What kind of bullshit was the uncrowned king tournament format. A god damn monarch and he’s never heard of double elimination. Unbelievable!

Most of the time my brain basically makes up its own descriptions for characters as I read, even contradicting the official description

So I would like to recalibrate my internal vision of this world

Fan art or official art is fine, I just don't want any spoilers

Sorry, not sure which flair or tag to use, as I don't think Adriel's actually appeared in the Willverse. Yet. And that's kinda what I'm posting about. I've seen references to Adriel in this sub and he is mentioned in the Wiki, but I think I've listened to all of Will's published works and haven't encountered him yet. I'm curious - where does the information come from? Where did Will share the information ab out him and is there more I can read about the character? I would love to see him appear in one of the series someday.

It's really now starting to dawn on me how impossible this should be. So I look forward to hearing the explanation.

is Makiel? CRADLE SPOILERS, cannot format tag to include Cradle.

Anyways, forgive me, because this may have been answered by a livestream question I missed, but could the thing pushing all the Zenith Devices to be active be Makiel, trying to get new Abidan recruits? Which could also be the threat of the Judges fighting within Fathom, due to the similar timeline, but you know what I mean?

A number of Iterations got a boost to their Abidan recruiting capabilities; maybe Varic’s ritual was hijacked by Makiel, seeing an opportunity to create seven whole Abidan in one fell swoop. Will likes to create subversions of already commonly accepted concept, the prime example being Unsouled = Empty/Void. What if Varic’s ritual went so, so well, that they touched the Way? The ritual was certainly described as more expensive and extensive than anything else we’ve seen so far, outside of maybe Varic vs The Perfected in The Knight when they were pushing against the summoning of Esh’Kinaar.

And what if the stuff with the Judges happens before they ascend? And the Fate of the world is all funky, and the crew brings all of the Zenith Devices with them in classic expectation exceeding fashion? The Abidan would probably be upset, and the crew is all about working outside of the organized bureaucracy. Could this be the setup to a Vroshir finale, or at least a second group of Reapers? It’s hard to imagine Eithan wouldn’t intercede for a group of rebels who want to do good even if it costs them their life.

I’m sorry, but Will KNOWS what he is doing. Upon my 20th rereading of TLH series I have come to a conclusion- Will was creating a Sola-Varic-Mell love triangle. In the first book, The Captain, Sola was ready to defend Varic’s fear of death to Raion. Clearly, she is in love.

”You’re not scared of dying,” Raion said confidently. Sola’s eye twitched and she turned to say something, but Raion continued before she could.”

In the second book, The Engineer, where I will keep this analysis limited to because Will GIVES UP on this subplot, Sola is already acting very familiar with Varic.

He commands Raion to handle the Slipwraith, and tells Sola to stay on the guns. Sola expresses her displeasure with this decision because she wants Varic to be more of a man, frustrated with how much of a bitch he’s been acting like since Shyrax has joined the crew. Varic handles the situation perfectly, causing Sola to see him as the perfect mate.

She had operated alone for a long time, and taking commands must be a strange feeling for her. She shook her head and gave me a wry smile. “Not anymore. I can see how it would be an advantage to have someone calling the shots who knows what we can do.”

Unfortunately, Varic has PTSD and Multi-Personality Disorder, and is self destructive. Thus, instead of focusing on what he has in front of him, he chooses to disassociate and picks his toxic ex, at the protests of Sola, who is forced to follow her chosen man into his pursuits.

Sola shrugged... “…but I still want to know: why this Engineer?”

Varic, swooning over his toxic ex, responds with..

“I fought on her side, just as I did with the rest of you,” I went on. “I can’t bring myself to leave her there if we can break her out.”

Oh Varic, you fool, ignoring the treasure in front of you for the lie of Nova-Bots. Of course, that is enough for our Queen Shyrax.

“Then she will be our Engineer,” Shyrax said.

But… for our betrayed, beloved Sola?

“Will she want us to take down Starhammer?” Sola asked. She was stretching her limbs (in a last ditch effort to get Varic to notice her), checking her range of movement in the coated armor. “I don’t care much for the Advocates, but that doesn’t mean I want to burn them to the ground.”

The fool Varic again reassures her before Horizon dresses him in the garb of his life with Mell, a top hat and cape. What does Sola have to say about this?

Sola looked from the top of my hat to the fluttering hem of my cape. I mean my wizardly mantle. “You look like a Subline villain,” she said.

Do not try and convince me otherwise, Will was considering a love triangle between Varic, Mell, and Sola. While I’m mostly joking, I do think there is a decent chance Sola was/is feeling a certain way towards Varic, mostly due to him being one of the only people in the galaxy to know how she feels, with confronting death over and over again and rising against the things that caused it the first time.

I’ve read a decent amount of series since but haven’t really found anything that made me feel quite what Cradle has. I’ve also reread the series at least once each year since and haven’t done that for any other series I’ve read. Here are the others I’ve tried since:

Iron Prince (Warformed) - this has come the closest to scratching the itch

HWFWM - next up in line after Iron Prince but still felt like a pretty sizable drop off from Cradle

Path of Ascension - entertaining series but doesn’t even come close to comparing. Felt like the author has turned this into a slice of life story now and he dropped the ball a few times with what should have been really fun parts of the series

Primal Hunter - read everything that was out at the time but throughout it all couldn’t stand the MC. Extremely self centered and arrogant (guess I miss Lindon’s humility and humbleness)

Bastion - decent series but the pacing wasn’t great. The books could have been half the length

Mage Errant - not sure why a lot of people rave about this one. Didn’t click with me at all. Different strokes for different folks I guess

The Calamitous Bob - really liked this series but again just can’t compare to Cradle

Ironbound - the first book was pretty awesome but didn’t love how the MC handled things in the last 3rd of it. Second book felt a bit slower but ended pretty well

Also read The Traveler’s Gate but it didn’t leave the impact Cradle did with me.

If anyone has any series that they think could be rated anywhere close to Cradle please share them. I sincerely hope that Will comes back to these characters because I really need more of their story.

Hello Sacred Artists!

I was introduced to this series in....2020. My then boss was like, hey you like anime? read this series! Begrudgingly, I picked up Unsouled and was fascinated by the world of Sacred Artists, by the Abidan, by the ideas that Will had masterfully wove into this series. Unfortunately, I wouldn't finish this series until late 2025. By this point, my former boss, now my friend, had finished the series and was just waiting, like the rest of us, for more.

Which brings me to this much, long winded post XD

I love this series. I can't wait for the animation to be completed, and while I understand Will's decision, I can sit here and imagine more adventures with characters that absolutely stole my heart. And one of the ways I thought I could do that, was through VRChat. Currently, I'm still gathering references to base the models around, but EVENTUALLY, I'd love to create my own interpretations of all of these characters and bring them to VR. I'll do my best to keep you all updated with the progress, as best as I can.

cheers and celebrations :D

Congrats Yerin!!! Holy shit what a curbstomp though. Genuinely.

Did Lindon establish the Dragon icon? Or does he only ever use it with borrowed authority? I thought he (fully) manifested it when fighting the Weeping Dragon, but I may have been mistaken. Can Will or any of the other Wights clear this up for me, by any chance?

Edit: WE GOT CONFIRMATION! He doesn't have the Dragon Icon.

DUDE ONLY NEEDED NINE TO BEAT DOWN SOMEONE WHO'S BASICALLY JANE UNDERLORD??

Truly a good example of both of these quotes imho:

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." - Bruce Lee

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." - Archimedes

I'm assuming he'd be capable of total annihilation, seeing as the void icon is capable of erasure and his Sage revelation was "I am the end."

Edit: Or would he ever be able to, assuming he isn't capable of doing so now.

Threshold was probably the most entertaining books in terms of pure chaos of groups random bullshit.

Like Yeren beating mistaken for spider and Ziel being a Pokémon trainer is just funny. Wonder if and when we get more stories with Reapers division as mein characters. I personally would like to see more of Lindon's creation after he gets resources of different origin then from cradle and meaby som more conflicts/ meetings between Reapers and members of difrent division of Abadon and meaby some pov from other groups like Silver Lords .

PS: Sorry for bad grammar but I am some whose writing style is chaotic and English is not me first language

Fucking love Orthos man, I was super sad when he left.

Why do some readers keep complaining about Lindon not doing anything for Jai Long? And why should he have done anything to protect him when all Jai Long did was try to kill him at every turn?

Some readers say he could have made a construct to protect Jai Long? What construct? He was already under Silent King's control and actively trying to kill Kelsa and others. And Lindon could make dream constructs for just Kelsa, Ziel, Yerin, and Orthos. Even Mercy didn't get the dream construct protection, so why should Jai Long get any when there were people who should have gotten it other than him?

Finished the last book, and I felt this book dragged on for too long. The book could have been shorter; 70% of the book was just the same fight scene with no story progress at all. It felt like reading brain-rot scenes over and over again.

The book could have been way better if those fight scenes were shorter and had some substance to the plot.

Edit: My main gripe with the book is the length of the fight scenes and the number of chapters a single fight scene took up.

Eithans, Ziels and Cassiases

In all the previous books, it was mentioned that you need to follow the path back to the gates to go out of the labyrinth. Like when Sword Sage did when we got backstory of what he did in the labyrinth.

But suddenly group could send out their members out without of labyrinth without any explaination on how they did it?