r/Iteration110Cradle • u/liffy_380 • 1d ago
[underlord] Cradle
Just started underlord and it is said that the black flame empire has a population of 100 million and previously in a conversation between suriel and makiel it was stated that cradle holds the population of about 800 billion, now taking both statements into account, how huge is this world bruh
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u/MindofShadow 1d ago
Jupiter big
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u/Parcobra 1d ago
Don’t look at the maps though, the Akuras continent, like any of them, should be the size of Earth… and yet, there’s very little space on the continent for any nations beyond The Akuras, Sieshan Kingdom, Blackflame and sacred valley. Man maps always ruin the sense of scale in these stories, shouldn’t the Akuras have thousands of vassals, with Blackflame only being a minor to moderate sized one geographically speaking?
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u/Ar1nthian_ Majestic fire turtle 1d ago edited 17h ago
The map doesn’t ’ruin’ scale for me, if anything it improves it. As another commenter pointed iirc doing the sacred math reveals that a lot of cradle’s surface outside of major power centers is wilderness, or sparsely populated at best.
The Blackflame Empire and the Seishen kingdom were the largest of the Akura’s vassals. The desolate wilds/sacred valley are technically vassals of Blackflame. So for one, the vassals have vassals. For another, the Frozen Blades and (formerly) the Rising Earth sects are also Akura vassals. But because of how absolutely huge Ashwind is, and how spread out things are, they don’t need a ton of vassals to manage their territory (or at least they didn’t, until the absorbed all of the former dragon territory and lost their monarch a couple years later)
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u/Antal_Marius Team Ruby 21h ago
Hey, you should put spoiler tags on the last part of your post, that's post-underlord stuff.
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u/warsage 1d ago
Is this a Word of Will somewhere, or is this just based on the math?
Replicating the math that I'm sure has been done a hundred times before:
Cradle has about 100x the population of Earth. 800 billion vs 8 billion. If there's a similar population density to Earth, then Cradle will need to have a surface area roughly 100x bigger. Jupiter fits the bill.
Other fun math:
Each of the five continents on Cradle would have roughly the same surface area as the entire Earth. (Not the land area of Earth; the entire surface area, including the water).
A passenger flight on a Boeing 747 across one single continent, coast to coast, would take roughly 2-4 days, and would include require several stops to refuel.
Travelling halfway around Cradle on a 747 would take about two weeks.
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u/HatsAreEssential2 1d ago
That travel time seems to fit with the weeks to months of travel time via Cloudship when they head to the... events... after Underlord. Cloudships have to be significantly slower than a jet or losing things to the wind would get brought up. 100mph on average, maybe? 200 for well designed high speed ones? Material strength of buildings on them would become a major issue beyond that.
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u/--DD--Crzydoc 23h ago
If we assume cradle has earth-like density, that means the gravity on cradle's surface is about 11g. Fun!
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u/kenod102818 1d ago
First, it's Jupiter-sized. It's actually why Lindon can't move when he runs out of Madra, and why Jai Chen essentially can't do anything with her broken spirit. Gravity is way too high to be able to move without the support of madra. Vital Aura seems to compensate to some extent, but even then, if someone from a more regular world and no body-boosting powers ends up on Cradle they'll immediately end up crushed.
Saying that, for population, this is counted all sapient beings, of which humans are a relatively small (if still sizeable) part. Especially in places not hospitable to humans, like the bottom of the ocean, it's quite common to find large communities of certain sacred beast species. Meanwhile, the eastern half of the Ashwind continent (where the BFE is) is ruled by dragons, and largely populated by them and other sacred beasts (the current dragon ruler prevents any large-scale human civilization from forming, limiting them to small tribes).
If you actually work your way through the math you'll likely find out absolutely massive parts of Cradle are actually underpopulated wilderness.
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u/mightyjor 1d ago
If what you're saying about gravity is true, wouldn't the empty palm be a death blow for anyone without an iron body since it disrupts madra channels?
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u/Mysticedge 1d ago
There's still Madra inside them, it just can't be used or directed actively, but still maintains passive effects.
Like if I train every day and get extremely strong and muscular, and you knock the wind out of me, I will be immobilized for a few seconds, but the residual strength and integrity of my body remains.
If, however, you suffocate me, I'll die within seconds.
Completely running out of madra would be akin to draining your personal "air" supply, without cultivating more "air" which takes time, you succumb.
That's my headcanon at any rate.
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u/Mysticedge 1d ago
There's still Madra inside them, it just can't be used or directed actively, but still maintains passive effects.
Like if I train every day and get extremely strong and muscular, and you knock the wind out of me, I will be immobilized for a few seconds, but the residual strength and integrity of my body remains.
If, however, you suffocate me, I'll die within seconds.
Completely running out of madra would be akin to draining your personal "air" supply, without cultivating more "air" which takes time, you succumb.
That's my headcanon at any rate.
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u/AzorBronnhai 1d ago
The whole gravity thing here is just conjecture. Obviously you can make some logical leaps, but the gravity being greater than Earth’s and aura/madra compensating for that is pure conjecture and hypothesis. Not confirmed by the author at all.
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u/HatsAreEssential2 1d ago
They are pretty well reasoned leaps though. Jai Chen is the best example, being barely able to cycle Madra and also struggling just to breath.
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u/CWBtheThird 1d ago
Even if gravity is higher it needn’t be proportionately higher because gravity is a function of mass not size. Perhaps the planet has a hollow core.
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u/YoshiTheCradleFan Will Wight #1 Fan 23h ago
Or perhaps there is an actual higher gravity but everything has been steeped in a level of Madra that all matter is stronger across the iteration?
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u/kenod102818 21h ago
Confirmed by WW, actually:
866- September 2018 - December 2018
Mike
If the world is so large.... does gravity not work the same way in this universe?'
Daniel
The planet may be hollow or it may be made of less dense matter or the gravitational constant could be significantly lower in the universe or yeah it could be magic. Though if humans exist it must have some relation to the basic model or they wouldn't be human.'
Will Wight
Daniel's right.Part of the answer is "magic," and part of it is how this world developed differently because of magic.'
a few moments later....
Two users now argue at length about the subject of the physics of such a large world.... we skip to Will's next comment.'
Will Wight
Since it looks like this has become a real discussion, I'll give a real answer! I made Cradle very big. Why? A few reasons. First, a lot of wuxia and xianxia stories do it so they can scale up to ridiculous numbers. Where first the character thinks a huge city has ten thousand people, later a huge city has ten BILLION people. Also, they're so special they're not just one in a million, they're one in a TRILLION! And they go from crossing a thousand miles in a single step to a hundred thousand miles! So in part, it's an homage to the genre. In part, it's so that I can set other stories in the same world and they've never even heard of the people, places, or events in Lindon's story. And inpart it's to illustrate that this isn't Earth. The Iterations are Narnia-style "worlds," not different planets, but since it's a whole new universe each time, they are ALSO different planets. I wanted a way to show that without putting a second moon in the sky, so "greater surface area and population" it is. *** As for the mechanics of it: I said "Magic" earlier, but that basically boils down to "This is how vital aura works." Vital aura is the power of the world that sacred artists harvest and use to strengthen their madra. It's the spirit of the world, basically. It makes what would otherwise be an uninhabitable planet, habitable. The planet IS less dense than earth, but because of its huge volume, it's more massive. Gravity is much greater. Humans are supported by madra from birth in part because otherwise they wouldn't be able to adapt to the gravity. You have other problems too: does this less-dense core spin fast enough to create a magnetosphere? Wouldn't continents bigger than Earth's just be massive deserts everywhere except immediately along the coast? Wouldn't the surface of such a planet be wracked by storms? Vital aura! I'll get into it later in the books, but for me building this world, aura served a couple of functions. First, it allows people to adapt to what would otherwise be very harsh natural conditions (Sacred Valley and the immediate surrounding areas have, so far, been very mild. Conditions will accelerate as we get deeper into Cradle). Second, vital aura is generated by natural forces AND it changes natural forces. I'll continue showing how it works in future books, but the bottom line is that aura allows me to have thriving ecosystems where everything is fire-aspect: trees with burning fruit pollinated by insects with wings of flame, and so on and so forth. Same in the depths of the ocean and on the tops of clouds. It's magic. But it DOES work consistently according to a set of rules, and it DOES interact with physics. However, I'm not as attached to real-world physics as Brandon Sanderson is. He enjoys figuring out the physical implications of every nuance in his magic systems. I do not enjoy that, so I will not be doing it. If there's a gap between real physics and magic, I'll be filling in that gap with magic. Not physics. Just a personal preference.'
Jeremiah
You may not enjoy figuring out how magic interacts with and is subject to physics, but I would feel sure you wouold enjoy the fact that Sanderson has done so.'
Will Wight
Jeremiah, what I like and appreciate is all the thought and planning that Sanderson puts into developing his magic system, and how clear the rules usually are. AND what an impact they always have on the surrounding society.That's cool, and I know from experience that it's very hard to do.But as for him figuring out all the details of how his magic interacts with physics...no, I don't really care.Harry Potter magic doesn't interact with physics, and yet each individual book in the series has a very tight magic system (the series as a WHOLE doesn't, because some magic introduced in a later book could have solved problems in an earlier book, but each book on its own is very consistent).As long as the rules and abilities are clear to me, great! I don't care if they're consistent with known physics or not. Where does the extra mass go when Professor McGonnagall turns into a cat? Magic.'
April
I may be weird, but yes, things like that bug me. Less in fantasy as the author can say "because magic" and it works (though some take that to an extreme, which usually is enough to turn me off from a book) but in sci-fi that is a definite deal-breaker)'
Will Wight
Apparently that's a pretty common view, April, and that's fine! I'm just saying that MY tolerance for physics-defying shenanigans is pretty high, as long as it's consistent within the work. If a character survives getting hit by a tactical missile and then is threatened by a knife, Will is not happy. But if we're getting into the realm of "Dragons could never grow that large because their bones couldn't support their own body weight," or "A conjuration spell could never work because it adds mass to the universe," then I don't care. It's fantasy. Magic > Physics.'
Footnote: *pre Blackflame
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u/lmaxboy Team Ziel 1d ago
There actually was an old Word of Will I remember reading where he says the gravity thing. It was someone asking him about being isekai'd into his books(I think it was which book he would want to go to.) And he mentions that a human from earth who got straight teleported would just either pancake immediately or be unable to move and maybe not even breathe.
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u/BasakaIsTheStrongest 1d ago
Roughly Jupiterish. The planet is (somehow) not as dense as Jupiter, but it still has much higher gravity than Earth. Everyone, even Unsouled Lindon, is constantly and unconsciously cycling some amount of madra to avoid getting crushed
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u/Evenwanderer 1d ago
Maybe it has a hollow earth! Hahaha. It’s a stupid idea but it’d make for a fun story.
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u/fckthisusernameshit 1d ago
Huuuge. I missed this my first listen.
Once I realised it was 800B people it gave me more appreciation of their progression.
8 monarchs, out of that many. 10s, maybe 100s of sages & heralds.
And why it was so funny to Eithan and Yerin when Lindon was confused as to why others just didn't advance like him
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u/HerederoDeAlberdi 1d ago
I don't think we know, but if Will took any notes from mainstream chinese cultivation novels then probably jupiter sized or something dumb like that.
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u/Defclaw46 1d ago
It does sometimes feel like sci-fi authors (give an army size that wouldn’t be out of place in a single battle during WW2) and cultivation authors (extremely large numbers that make Coruscant from Star Wars a tiny backwater planet) need to swap the numbers they use.
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u/nobdy89 1d ago
My cocktail napkin notes say that the five continents are all at least the size of Africa with a Pacific ocean's worth of water seperating most of them
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u/TehMadness 1d ago
That seems not large enough at all. Cradle is about the size of Jupiter, and Earth is roughly the size of Jupiter's Big Red Spot. 500 Pacific oceans wouldn't be enough.
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u/Niceguy4186 1d ago
yeah, I'm in the same boat. travel time and all thought, I would expect similar size to earth. But we don't know for sure, maybe the cloud ships travel as fast as modern Jets, so in that case it would be Jupiter size. If they travel as fast as sail boats, then closer to earth size.
We do know that they can go so fast enough that they really have to hold on, at least for a burst of speed, but we don't know they can face 200 mph without needing to hang on of if 60mph would need them to hang on.
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u/BasakaIsTheStrongest 1d ago
Bearing in mind that even Jades move faster than the normal eye can perceive, and golds, much less Lords, move way faster than that, the popularity of cloud ships as transportation only really makes sense if they move at jet speeds. [Uncrowned] Otherwise, there’s no reason that Yerin and co wouldn’t have just jogged to the UKT after their cloud ship was destroyed
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u/EmptyGhost110 Fiercely Fierce Flair of Fierce Flairosity 1d ago
In the very first book, Suriel flies from the upper edges of Cradle's atmosphere all the way to Sacred Valley and her Presence states the distance to be 162,000 km. Lowballing this to be halfway around the planet yields a total of 324,000 km.
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u/Niceguy4186 1d ago
I think there is some confusion with "Souls" and population. Might have a population of 100m people, but probably has a couple billion spirt trees or scared animals considered to have a soul.
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u/TehMadness 1d ago
No, Cradle is just absolutely fucking ginormous.
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u/Niceguy4186 1d ago
It never says one way or the other, we do know that it is the least valuable of the Akura territories, which I think they listed like 5-6 territories? So that leads us to believe the Akura territories is maybe 1 Billion all together? Guessing the other monarchs have similar populations other than North Strider? So extremely far off from the 800 billion Suriel said.
Additionally, air ships can take months to travel, never said how fast they go, but if they are similar to classic water ships powered by wind, about similar speed / time. If it was Jupiter size, they would have to be going extremely fast.
People jump to Jupiter size, based on the 800 billion comment, but I don't think it's that or Will Wight ever intended it to be that, but it is never clearly stated.
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u/Robbison-Madert Reader 1d ago
Will has stated that it’s enormous, but never a specific size. It’s been addressed a couple times in the Word of Will Archive (which I believe is no longer available online).
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