like: draw sword madra from the core, circulate it through the arm channels, compress and shape it, then release it in a narrow cutting line?

I’m just trying to get as close as possible to how the mechanics seem to work in-universe. Thank you!

I finished the Cradle series, and now I want to read more about the Abbadon and what the Way or spaces between itterations is like.