- Location
- My house, probably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Huh, well there you have it. Seems hypocritical to me, if he's using the "setting not characters" loophole while still being pissy about people doing stuff in the setting he created.
Path of the Immeasurable Swarm [Worm/Cradle]
- Thread starter derivativeoflife
- Start date
- Crossover
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ok so bear with me because I had a delayed thought. This is Cradle where power is… it's most people's life goal, it's everything, even if the reasons they want that power can vary. And Taylor is pants shitingly terrifying to all but… what, 50 people on cradle right now? Probably less. 6 monarchs the 8 man empire probably two to four heralds/sages for each of the six with a few likely in reserve for the empire in case any of them die, two for each of the 4 dread god cults, a few loners like the sword sage staying out of it all? Yeah, 50 sounds about right.
Point is Taylor's got power, she stands out, she's a symbol of everything they aspire to be….
So how many young men and woman do you think she's going to leave pining for the untouchable shadow sage when she sets down to fix something and then leaves? After fixing their problems in an hour with one technique? The sensible ones will just be terrified but it's cradle the ones destined for greatness seem to lack some common sense by default.
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- Location
- Denial
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Taylor returns to Whitestone in a few years time only to find the bookshops full of racy romance novels about her. Immediately turns around and leaves then pretends she's never heard of the place before.
Pining for Shadows
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Here have an omake oh what to call it…. Pining for Shadows.
"Lord Ming, we have a small issue with our new guard recruits." The guard captain said from the door of the young lords office.
The Lord Ming did not look up from his paperwork which given all the recent unrest was stacked almost as high as his chest.
"Captain, I know they can't be up to your old standards, most of them are just low golds after all, but I can't shake the city until high and true golds fall out when they already have lives and duties we need them to keep fulfilling. And with the sages gift they'll have what they need to advance even if it's not going to be as quick as either of us might like."
"Er, all do respect my Lord, but that isn't really the issue. Honestly, they might not be as strong as I'd like, but their driven like few recruits I've ever worked with. Train all day without complaint, and if someone starts to flag they rally round them and get that one moving again."
Lord Ming blinked and looked up from his paperwork.
"Well that sounds excellent, so what's the problem?"
"Er well, most of these recruits are young, very young. For starters not a one older than twenty five a lot no older than sixteen. Makes them a bit rowdy but what's left of the old guard can handle that. No the real issue is, well what's driving them, my Lord."
"I don't understand, their motivation is the problem?"
"Yes, my Lord!" The Captain nodded vigorously. "It's, well they all want to serve the Shadow Sage."
The thought of the most terrifying woman he'd ever met filled the Lord Ming's mind.
"What?!"
"It's the damndest thing my Lord!" The Captain finally gave up all pretense of composure and began to pace near the door. "Every one swears they'll make it to Underlord then go on a training pilgrimage to reach Akura territory! Plan to be Overlords by the time they get there and then beg for the right to serve the shadow sage! If one of them starts to falter during training they circle round and demand to know if they think the sage will allow a weekling to carry out her will, never mind fetch her food and drink, or heaven's bless them brush out her hair!"
The Captain threw his hands into the air.
"They're mad, the lot of them! Every last one a love sick fool chasing a woman they think is beyond them and utterly willing to devote themselves to her anyway so long as they can serve her! A couple are even less sane than the rest! Swear that even if it takes them a hundred years they'll advance to Sage or Herald before approaching her so she might consider them an equal and bless them with a chance to win her heart! It's madness! One and all these new recruits are insane! I'd turn them away but there's no one more motivated then they in the whole of the city! I can't afford to turn them loose, but if this keeps on the city guard will be a cult dedicated to the shadow sage!" The guard Captain slumped and turned again to face his ruler.
"My Lord, what do I do with them?"
The Lord had no answer, no brilliant plan. He was in fact still stuck on stunned disbelief. In the end he told the Captain to try and get the less committed to calm down, and start up recruitment again once some of the more driven started to approach peak true gold, he doubted many if any would actually advance into the Lord realm, but if they really were so driven… well, best to not dismiss the possibility.
"Lord Ming, we have a small issue with our new guard recruits." The guard captain said from the door of the young lords office.
The Lord Ming did not look up from his paperwork which given all the recent unrest was stacked almost as high as his chest.
"Captain, I know they can't be up to your old standards, most of them are just low golds after all, but I can't shake the city until high and true golds fall out when they already have lives and duties we need them to keep fulfilling. And with the sages gift they'll have what they need to advance even if it's not going to be as quick as either of us might like."
"Er, all do respect my Lord, but that isn't really the issue. Honestly, they might not be as strong as I'd like, but their driven like few recruits I've ever worked with. Train all day without complaint, and if someone starts to flag they rally round them and get that one moving again."
Lord Ming blinked and looked up from his paperwork.
"Well that sounds excellent, so what's the problem?"
"Er well, most of these recruits are young, very young. For starters not a one older than twenty five a lot no older than sixteen. Makes them a bit rowdy but what's left of the old guard can handle that. No the real issue is, well what's driving them, my Lord."
"I don't understand, their motivation is the problem?"
"Yes, my Lord!" The Captain nodded vigorously. "It's, well they all want to serve the Shadow Sage."
The thought of the most terrifying woman he'd ever met filled the Lord Ming's mind.
"What?!"
"It's the damndest thing my Lord!" The Captain finally gave up all pretense of composure and began to pace near the door. "Every one swears they'll make it to Underlord then go on a training pilgrimage to reach Akura territory! Plan to be Overlords by the time they get there and then beg for the right to serve the shadow sage! If one of them starts to falter during training they circle round and demand to know if they think the sage will allow a weekling to carry out her will, never mind fetch her food and drink, or heaven's bless them brush out her hair!"
The Captain threw his hands into the air.
"They're mad, the lot of them! Every last one a love sick fool chasing a woman they think is beyond them and utterly willing to devote themselves to her anyway so long as they can serve her! A couple are even less sane than the rest! Swear that even if it takes them a hundred years they'll advance to Sage or Herald before approaching her so she might consider them an equal and bless them with a chance to win her heart! It's madness! One and all these new recruits are insane! I'd turn them away but there's no one more motivated then they in the whole of the city! I can't afford to turn them loose, but if this keeps on the city guard will be a cult dedicated to the shadow sage!" The guard Captain slumped and turned again to face his ruler.
"My Lord, what do I do with them?"
The Lord had no answer, no brilliant plan. He was in fact still stuck on stunned disbelief. In the end he told the Captain to try and get the less committed to calm down, and start up recruitment again once some of the more driven started to approach peak true gold, he doubted many if any would actually advance into the Lord realm, but if they really were so driven… well, best to not dismiss the possibility.
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For better or worse, they are lucky that to advance into the Lord realm requires them to understand themselves and it seems unlikely that so many of their devotion is central enough to serve for their advancement. One can hope they can convince the nascent city guard that the best way to serve the Shadow Sage is to protect the city rather than journeying into Akura territory.
DoorAlarm
Doorsss
- Location
- U.S of A
- Pronouns
- She
Proof that simps will still be simping even in Xianxia worlds, I see.
I mean, power and confidence tends to be attractive to people and now we have someone who tempered their form in soulfire, saved them all from an obvious tyrant. Hero worship is a universal thing after all. Eventually reality will set in but if the Sacred Arts can be summed up as Improve Yourself so can Cultivation be summed up as Turn the Impossible into the Possible. The mightiest beings in this verse within the way (Fiends are another matter) are those who cultivated their connection to the Way such that they can mantle archetypes. We know of nine and there seems to be no indication that more could not be found (after all, The Reaper/Destruction was a more recent addition while Creation never found a successor).
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- Location
- Omniverse #1345
To my recollection his problem with them is he basically instinctively goes "oh, now I can't use that idea" when he reads an Omake, as he has a thing about never quite doing the same thing the same way. So he wants them segmented off so he can avoid looking at them and unintentionally cutting himself off from certain ideas.
For most writers that isn't really a problem, so most allow or even encourage omakes.
I mean…religious devotion is a very powerful motivator and a solid reason to practice the Sacred Arts (there are whole groups that worship the dreadgods after all). And Lords are basically minor gods. Sages might as well be full on gods. So aspiring to serve the Shadow Sage is actually a legit path to power and purpose in life.
Stahor
BookWorm
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
Just explain that you fully support their inspirations, but given that they all joined together and reinforce each other, then if they advance together and quit it would put city in a pickle, and it would not serve anyone. So put a condition: they will train a replacement if they advance (enough).
Article: "This is exactly what I was talking about. She's a dangerous influence."
"She's a sixteen year old girl with strong opinions, Wilkins," Armstrong answered. "Nothing more. She holds onto those opinions and her core worldview, and vulnerable people get caught up in her momentum. Cult leaders will do the same thing, only it's purposeful in their case. Get people tired, get people worn out, scared and hungry, and then give them someone with presence to give them support."
"You're saying she's an accidental cult leader?"
"She's in a position where it's very easy to sway others.
Word of god is that there's around 50 Sages and 100 Heralds in Cradle during the story. The fact that she's "just" an Overlord should matter too, and peak Archlords can probably take her on in an equal footing.
At the very least, I expect Eithan to still destroy her in a fight while still limiting himself to Archlord levels.
Let's be conservative and put "peak Archlords" at around 300 people… Then there are around 450 people who can match or beat Taylor.
Of course, this is spread out over a population of hundreds of billions, and probably 50 of them are on the same side.
Once Taylor advances to Archlord though, that number shrinks to around 150.
Let's be honest, Eithan is an outlier and should not be counted. Eithan could probably take 'Sage-Overlord Taylor' while an Overlord, and probably put up a hell of a fight even as an Undelord.
However, yeah, Taylor is in the top thousand people on Cradle, which has a population of 600 Billion or something. That's terrifying when you think about it.
- Pronouns
- He
There is also the fact that Taylor actually gets more dangerous the more people that are against her as she is so good at turning enemies against each other with her illusions.
In one on one tournament style fights Taylor might have 500 or so people that are on her level or higher but in actual battle I would rank her significantly higher than that.
She is also going to be improving rapidly over the next few years. I don't think it will be too long until the weaker heralds or sages are no longer considered to be on her level.
In one on one tournament style fights Taylor might have 500 or so people that are on her level or higher but in actual battle I would rank her significantly higher than that.
She is also going to be improving rapidly over the next few years. I don't think it will be too long until the weaker heralds or sages are no longer considered to be on her level.
Especialy since she has Multitasking Yes so her efficiency of action on a field of battle it typicaly quite absurd
Okay, so this just popped in my head and I need to know—Won't the fact that Taylor hasn't displayed the Akura bloodline (Crystal armor generation) ability let others figure out she's not actually an Akura? I mean, it kinda seemed like it was sth they didn't want the world to know, at first. Or is it not sth that's observed in all the Akura clan members?
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
I think it's something only the closest relations are certain to have, and Taylor is thought to be a distant-enough one to have a different bloodline ability.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm not sure that it matters that much. Who's going to make a significant point of "she's not a real Akura", either internally or externally? She has the name Akura, she serves with the Akura, she's aligned with the Akura. It's plausible that other major factions would realize that she's not a blood relation, but what would they do with that?
If anything, they'd probably just expect a marriage to some appropriate young Akura man which, given that the most obvious options are Pride and Harmony, is very funny to contemplate.
If anything, they'd probably just expect a marriage to some appropriate young Akura man which, given that the most obvious options are Pride and Harmony, is very funny to contemplate.
Satisfaction
brought it back.
She's a Sage tho. She's powerful and important enough to not need to give a shit about that kind of politics. At her level the only opinions that actually matter are those of Malice, Charity and Mercy, and all of their opinions are positive.
Sage says she doesn't want to marry this or that guy, or at all, who's going to make a fuss about something like that?
Sage says she doesn't want to marry this or that guy, or at all, who's going to make a fuss about something like that?
Roth963
If I become inactive with this massage, I died
He was talking about what other factions might expect, not what will happen in the akura clan, although I think they might have expected it if she was just an overlord, as a sage, nobody really expect her to do something like have arranged marriage unless she want to.
Functionally, Taylor an Akura, unless she turns against Malice or cause serious political problems (as in world shaking problems), she is staying one, she could have been a walking fish and people would still need to treat her like an Akura.
- Location
- Goose Land
It's already been explained, so I might as well explain how Magic Bloodlines (seem to) work in Cradle.
There's basically two different ways Bloodlines seem to appear in Cradle, Mutation and Authority.
A Mutation sourced Bloodline seems to occur the same way natural evolution happens IRL. An otherwise normal person is born through the usual methods, and their physical and/or spiritual DNA has a slight error in it, causing their body/spirit/soul/madra to grow in an unusual way, and this alteration helps increase survival and reproduction rates and eventually spreads out into a stable population, though thanks to Punch Magic and Life Extension what defines a "stable population" can range from "everyone on the planet" to "literally one family unit, possibly even only two people at a time, the mainline parent and their child-heir".
Because of the "Consume Remnants For Power" pipeline, we receive exactly one firm canon statement on a Madra Mutation existing, so while we can make assumptions and extrapolate on the idea that people living and shaping themselves to adapt within a certain area will develop genetic traits (physical or spiritual) over vasts amounts of time that help them adapt to their local conditions, no one explicitly has that going on in Cradle, so we come back to the one explicitly canon statement of Madra Mutation that exists (that I remember).
The Sha Family's Royal Madra is reportedly a spiritual mutation. This complicates things because the Sha Family is a Monarch family, but we'll get to that in a minute, so first let's get the direct quote.
So while it could be a result of an Authority Bloodline, it's not spelled out as that and the above comes from an Abidan Report I'm inclinded to treat it as what it calls itself, a spiritual mutation, which means it's a quirk of spiritual genetics which was successfully exploited by the Sha Family to maintain their existence and control over the Ninecloud Court.
Said Spiritual Mutation allows them to use their particular flavor of Pure Madra to control the Madra of others by the way, but we've already seen a first person view on how a Sha Underlord might fight so I won't go into details beyond that right now.
The other type of Bloodlines is the Authority Bloodline, or the Bloodline Legacy.
When someone reaches Monarch, a/the core aspect of their spiritual journey is highlighted, emphasized, refined, and turned into a genetic Bloodline ability.
I am uncertain if this ability is "retroactively" applied, and given to existing bloodline members of the Monarch's familial legacy, presumably within their Authority, or if it only applies to those newly borne to the new Monarch.
Additionally, it's not quite known if someone who already had a Bloodline Legacy who becomes a Monarch creates a new Bloodline Legacy, either a variation or a whole new Legacy altogether, but to be honest the available information suggests that it both is not "retroactive" and that if you have an existing Legacy when you become a Monarch you don't seem to create a new one or a new variation of it.
The two Legacies that we're certain of existing as an inherited Bloodline Ability are the Arelius Bloodline, which is a very strong expansion of their Spiritual Perception, and the Akura Bloodline, which is their purple gemstone madra armor.
Addressing the original question of "Are there members of the Akura Clan who can't use the Purple Armor?", the answer is actually yes!
The Akura Clan basically has two degrees of genetic closeness, which essentially boils down to the Main Family and the Branch Families.
It's actually really easy to figure out which are which by the way!
Is their first name some sort of Virtue or Vice, some sort of Single Word Personality Trait?
If so, congratulations, it's a Mainline Family Member!
See, Malice has this thing about the whole Virtue Name Thing, especially because it was used with her with the intent of her becoming the Malice of/against Dragons and Dragons killed all of her family members when she wasn't a Monarch, so if you're born in the Mainline then Malice pops on over, does a scan of the baby brain, and slaps down a one word Virtue Descriptor as their name based on what she determined about the newborn baby's brain structures plus probably Future Sight to a small degree, and then bounces to whatever else she has going on that day.
So, Taylor being a member of the Akura family isn't strictly unusual, except for the name Taylor probably being mildly unusual but honestly not significantly, and also the Akura sometimes adopt people into the family without them needing to marry into it, so that's not really any sort of thing at all to be concerned about politically.
So, Taylor not displaying the Akura Bloodline Legacy is honestly not any sort of issue in regards to Akura Legitimacy outside of the hypothetical "Hebert For Shadow Goddess President" but that's unlikely for- let's just say "several reasons" and leave it at that.
In terms of Marriage Politics, external actors are entirely a non-issue for the summarized issue of "Not Their Circus Not Their Monkeys", where it would take some sort of really archaic asshole to make any sort of fuss about it, and they'd have to be at least as powerful as a Monarch for said fuss to have any real barring on anything that could possibly matter in terms of putting pressure on Taylor to get some sort of marriage to an Akura.
For internal actors aka Akura Clan Politics Below The Level That Malice Cares About, well.
Taylor is/was the personal disciple of Charity, the Heart Sage, is the personal friend and right hand of Mercy, the Akura Heir, and was involved in a long term scheme to manipulate the Dragons into wasting a bunch of resources crippling one of their rising stars for the Uncrowned King Tournament, which I emphasize succeeded, and became one of the Uncrowned IIRC.
All that alone, let alone together, would make Taylor untouchable in terms of Akura Clan Internal Politics, especially after Harmony screwed up so bad it was honestly a relief when Lindon killed him, but her becoming an Overlord, and then an Overlord Sage, makes the idea of anyone within the Akura Clan who isn't Mercy, Charity, or Malice trying to pressure Taylor regarding anything is honestly completely laughable.
Cradle is a world that respects known strength, and Taylor is currently in the top point 1 percent in terms of strength, with her journey to Archelord and thus Sage Proper and then Monarch effectively ensured unless someone kills her.
And good luck doing that to someone with the Shadow Icon, who will also soon have the Oracle Icon.
So, in summary: It doesn't really matter that Taylor doesn't have the Akura Bloodline Legacy, and anyone trying to pressure Taylor into a marriage for any sort of reason is probably suicidally stupid and is either that dumb or is trying to die by Magic Ninja Cop.
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Stahor
BookWorm
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
" - I'm Malice, you are now Akura."
I think number of people who can oppose that is less than number of fingers of machinist with 40 years on the clock.
For practical purposes, even before whole Sage thing, more or less god declared Taylor to be Akura, it's not something people would doubt.
- Location
- Escondido, California, USA, North America
She is saying she is from a branch of the family from before Malice became a Monarch, thus she wouldn't have the bloodline ability. Reread Shade 2.10 for the conversation where this is said.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
There's one piece of evidence that supports it not being retroactive. It's not explicit, just implied. Akura Fury is Malice's son from before she reached Monarch (but probably not much before, because it's mentioned that he failed to bond the Book of Eternal Night that became Mercy's), and he does not have purple eyes and we've never seen him deploy the armor in canon, unless I've missed something.
It's possible that he just never had a reason to use it "on-screen", but I suspect that he doesn't have it as a power. Since Charity is his daughter, you'd think that this applies to her, and I also don't recall her using the armor. Fury had a broad and deep line of descent, and they might all not have the bloodline armor unless they got it from their other parent.
I think another point of argument that people are forgetting in the discussion is that Taylor has a "bloodline." Her naturally living madra and her ability to perceive "everything" through her forger constructs is not normal and is thus seen as a bloodline by the people of cradle. To anyone wondering if Taylor is a real Akura her unique bloodline ability would be seen as a very large reason for Malice to have taken note of a branch family member. And, Malice herself said that her bloodline has spread throughout and beyond the continent and that, even without the purple eyes, Taylor looked enough like an Akura with her hair for it to not be taken as unusual that Malice brought a branch member with a strong new power out of obscurity and into the main family.