I'm re-reading the series in preparation for the next book release and I've noticed a few things here and there that could be interesting. This post is a collection on the bits I've noticed that might relate to the dreadgods, and my theories on what this information says (which I'll put after the info) as well as a few side theories here and there that aren't very important overall but are still interesting to me.
Sorry it's a bit cluttered, so watch your step, don't mess with those books, and for the love of Suriel DON'T SIT IN THE CHAIRS THOSE ARE PAPERS ARE WORTH MORE THAN THE LIVES OF A DOZEN HUMANS. The floor is perfectly comfortable and at an acceptable temperature at the moment, use it instead.
First, the info I'm drawing my conclusions/theories from:
It told of the heavenly guardian within Mount Samara, and how enterprising disciples of the Heaven’s Glory School might earn a mark of its favor, and of the mythical “true badges” that amplified the power of human madra.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
[Recovery?] the Presence asked, and all over the planet, displays lit up in Suriel’s vision with diagrams and glowing ribbons of text. They marked artifacts of the Abidan, lost over the millennia, matching them to last known locations and possible uses. With a thought, Suriel declined.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
[Business?] the Presence asked, and though it was equally innocent, Suriel imagined an accusatory tinge to the construct’s voice. Before she could stop it, details of Ozriel’s life spooled out on the spectral display, locations of interest blinking into being all over the planet.
The mountain under which he had been born in a dark chamber of stone.
The ruins of the library where he had once developed his own Path.
The pillars where he debated the ten greatest scholars of the day, leading three to commit suicide soon after.
The City of Anvils, sealed now, where he’d forged his first weapon.
The labyrinth where he died and returned to life.
The country home, buried beneath a meadow now, where his fury had first touched the Way.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Then Sacred Valley collapsed.
The image passed so quickly he almost didn’t catch it. A monstrous creature that towered into the clouds waded through the mountains like a man through waves, washing over the valley and burying it in earth. Everything was wiped out in an instant.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Mount Samara loomed over the Wei clan to the east, lit by the massive halo of white light that they called Samara’s ring. It glowed brighter than the moon, casting all of Sacred Valley in white,
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The Heaven’s Glory School of Mount Samara wore white and gold,
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
To the east, Mount Samara rises as the tallest of the four holy peaks. It is blanketed in snow, and crowned in a ring of pale white light that circles the summit. The halo appears at sundown and disappears at sunrise, so that no one in Sacred Valley has ever experienced a dark night. Samara’s halo is a construction of light aura bound into form by an expert centuries past, and it is the reason why so many sacred artists in the valley practice light-aspect arts. The Heaven’s Glory School has claimed this peak, using the power of Samara’s ring to gather light aura even on a moonless night.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The injured girl winced as she shifted position. “If you want to go after her, you’ll be going by yourself. I don’t know anyone else who’s willing to risk their lives for it by this point, no matter how much the elders are offering. We saw her in a cave on the north side of the mountain, a few miles up from the Ancestor’s Tomb. Don’t know how she survives the Remnants out there every night. Samara’s ring gathers them like flies to honey.”
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Most of the Remnants up here carried aspects of light, which was why they were attracted to Samara’s ring. His mother had taught him that when he was a child. They drank from it as humans did from a river,
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
“We would not lightly disturb the Ancestor’s rest,” the Grand Elder said.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
“Is the Ancestor’s rest not disturbed by the presence of another corpse? Or the wild Remnant accompanying it?” Whitehall countered. “I do not understand why you haven’t cleared the tomb already!”
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Samara’s ring was a bright line in the sky when he reached the Ancestor’s Tomb. The Tomb predated their school by unknown centuries, a titanic monument to an age long past perched at the edge of the mountainside. Behind it was a sheer thousand-foot drop and a picturesque view of distant snowy peaks. The building itself was bigger than anything in Heaven’s Glory, a square mausoleum that stood proudly on vast pillars. Far above Whitehall’s head, a mural of four gigantic beasts locked in battle rose over the entrance.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The Ancestor’s Tomb was set with deep, ancient scripts that had gathered vital aura into those walls for centuries. They should be next to indestructible by now.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The inside of the Ancestor’s Tomb was vast and empty, set with as many pillars on the inside as there were on the outside, and the ceiling was covered in another mural of four beasts: a blue serpentine dragon on a thunderstorm, a crowned white tiger, a stone warrior with the shell of a tortoise, and a blazing red phoenix. In the back of the room was an ornate door, presumably leading to the actual tomb, because there were no bodies here. Or perhaps that was the entrance to the labyrinth Yerin had mentioned.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
“The Ancestor’s Tomb,” Yerin said, and vaulted down from the cloud. “Master went to the Heaven’s Glory in particular just for this. They say it leads down into some labyrinth where even my master couldn’t step easy.”
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
“Yerin promised to take me beyond the valley,” he said slowly. “I’ve been weak for too long, and I won’t settle for the mediocre strength we have here.” Whitehall’s eyes lit up, and his grip on the dagger tightened. “Exactly right. That is the heart a sacred artist should have.” He waved his hand around them. “Even this place is built on foundations deeper than we’ve ever explored. Our elders stay Jade because they’re too afraid to risk what they have and dig deeper. I am not.”
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Gesha walked him over to a new corner of the foundry. Something that looked like a metal barrel with handles stood there, with script covering every inch and a few gleaming jewels studding an otherwise unremarkable lid. After close examination, he identified them as crystal chalices. “This,” she said, slapping the barrel, “is mining equipment. You've heard us talking about miners in the Ruins, have you? Well, there's nothing to it. All a 'miner' has to do is go where the aura is thick, funnel madra into the handles, and the script does the rest. A trained dog could do it. When it purifies enough aura, it comes out the other end...” She flipped a scale into the pan at the bottom, where it landed with a hollow ping. “...as a scale. You see? Scales come out at the bottom.”
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The hall itself would have been worth a closer look, if it didn't take all his concentration to stay upright with the barrel. Script ran along the walls, with runes etched deeper than his fingers and wider than his hand. It must have continued for miles, judging by how long they'd traveled.
He couldn't even comprehend the scale of a circle like that. It must only be a small part of whatever mechanism drew in vital aura from all over the region, which made it more ambitious than anything he'd ever imagined.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Now that he'd settled on a goal, Lindon grabbed the handles and sunk his spirit into the script.
The harvester activated almost immediately, drawing Lindon's senses to the aura in the air around him...
He swallowed back a scream.
It was a silent storm, a chaotic gale of blinding color that flashed and blasted in every direction as though it would tear everything apart. He couldn't pick a single aspect out of the maelstrom—anything, maybe everything. It felt as though it would peel the flesh from his bones with sheer force, though it passed through him harmlessly. When the harvester began, it pulled the slightest breath of that aura from the air, running it in a corkscrew pattern through the center of the iron barrel. The energy circled between the crystal chalices at the bottom—purifying the aura and converting it to madra, no doubt—and Lindon's spirit was only necessary to keep the script running so that the process continued. The crystals were steadily filling up, and when they were full, he supposed the final stretch of script would activate and pop out a scale.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Quickly, he scanned the notes near the bindings. “Generation Fourteen shows all the qualities we’d hoped for,” they read. “It demonstrates the capacity to devour and process madra with a high degree of efficiency, though each individual contains only one binding. If a sacred artist could cultivate similar techniques, our efficiency may double…” The next page had been scribbled in haste, judging by the carelessness with which the characters were slapped on the paper. “The failed specimens may be the key to success. Their auras alter as they devour one another, growing faster than we’d ever predicted. Theoretically, there is no upper limit on this growth, but the spirit warps the flesh. Further study needed; could lead to achievement of the primary goal.”
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
They wore badges in Sacred Valley, and her master had commissioned it for her in line with local customs,
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Carefully, he lifted the lid. There were no notes and no brightly colored bindings inside, so he almost tossed it aside. Then he realized what they were, and suddenly he couldn't breathe. The badges were slightly smaller than the ones from Sacred Valley, but otherwise they were practically identical. Eight badges sat within the box, each marked with a hammer—the symbol of a Forger. The first row contained a badge each of copper, iron, jade, and gold. That much he expected. But the second row moved from halfsilver to goldsteel to materials he couldn't identify. One of them was a deep, fiery red, and the other a blue so rich it was like a Forged slice of the sky.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
He drew Heaven’s Glory energy from his core, focusing it according to the Heaven’s Lance technique. The energy struck out in a line of light and heat, scoring the floor between the two fighters.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
A long glaive made of Forged madra, with a blood-red shaft and a gleaming golden sword blade at the end, sat on a frame halfway up the wall. A circle of script surrounded it, sealing its power and preventing it from dissolving. Beneath the weapon, an image was painted directly on one wall: a circle, blank on one half, the other half complex and twisted with a network of lines.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The mirrored door to Elder Whisper’s chamber swung shut, leaving the ancient fox staring at a reflection of himself. He tilted his muzzled back, snapping up a fish and letting it slide down his throat. He had spent most of the past five decades in this room, where every day was much like another. Compared to the excitement of his younger days, this was a perfectly satisfying way to spend a few years.
Wight, Will. Cradle, Foundation: Box Set (Cradle Collection Book 1) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Information requested: current status of the Dreadgods. Beginning report… The Bleeding Phoenix, its consciousness scattered over thousands of pieces, settles in to wait. Many of its fragments go dormant, but many others go looking for hosts. To hunt, and to build up their mother’s power. It is biding its time, for the moment when it senses its lost brother again. The Silent King stirs in its dreams as it senses the Phoenix in battle. For hundreds of miles, spirits and Remnants feel its influence. Though they do not know the source, they are disturbed. The Weeping Dragon sleeps in the upper atmosphere, on a miles-long bed of clouds. It has not been long since it last woke, and it is still weary. Though the power of the Phoenix prickled its spirit, it will take more enticing bait to rouse the Dragon from its slumber. In a chasm on the ocean’s floor, the Wandering Titan rolls its stone joints. They have stiffened from long disuse. It wakes slowly, but steadily. Soon, it will rise.
Wight, Will. Skysworn (Cradle Book 4) (pp. 281-282). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
“My grand-nephew is inside. If I thought the Blackflame Empire or the Sage of the Endless Sword were making a move to upset the balance, I would move to maintain order.” Yerin squared her shoulders, meeting the Sage's eyes. Usually no one recognized her Path, even if they recognized her master's title. Only those who had known her master.
Wight, Will. Ghostwater (Cradle Book 5) (p. 98). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
He waved his hand, and the blue fabric tore. He stepped out into the sky over a city Lindon had never seen before: a landscape of towering spires in all the colors of the rainbow, as though each had been hewn from gemstone. Amethyst and sapphire and emerald shone in the sun, with glittering crystal bridges crossing from one to the other. Sacred artists traveled through the sky, standing on Thousand-Mile Clouds, riding sacred birds, or pulled by Remnants.
Wight, Will. Skysworn (Cradle Book 4) (p. 276). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
This time, the door swung silently open. Power washed out, flooding him with awe. He glanced at the aura, which seemed both shining white and utter black at the same time, as though he couldn't see through the doorway because it was both too bright and too dark. Either way, the aura blinded his spiritual sight, and he had to close down that sense as he stepped inside the ancient storehouse.
Wight, Will. Skysworn (Cradle Book 4) (p. 30). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
For a moment, he felt as though he'd stumbled onto a dragon's hoard. He was shocked by the sheer value of what was presented before him, overwhelmed by the weight of wealth. He wanted it all. He was surprised at his own greed,
Wight, Will. Skysworn (Cradle Book 4) (p. 30). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The cabinet was smooth to the touch, and he seized the wooden handle and pulled it open. It was empty. So was its neighbor, and the eighteen others he checked in an instant. He was sweating by this point, his gut heavy with disappointment. Where had all his wealth gone? He shook himself. He wasn't worried about riches, but about the fate of his family. He had to tell himself that very firmly.
Wight, Will. Skysworn (Cradle Book 4) (pp. 30-31). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Ten more empty cabinets went by before he found something: a ring of pure white, scripted inside and out, set with a single black gemstone.
Wight, Will. Skysworn (Cradle Book 4) (p. 31). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
There were six techniques bound up in Lindon's resonance cannon. Spear of the Golden Sun, from a Path of light and fire. Heart-seizing Claw, from a Path of blood and destruction. Phoenix Wing Burst, from a Path of force and fire. Song of Falling Ash, from a Path of destruction. Gravetouch, from a Path of death. And black dragon's breath, from the Path of Black Flame. All of those techniques were Striker techniques, all of them lethal, all compatible with one another, and all compatible with the Path of Black Flame.
Wight, Will. Underlord (Cradle Book 6) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Emriss Silentborn, the Monarch Remnant, watches gravely over the Wandering Titan. The massive Dreadgod, like a mountainous statue, has stirred earthquakes in its sleep.
Wight, Will. Underlord (Cradle Book 6) . Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
"Something marched into Sacred Valley," he said. "My home. It was just a shadow, blotting out the sun, but it waded through the mountains like they were made of sand." Like the giant in armor he'd seen only a few days before. Mercy's mother.
Wight, Will. Skysworn (Cradle Book 4) (p. 271). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(Some of these were haphazardly copied from my notes, so sorry in advanced about the disorganized nature)
Theory time:
First, the labyrinth isn't actually a proper underground dungeon, but rather the crystal city that Ozriel showed in his black marble that he left behind for his descendants. It was buried at some point after its fall as a civilization, and the entrances are nothing more than doors and windows into the buildings that once existed there. Either Ozriel was the first patriarch of that civilization, which would make that the home city of the original Arelius line, or he was its greatest soulsmith. Either way, we know he's connected to the labyrinth, the abidan, Cradle, the Arelius, and that city, which makes it pretty easy to assume the city is the labyrinth.
It's possible that the city was buried intentionally rather than accidentally, possibly to hide the existence of a large number the abidan-level artifacts which are revealed to exist on Cradle during Suriel's visit in Unsouled. Considering we suspect that Ozriel's scythe is made from hunger madra and scripts and that he was likely working on it during his pre-ascension time, it wouldn't be a surprise to learn that he had access to several abidan artifacts. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that he headed the research that lead to the creation of the dreadgods and the artificial hunger madra, which means he probably had access to several abidan-level artifacts that contained scripts far more advanced than anything Cradle had to that point. We know that advanced scripts exist because Suriel's eyes contain scripts so advanced that even a glimpse of them might have swayed Cradle's fate by an unacceptable amount.
Second, I don't think the fifth dreadgod is trapped. I think it's sleeping soundly beneath the four mountains that make up the borders of Sacred Valley, gathering power in much the same way the other dreadgods sleep soundly in between bouts of utterly obliterating entire countries. We know that both the Ancestor's Tomb and the Transcendant Ruins contain script that gathers vital aura from the atmosphere for miles around and the scripts in the ruins pipe that aura directly into the soulsmith foundry at the top of the pyramid, so it wouldn't be out of place to assume the scripts at the tomb pipe the aura somewhere inside the labyrinth as well. And if the the other three entrances to the labyrinth on the other three mountains also have scripts embedded in them, then it's an extremely reasonable assumption that the dreadgod sleeping there is gathering aura through those scripts.
Third, I think that the fifth dreadgod is either like Lindon's resonance cannon, and contains all of the aspects of the first four tied together with hunger madra, or is a pure madra creature that feeds on purified aura.
For the first possibility:
We know that the Bleeding Phoenix is blood aspected, and possibly has some tiny life aspect to it as well, and we can assume the others from the information given. The Wandering Titan is probably earth, the Azure Dragon is probably storm (water with lightning and either cloud or wind as secondary aspects), and the Silent King is probably light and heat.
The Silent King's madra aspect is the weakest link, so here's why I think that: There's a theory that was posted here that the four mountains represent the four dreadgods. Greatfather, to the south, is home to the Dragon River, Greatfathers Tears, and year-round storms that are deadly to the residents of Sacred Valley if they're caught unprepared and likely represents the Azure Dragon. Venture, to the west, is home to rust-red cliffs filled with a unique mineral composition that includes the materials needed to make goldsteel and halfsilver and likely represents the Wandering Titan. Yoma, to the north, is home to a forest rich in orus trees and likely represents the Bleeding Phoenix. Samara, to the east, is home to Samara's ring, an artifact that's probably as old as the valley itself, and represents the Silent King.
At first, it's easier to say that the red cliffs of Venture represent the Bleeding Phoenix, but in truth the Wandering Titan, which has a stone body, is better represented by the mineral-rich stony mountain that is Venture. In addition to that, Blood is actually a pretty good fertilizer for crops It's not used often in the modern world, but there are ancient traditions from many civilizations of using both blood and ground-up bone to fertilize crop fields. If the Bleeding Phoenix also has some life aspect to it like I suspect, then all the better, but even as just blood aspected it better represents Yoma's expansive and rich forest. I assume the Phoenix does have life aspects to it though because it can copy the physical form and techniques from those its shadows conquer, and as we saw with Yerin it becomes more and more like the thing it feeds off of as it eats more of their life madra, which suggests that the shadows are eating the life madra of their victims in order to copy their form and techniques.
Now, from there, it's pretty easy to assume that the madra aspects of the four schools that take up these four mountains are somewhat representative of the dreadgods their homes represent. Fallen Leaf, of Yoma, at the very least use Green-tinted madra, which likely marks them as life artists. Whether they also use blood, we don't really know, as we've only met a Jade elder of Fallen leaf in passing and only a few Iron and Copper disciples right at the end of Underlord. We know literally nothing at all about the Golden Sword school of Venture or the Holy Wind school of Greatfather, but we know a lot about the Heaven's Glory school of Samara.
Heaven's Glory uses light and heat as their primary aspects, as detailed by how their attacks, like the Heaven's Lance, not only pierce but also burn and scorch. Light is easy, as it's white, so the gold part of their visible madra use is probably heat. While we don't see them cycling directly and we never get close enough to tell for sure, it's probable that the scripts on Samara's ring produce heat as a byproduct of gathering light aura. And since Heaven's Glory uses light and heat, and they cycle from Samara's ring, it's a fairly reasonable assumption overall.
Whether these aspects (Light, Heat, Earth, Water, Wind, Lightning, Blood, Life) actually work together in resonance is up to Will, but to be completely fair all but one of those aspects describe a human. Heat for body heat, earth for bones, water for water, wind for air in the lungs and bloodstream, lightning for the nervous system, blood for blood and life for consciousness. If you want to get twentieth-level technical, humans also output small amounts of visible light because DNA has a protection mechanism that bleeds excess UV energy off as visible light in times of extreme UV stress, though I doubt Will (or anyone reading this) actually cares about that.
For the second assumption (that the fifth dreadgod uses "pure", aka human, madra): It's detailed in Soulsmith that the peoples of the Desolate Wilds use iron barrels filled with scripts and crystal chalices to purify aura and convert it into forged pure madra. The mining barrels are described as giant human souls made out of iron, but beyond the time in the ruins it's never seen again. We later learn that most people in the richer areas of the world use scales made from their own aspected madra instead of human madra scales, but Will's not the type of author to not have at least two meanings behind every piece of worldbuilding, so the general concept of gathering and purifying aura with scripts will be seen again.
However, the soulsmith notes Lindon finds in Soulsmith make this second assumption unlikely, as it's pretty clear from the excerpt we were given that they were searching for a way to have a binding convert madra and aura from one aspect into another. It's possible that the mining barrels are a result of that, but the notes make it pretty clear that the auras their subjects were eating were warping their flesh and turning them into monsters, which is probably what the dreadbeasts started as. It's a pretty corporeal nail in the coffin to the idea that the fifth dreadgod uses human/"pure" madra.
However, the notes did mention that they were close to success, and had learned that their failures were in fact the key they needed to finish their project. So it's entirely possible, though not probable, that the fifth dreadgod can eat any aura or madra and convert it into whatever it's base aspects are without scripts. No matter what other aspects it has, it would be able to create hunger madra at will, which would explain where all the hunger madra for things like the archstone, the jai spear, and lindon's arm came from.
It could also be that human madra is actually a combination of the aspects listed above (Light, Heat, Earth, Water, Wind, Lightning, Blood, Life), but that's a stretch that would make Mr. Fantastic balk and has literally no supporting evidence anywhere in the story or any WoW, so I doubt it.
It's also entirely possible that the fifth dreadgod is entirely composed of hunger madra. (apologies, I'm coming up with new ideas as I write this out). That would be interesting, and it would tie in well with both Lindon's arm eating any spirit that comes close, like the bloodspawn in Skysworn and the artifical spirits in Ghostwater, and the fact that they were researching bindings that could convert madra and aura. I personally like this idea the least, but it's not entirely impossible.
Anyway, next theory.
Fourth, I think the Silent King still sleeps beneath Mount Samara. It's interesting to note that we never get a location on the Silent King, but we know where the other three are at various points from the context clues. When Suriel first arrives on Cradle, the Azure Dragon is on its way to decimate some place in the far north of the Iceflower Continent and when the Phoenix is getting bloody red feathers ripped off its wings by Malice, the Dragon is sleeping in the upper atmosphere. The Bleeding Phoenix slept somewhere either in the BFE or just south of it until the moment it awoke due to Jai Doucheshow entering the labyrinth and has yet to leave, though it's now resting in thousands of pieces around the empire and surrounding kingdoms. The Wandering Titan sleeps at the bottom of an ocean at the end of Underlord and is being observed by Emriss Silentborn, though where is not specifically stated.
But there are no clues as to the location of the Silent King. It simply says that when the King is stirred by the power of the Phoenix's battle with Akura Malice, the result has all the remnants and spirits for hundreds of miles around restless along with it. Combine that with the potential connection it has to Mount Samara and the Heaven's Glory school and the rumors/legends that the school is protected by a sleeping beast that will rise in their hour of greatest need (the same one they pay homage to in exchange for a potential favor) and it's pretty easy to assume that the Silent King is resting in its home beneath Samara, and just above the fifth dreadgod.
The counter to that is that the dreadgods are searching for their lost brother, and that one can't be that close without realizing it. Yet, it's stated at the end of Skysworn that only the Bleeding Phoenix is searching for its lost brother as only it has sensed and remembered the existence of its brother. It's attempting to rile the others up because it sensed a connection during the final minutes that Jai Daishou had the labyrinth opened, and can no longer sense the missing dreadgod now that it's closed, but the others aren't quite biting just yet. Either the Silent King is the brother it sensed (unlikely) or when the labyrinth is closed absolutely no hint of any power can escape, leaving them unable to sense anything within it. So it's entirely possible for the dreadgods to sleep literally right on top of the fifth, missing one and not know it.
As for the other potential counter that bamfious mentioned in his recent video, that the Silent King would have been close enough to the labyrinth to notice Jai Daishou opening it? Maybe but I'm not convinced. The SV is west of the westernmost official territories of the BFE, the Desolate Wilds. We know that the Jai own territory out to the west, but not directly in the Wilds because that's owned and managed by the Sandvipers and the Fishers, plus a few others here and there, and the entrance Daishou opened was in the heart of the Jai's directly controlled territory, beneath a large lake and past miles of underground tunnel systems (likely dug by the original blackflame dragons at the height of their empire). The Bleeding Phoenix rests south of the entrance Daishou opened, beneath a city made entirely of tattered cloth and presumably set up by Redmoon Hall as a temporary shelter for themselves. It doesn't say how far away the Phoenix is exactly, but SV is something like 5 or 6 days away from the Transcendant Ruins by thousand-mile cloud. The Bleeding Phoenix could well be only a day or two away from the entrance Daishou opened and much closer than the Silent King. Especially so if the entrance to the labyrinth is in the southwestern jungles of the BFE near the border, but it could still hold true even if the entrance is the northwestern part of the BFE. It's unlikely to be in the northwest though because much of that region is owned by the Kotai, who fight the various tribes of the Trackless Sea, and their direct friends.
Heck even if the Phoenix is five days away from the entrance and the King is six days away at the same pace, it's still possible that the King might not sense the labyrinth. There was only a 1% chance of the Phoenix sensing the opening after all, and a very basic physics law is that the intensity of a give power source decreases at one over the square of the distance. I.E. if the King was twice as far away as the Phoenix, the power he could sense would be only a quarter of that the Phoenix can sense. At three times, the King would only sense a ninth of the power, etc. Given that the Phoenix only barely sensed the power and even then didn't realize what is was for the first twenty-five consecutive minutes, then the King might not have ever noticed even if it was only 20% further away from the entrance than the Phoenix.
And now for some side theories, just for fun:
The Sword Sage, Timothy, could die to Jade-level poison because he didn't have the soulfire to keep his body functional. We know that madra naturally enforces the body, and can be cycled to enforce it further, and that the body is reforged in madra at Iron and tempered in soulfire at Lord. Both madra and soulfire are a direct result of vital aura being processed by a sacred artist as well. Therefore, it's a fairly reasonable assumption then that the bodies of Lords require a small but constant flow of soulfire to keep running at their enhanced levels. We haven't seen more than a few minutes of any of the main cast at Lord yet, and we've never been told much about how soulfire is used, just what kind of effects it can have on the things its used on, so there's a lot of unknowns about what it can really do and how it works.
We also know from when Jai Daishou entered the labyrinth that the entrance required him to give over more soulfire than he normally keeps on-hand just to crack open the door for a few minutes, so the labyrinth feeds on soulfire in some way. Scripts that feed on soulfire directly do exist, as Eithan used one on Yerin when the Phoenix first awoke and her blood shadow went haywire. And we know that Timothy of the Path of the Endless Sword went to Heaven's Glory because they had one of the entrances to the labyrinth on their land, and that he was poisoned in his sleep and then stabbed half to death. He also tried to run inside the labyrinth to hide from his attackers, which we know isn't normal behavior for the guy who literally cut his own disciple to pieces for training, so he was definitely feeling the effects of something in his body pretty severely and felt he couldn't win a straight fight. Even so, he managed to kill four of his attackers and cripple at least three more during his last breaths.
If his body was out of soulfire because he was using it to explore the labyrinth and if Lords need a constant supply of it to keep their bodies functioning at Lord levels, then his body would have been only as strong and resistant as that of a common Iron without it (his specialized body was focused on brute strength, not poison/acid resistance like Lindon's). With how aura-poor the valley is, it's not like he could just make more on demand. He's certainly not an Arelius, after all. So if he didn't have soulfire and couldn't make more and thus couldn't enforce his body with it, then he could have died to a simple poison cooked up by some know-nothing weaklings in some ass-backwards country in the middle of literally nowhere.
Second side theory: The Sword Sage was owed a favor from the Akura Clan. He knew about the valley, and its entrance to the labyrinth, and presumably wanted to explore it, and the valley is in Akura territory and marked as forbidden - do not enter by the Akura. While I highly doubt that the Akura have 24/7 guards on the valley (seeing as it trades with the sects of the Desolate Wilds whom the Akura own by proxy), anyone as powerful as a Sage going in there is going to be immediately recognized and stopped. Thus, in order to enter, he had to either pay his way in or call in a favor on the Akura's. While he was certainly a renowned refiner and extremely famous across most of the world, everything we know about him suggests that he's not one for hoarding wealth. He makes people pay for his services of course, but he probably doesn't stash away enough wealth to buy a favor from an entire nation that's easily among the seven most powerful and richest on the planet. Thus, he was owed a favor and he called to get access to the valley and the labyrinth within.
Yerin states at some point in Ghostwater that the only people who knew the Sword Sages path name were people who knew him personally, and Charity knows not only the path name but can recognize a practitioner of that path at a glance, as she did with Yerin. So Charity and Tim definitely knew each other, which could mean that Charity both owed him a favor and had enough pull with the rest of the clan to get him access to SV.
Side theory three: The badges of Sacred Valley are going to be important later on. While they could certainly be just a single worldbuilding detail, there's too much there for Will to not have a plan, considering the type of writer he is. Lindon finds the mythical true badges in the transcendant ruins, after all, alongside the three dream tablets that Eithan ultimately gives to Yerin. So I expect that the badge system of SV is important to the story of the dreadgods, the history of Sacred Valley, and Ozriel himself.
Side theory four: the ring that Jai Daishou found in the labyrinth was created to either control or communicate with the fifth dreadgod. That's it, that's all I have on that.
Side theory five: Elder Whisper is not only as old as Sacred Valley, but as old as Ozriel himself, making him the oldest still-living being on Cradle. To him, five decades is basically a three day weekend or one-week vacation, and he knows something about Sacred Valley's history and how it relates to the dreadgods. He was probably there during the original experiments and wandered the world in between the dreadgod creation and the creation of SV as the city was buried.
Side theory six: The Wandering Titan is the dreadgod that takes out Lindon's family and a quarter of SV in the vision Suriel gives him. This is based on the fact that Lindon said in Skysworn that the something that took out the valley in Suriel's vision was like the giant armored form of Malice when she fought the Phoenix, and the Wandering Titan wears armor like a Turtles shell and is either made of or covered in stone.
I have previously said that I think it's also possible, and more likely, that it's not a dreadgod that takes out the valley but a monarch fighting a dreadgod, but upon further review I believe that to be less likely (though not impossible).
Submitted September 10, 2019 at 06:37AM by SapphireSuniver https://ift.tt/2A3hEvp
No comments:
Post a Comment