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Eithan planned most of it.
There is a conversation in blackflame between Eithan and Cassius, where Cassius remarks that Lindon is a mess at his current advancement. The Bloodforged Iron Body takes too much madra to run at his current advancement at that point.
It does allow Lindon to train for a significantly longer time than others without doing too much damage to his body.
However, the main point of the iron body is to keep him alive and functional while he practices the path of blackflame - which damages the body and spirit.
With the Iron body in conjunction with the HAEPW, Lindon gets the madra to run the iron body, which stops him degrading his body from practicing the path of blackflame and has the added bonus of healing most other injuries in relatively short order provided he still has the madra to run it.
Eithan was definitely planning ahead to turn him into a monster, though Eithan himself points out that Lindon keep surpassing his (extremely high) expectations.
Mine too! For a man who is surprised by nothing to be flabbergasted is awesome.
I think Eithan saw the potential in Lindon's "most beautiful flaws," but was scared to truly hope after everything that had gone wrong on the rose gold continent.
In Blackflame Bai Roh says "Someone is making a monster." After they watch Lindon fight the Blackflame 3rd trial solo then heal the damage after his "failure".
Even at the end of Soulsmith, Eithan implies to Yerin that he is somewhat aware of the potential in his plan.
He says something like "If things go according to plan, I'm worried about you keeping up with him." Which is pretty wild since Lindon is only iron and Yerin is lowgold, but Eithan had a blank slate with 2 cores, and clearly had a plan for his ideal.
Now I'm going to go off on a tangent, because I just realized something. Lindon is almost to Eithan what Mercy is to Malice. He basically has a blank slate with a ton of drive to do whatever he wants with as an ideal path and none of his baggage. Obviously Eithan and Malice's methods differ, which might be why Lindon went on to only exceed expectations while Mercy has fallen short of Malice's.
Ethan has mostly only laid out options to Lindon. He'll nudge him along the most dangerous, productive path, but Lindon's own drive would have taken him there anyway. Lil Blue being able to purify channels was a happy coincidence but you can see how Ethan was happy to capitalize on it. I don't think Ethan ever thought Lindon would ever advance as quickly as he did, but chance catapulted him into position to skip decades hard work just to get the materials to strengthen his body and advance.
I think that’s why lindon surpassed with and expectations while mercy didn’t meet malice’s. Because the perfect path for malice isn’t perfect for mercy, but she tries to make mercy follow it anyway. Eithan’s perfect path for lindon isn’t an improved version of his path, it’s a new path, for lindon, and is only based on eithan’s perfect path for eithan.
Malice is intentionally slowing Mercy down, she wants a century to corrupt Mercy so she is not a threat to the system. It is why Malice throws a fit every time Mercy advances because Lindon supported her. Her friendship with Lindon threatens to advance Mercy to a level of power where she can no longer be manipulated.
Mercy's character arc literally starts with Malice trying to force her to accept her place in the system. Making it clear she cannot advance alone and implying that her only path forward is within the family.
Don't forget Eithan also helped push Little Blue's advancement in Blackflame as well. He seemed aware that she could help offset the damage caused by Blackflame, and interfered along that path as well.
Not to say he foresaw how far Lindon would take his path with Little Blue. I doubt Eithan originally planned for Lindon to contract with her for instance. But he seemed to know Little Blue would compliment his path all the same.
He definitely planned it considering the channeling method he taught London later. The Heaven and Earth Purification wheel is designed to massively increase the capacity and so he knew of London worked hard enough the drain would be negligible. It’s important to remember Eithan had no problem discarding Lindon if he turned out to be nothing special.
I suspect that there are other options. Will discusses a cycling technique in a WoG that focuses on madra recovery, and can apparently work fast enough that you can throw out techniques basically constantly with no regard for pacing.
And, to be honest, it also depends a lot on your techniques, most likely. Purification Wheel is useful less because it's necessary to advance (it might actually be kind of bad at it, not good at actually purifying madra, iirc Lindon and Eithan use elixirs for that), but it's useful because most pure madra techniques are extremely inefficient.
However, it might also be possible to form a good pure madra path with other jade cycling techniques, as long as you use the right techniques with it.
I personally suspect it's less the efficiency and madra capacity that's an issue that stops people from pursuing a pure madra path, and more the lack of applications and the extreme cost of advancing a path without having external aura sources.
Of course, Purification Wheel is still a very good option, and is an even better fit for Lindon given his split cores and iron body.
Yeah, most of the SV knowledge from Unsouled is useless but Jaran let’s us know why it’s so hard right away. Without being able to take in vital aura it becomes very difficult to advance and recover. Lindon has access to insane amounts of resources in order to practice his pure path. Without those resources his advancement would have been in decades rather than months/years.
From the start of his training with Eithan, chowing down on the four corners rotation pills whose cost nearly made Fisher Gesha faint. Then the Blackflame Trials, which were wildly expensive to run costing as much as the rest of the training Arelius outer disciples receive each year. Then his luck stumbling on Ghostwater, where he chugged elixirs (Well water) that were so valuable that the researchers may get a drop or two in their lifetimes. And of course the wheel itself, which not only is useful because of the inefficiency of Pure madra techniques but because with his split core without something to make up the gap he would never be a true member of his advancement stage. He’d be half a Jade, or half a True Gold due to his limited madra capacity. It’s like having 2 4 GB flash drives instead of one 8 GB one. That’s fine until you need to transfer a 6 GB file.
Without his luck stumbling across Eithan, his strong drive wouldn’t have been enough. From the world building we receive maybe a couple chosen few could be given opportunities the way Lindon was but definitely no chance of everyone who wanted to try a pure path. That isn’t how Cradle works.
Iron body? Dude, Eithan has been training Lindon to be the Void Sage (specifically the Void Sage), since day one.
Sure, he wasn't sure he could do it and I don't think he really cared for him until Lindon lost a hand, but he gambled. And paid off big time.
As I said it once, Eithan is a power gamer. Lindon and Yerin are his characters. He saw an perfect account whose player abandoned the game (Yerin) and one with the worst possible initial status (Lindon) and went: "I'm gonna reach top level with both!"
Of course he new the bloodforged Iron body would pay off this much. The only thing Eithan didn't accounted for was Dross. Even Little Blue was part of his plans since early stages.
I would change him seeing Lindon as something with bad stats to a character with good stats that you'd get to level up from level 1. No predetermined build or wasted points but a blank slate.
Basically allowing Eithan to give Lindon whatever build/skills he wanted on his team.
Not sure, pushing someone towards a specific Icon feels like it'd be very difficult, given how personal Icons are.
I personally suspect Eithan focused more on giving him as many tools and options as possible, so he'd be perfectly suited for whatever path he picked.
His Iron Body was one of the better combat ones, especially given limited resources, while his cycling technique is well-suited for basically any path, but especially pure madra, as well as getting his cores up to snuff. It's also very good for preparing someone for Sage.
He likely did plan out a specific path involving combining Blackflame and pure madra techniques, but he likely also created other plans for if Lindon decided to pick something else, and Eithan didn't really influence Lindon's pure madra techniques either.
Eithan has noted it before himself, he focuses on making plans where each possible outcome or option benefits them, not simply driving them down a single path. (tbh, I'm not even sure if you can even get someone to Sage if you hold their hand the whole way, it feels like you'd get the same effect as a Sage taking a disciple)
>Not sure, pushing someone towards a specific Icon feels like it'd be very difficult, given how personal Icons are.
Except recall that Eithan doesn't feel that way. Note the reference where he manifested the Broom Icon at will in front of scholars of the day to disprove their theories about Icons, whereupon several suicided shortly after.
Keep in mind here that the Broom was an important symbol to Eithan at that point, with him using one in battle, and the narration focusing on him cleaning up the country side.
Gaining an Icon still requires a personal connection and understanding of the concept, you can't just hand someone like Ziel a sword and expect him to get the Sword Icon.
And, most importantly, the final step would still need to be taken by Lindon himself, and requires personal awareness on his part, which isn't something Eithan could force.
> for the whole time Eithan knew him
Small correction, Lindon took off his "empty" wooden badge after finding the box of badges in Soulsmith. But Eithan did meet Lindon with that badge. No badge outside Sacred Valley has the "empty" symbol by default, which is why Eithan had to carve one when Lindon became a Sage.
I think he steered Lindon in that direction and had hopes for him, but I don't think he thought for a second that Lindon would take it to the extremes he did. Like his Iron body needed a single drop of poison to create, Eithan was going to give him 1000x that amount, but Lindon said nope and did 10x more than Eithan expected. Eithan taught him the HEPW but told him not to do it with the parasite ring on, what does Lindon do at the first opportunity? Puts on the parasite ring to make a difficult thing nearly impossible. Eithan feeds Little Blue to make her stronger so she can help Lindon, only to discover Lindon has already been feeding her and has made such an impression on her that she took the form Lindon wanted not the one Eithan thought she should have. Eithan gambles Lindon's life and basically orchestrates the loss of his arm allowing Lindon the chance to get his first Hunger arm, something that I don't think Eithan planned for at all, but also a major contributor to Lindon's Long term success, Eithan wants Lindon on his uncrowned team, instead Lindon creates/empowers Dross, kills a member of the Akura family, and is chosen to be on the Akuru team where he gets personal training from a sage and a herald. When Lindon becomes a sage he pretty much saves Eithan's ass, not saying Eithan couldn't have gotten out of that situation, but I don't think he had any way to tell how close Lindon was to becoming a sage, and so couldn't have counted on it. It's also specifically pointed out that Lindon is extremely good at Madra control, and that most people aren't, he just didn't realize that he was actually gifted at it. I don't know if Eithan would have had a way to know that in the beginning.
Basically I think Eithan took a gamble with extremely long odds, one that if he won would get him someone capable of competing in the uncrowned king tournament, with the possibility of maybe, eventually, going further. Instead he created an absolute monster. I'm pretty sure everything since Lindon took control of the Labyrinth has been far past what Eithan expected, and the time frame of it has been miniscule in comparison to what he had planned.
I think he planned the Arm too, or at least had helped orchestrate it as he went.
\-He wouldn't let Lindon out of the Match. Thus he knew Lindon would Die or be Maimed. (Lindon couldn't possibly win).
\-He told Lindon about Jai Long's sister and sent Lindon to her during the raid. Knowing that Lindon would earn mercy from Jai Long.
\-He knew Lindon had the Hunger Binding.
\-He knew Lindon wanted to be a Soulsmith and he brought Fisher Gesha to teach him.
\-He knew Lindon was obsessed with the Hunger aspect, at least in the form of making a weapon like the Ancestor's spear.
\-If I recall correctly, he secured the Hunger Madra portion of the spear from the match with Jai Long and gave it to Lindon?
I think if we allow the idea that Eithan planned for Lindon to be the Void Sage, then we can most probably reason that Eithan planned or at least knowingly orchestrated events as they went that led to Lindon's Hunger Arm.
Maybe.
>I'm pretty sure everything since Lindon took control of the Labyrinth has been far past what Eithan expected, and the time frame of it has been miniscule in comparison to what he had planned.
I think it was Ghostwater. No way Eithan expected Lindon to go through a Monarch's pocket world, and even had he known, he probably wouldnt have assumed he would come out okay. Instead, he came out as a truegold with a buttload of stuff, including elixirs for the heaven's drop.
And then Eithan found out about Dross, and all his plans and predictions were thrown off in the best possible way. I can only imagine how many options that opened for them.
I'm pretty sure Lindon using HEPW was also training his madra control. It the best multi-use tool that Eithan could give Lindon: deep cores to make up for splitting them, training on using his madra and training on his willpower.
You forgot one: from the start he could no longer become physically fatigued as long as he had madra. That was a huge boon that Erin was jealous of in Blackflame.
Seemed like the whole encounter with Lindon and Yerin was serendipitous and he worked with what he had at first. I just loved the contrast of stabbing Lindon and pouring the blood from 5 (?) of those creatures to create the iron body with the clan using a pinprick once 😂, but that was mostly on Lindon past #1
I would interject that Lindon's regeneration capabilities were pretty staggering from the start. Yerin was shocked all the way back in Soulsmith when she found that he was run through with a spear by a Highgold. She flat out tells him he should be dead, even with an iron body. Six hours later, an injury that should have killed him was practically fully healed. That's not just "accelerated" healing, it's miraculous.
Possibly his iron body is significantly better than other bloodforged, due to how far he went into his iron advancement.
I'm pretty certain that's the case (it would be weird if it wasn't) we just don't know how big the gap is between his bloodforged body and the average one. Like, 20% better? 5000x better? What are the capabilities of the standard bloodforged body? I feel like it's a WoW question at this point
Probably a standard bloodforged iron body is much worse at healing, but it doesn’t take an absurd amount of madra to sustain itself. I think most people would have crippled themselves with London’s body do to not having the necessary madra capacity to sustain it
I'm sure Eithan had plans, but I'm also certain that whatever the outcome, he'll take credit for everything that goes good, and work around anything that doesn't.
Well he obviously realised how good it would be with HEPW. As for Iron heart? He probably didn't imagine that specific treasure in that specific way, but he probably had plans on getting something for him eventually anyway.
It was a gamble, the real prize in his mind at the time was Yerin. Lindon was a cheap freebie with great potential. Like OBV he knew something was up with him due to having Suriel's favour in the form of the marble but he couldn't what she saw while being stuck as Eithan.
Oh, it was pretty much stated in the books.
Eithan had plans layered on other plans for the Void Sage and the Uncrowned Queen.
However, he wasn’t rigid in his thinking, like he later admitted to Suriel, he would have let them make their own choices and worked with those choices even if they were suboptimal.
Don’t forget, we are talking about arguably the most gifted Sacred Artist to exist, who became Reaper of Worlds. Also, he told Yerin when she was developing her blood shadow that his wisdom was deep and would work with her whichever method she chose for Ruby.
So even if Lindon had chosen the path of incompetence, as long as he was willing to work as hard as he did, Eithan would have supported him.
Caveat:That doesn’t mean the plan couldn’t have failed, though.
Eithan thought he had longer on Cradle, so if Lindon had been less “enthusiastic” with his training and had chosen a diff path, I suspect he would have either died along the way or he wouldn’t have been as strong as he is now, which would mean his inevitable death at the hands of the Monarchs.
Was his iron body ever mundane? I mean he kept surviving things that would kill anyone else. Including his very first fight with the body against Kral.
It was more that his body was a huge liability for everything else. Sure he heals like Cell from DBZ but the cost of it is so high he cannot fight.
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Eithan planned most of it. There is a conversation in blackflame between Eithan and Cassius, where Cassius remarks that Lindon is a mess at his current advancement. The Bloodforged Iron Body takes too much madra to run at his current advancement at that point. It does allow Lindon to train for a significantly longer time than others without doing too much damage to his body. However, the main point of the iron body is to keep him alive and functional while he practices the path of blackflame - which damages the body and spirit. With the Iron body in conjunction with the HAEPW, Lindon gets the madra to run the iron body, which stops him degrading his body from practicing the path of blackflame and has the added bonus of healing most other injuries in relatively short order provided he still has the madra to run it. Eithan was definitely planning ahead to turn him into a monster, though Eithan himself points out that Lindon keep surpassing his (extremely high) expectations.
Yeah the fact that Lindon keeps supassing Eithan's expectations is mind-blowing to think about.
The moment when he first sees Dross and realises what he is (a baby presence) is one of my favourite moments of the series
Mine too! For a man who is surprised by nothing to be flabbergasted is awesome. I think Eithan saw the potential in Lindon's "most beautiful flaws," but was scared to truly hope after everything that had gone wrong on the rose gold continent.
Tbf, it happens occasionally from others. Like how the Jai patriarch managed to fake his death right in front of Eithan himself.
You notice this a lot in soul smith because they’ve just met, there are at least three times I can remember London impressing Eithan.
In Blackflame Bai Roh says "Someone is making a monster." After they watch Lindon fight the Blackflame 3rd trial solo then heal the damage after his "failure".
Even at the end of Soulsmith, Eithan implies to Yerin that he is somewhat aware of the potential in his plan. He says something like "If things go according to plan, I'm worried about you keeping up with him." Which is pretty wild since Lindon is only iron and Yerin is lowgold, but Eithan had a blank slate with 2 cores, and clearly had a plan for his ideal. Now I'm going to go off on a tangent, because I just realized something. Lindon is almost to Eithan what Mercy is to Malice. He basically has a blank slate with a ton of drive to do whatever he wants with as an ideal path and none of his baggage. Obviously Eithan and Malice's methods differ, which might be why Lindon went on to only exceed expectations while Mercy has fallen short of Malice's.
Ethan has mostly only laid out options to Lindon. He'll nudge him along the most dangerous, productive path, but Lindon's own drive would have taken him there anyway. Lil Blue being able to purify channels was a happy coincidence but you can see how Ethan was happy to capitalize on it. I don't think Ethan ever thought Lindon would ever advance as quickly as he did, but chance catapulted him into position to skip decades hard work just to get the materials to strengthen his body and advance.
I think that’s why lindon surpassed with and expectations while mercy didn’t meet malice’s. Because the perfect path for malice isn’t perfect for mercy, but she tries to make mercy follow it anyway. Eithan’s perfect path for lindon isn’t an improved version of his path, it’s a new path, for lindon, and is only based on eithan’s perfect path for eithan.
Yeah mercy is mercy, and her path revolves around using darkness to psychologically scar people
Malice is intentionally slowing Mercy down, she wants a century to corrupt Mercy so she is not a threat to the system. It is why Malice throws a fit every time Mercy advances because Lindon supported her. Her friendship with Lindon threatens to advance Mercy to a level of power where she can no longer be manipulated. Mercy's character arc literally starts with Malice trying to force her to accept her place in the system. Making it clear she cannot advance alone and implying that her only path forward is within the family.
Don't forget Eithan also helped push Little Blue's advancement in Blackflame as well. He seemed aware that she could help offset the damage caused by Blackflame, and interfered along that path as well. Not to say he foresaw how far Lindon would take his path with Little Blue. I doubt Eithan originally planned for Lindon to contract with her for instance. But he seemed to know Little Blue would compliment his path all the same.
Wait, what is HAEPW
Heaven and Earth purification wheel
That’s not even including the fact that he left little blue as is which helped ole London complete his pure madras path
He definitely planned it considering the channeling method he taught London later. The Heaven and Earth Purification wheel is designed to massively increase the capacity and so he knew of London worked hard enough the drain would be negligible. It’s important to remember Eithan had no problem discarding Lindon if he turned out to be nothing special.
The Purification Wheel seems to be the only real way to advance with pure madra. He would have taught it to Lindon regardless of his Iron Body.
If I recall there are others not named but alluded to, but this was the best option and the hardest.
And because it was the hardest it opened the door to becoming an UnderSage. Eithan mentions after the fact that it was excellent willpower training.
I remember that, it was so exciting, hearing that it used to be merely uncommon not impossible.
I suspect that there are other options. Will discusses a cycling technique in a WoG that focuses on madra recovery, and can apparently work fast enough that you can throw out techniques basically constantly with no regard for pacing. And, to be honest, it also depends a lot on your techniques, most likely. Purification Wheel is useful less because it's necessary to advance (it might actually be kind of bad at it, not good at actually purifying madra, iirc Lindon and Eithan use elixirs for that), but it's useful because most pure madra techniques are extremely inefficient. However, it might also be possible to form a good pure madra path with other jade cycling techniques, as long as you use the right techniques with it. I personally suspect it's less the efficiency and madra capacity that's an issue that stops people from pursuing a pure madra path, and more the lack of applications and the extreme cost of advancing a path without having external aura sources. Of course, Purification Wheel is still a very good option, and is an even better fit for Lindon given his split cores and iron body.
Yeah, most of the SV knowledge from Unsouled is useless but Jaran let’s us know why it’s so hard right away. Without being able to take in vital aura it becomes very difficult to advance and recover. Lindon has access to insane amounts of resources in order to practice his pure path. Without those resources his advancement would have been in decades rather than months/years. From the start of his training with Eithan, chowing down on the four corners rotation pills whose cost nearly made Fisher Gesha faint. Then the Blackflame Trials, which were wildly expensive to run costing as much as the rest of the training Arelius outer disciples receive each year. Then his luck stumbling on Ghostwater, where he chugged elixirs (Well water) that were so valuable that the researchers may get a drop or two in their lifetimes. And of course the wheel itself, which not only is useful because of the inefficiency of Pure madra techniques but because with his split core without something to make up the gap he would never be a true member of his advancement stage. He’d be half a Jade, or half a True Gold due to his limited madra capacity. It’s like having 2 4 GB flash drives instead of one 8 GB one. That’s fine until you need to transfer a 6 GB file. Without his luck stumbling across Eithan, his strong drive wouldn’t have been enough. From the world building we receive maybe a couple chosen few could be given opportunities the way Lindon was but definitely no chance of everyone who wanted to try a pure path. That isn’t how Cradle works.
Iron body? Dude, Eithan has been training Lindon to be the Void Sage (specifically the Void Sage), since day one. Sure, he wasn't sure he could do it and I don't think he really cared for him until Lindon lost a hand, but he gambled. And paid off big time. As I said it once, Eithan is a power gamer. Lindon and Yerin are his characters. He saw an perfect account whose player abandoned the game (Yerin) and one with the worst possible initial status (Lindon) and went: "I'm gonna reach top level with both!" Of course he new the bloodforged Iron body would pay off this much. The only thing Eithan didn't accounted for was Dross. Even Little Blue was part of his plans since early stages.
I would change him seeing Lindon as something with bad stats to a character with good stats that you'd get to level up from level 1. No predetermined build or wasted points but a blank slate. Basically allowing Eithan to give Lindon whatever build/skills he wanted on his team.
As was Lindon's void icon
I don't know if Eithan planned for Lindon to tap the Void Icon, but he did plan to pave the way for Lindon to become a sage.
I've been rereading the series and you can definitely catch hints towards him pushing Lindon in that direction *very* early on
Dude, Lindon was wearing the Void Icon badge for the whole time Eithan knew him. He 100% planned for the Void Icon.
Not sure, pushing someone towards a specific Icon feels like it'd be very difficult, given how personal Icons are. I personally suspect Eithan focused more on giving him as many tools and options as possible, so he'd be perfectly suited for whatever path he picked. His Iron Body was one of the better combat ones, especially given limited resources, while his cycling technique is well-suited for basically any path, but especially pure madra, as well as getting his cores up to snuff. It's also very good for preparing someone for Sage. He likely did plan out a specific path involving combining Blackflame and pure madra techniques, but he likely also created other plans for if Lindon decided to pick something else, and Eithan didn't really influence Lindon's pure madra techniques either. Eithan has noted it before himself, he focuses on making plans where each possible outcome or option benefits them, not simply driving them down a single path. (tbh, I'm not even sure if you can even get someone to Sage if you hold their hand the whole way, it feels like you'd get the same effect as a Sage taking a disciple)
>Not sure, pushing someone towards a specific Icon feels like it'd be very difficult, given how personal Icons are. Except recall that Eithan doesn't feel that way. Note the reference where he manifested the Broom Icon at will in front of scholars of the day to disprove their theories about Icons, whereupon several suicided shortly after.
Keep in mind here that the Broom was an important symbol to Eithan at that point, with him using one in battle, and the narration focusing on him cleaning up the country side. Gaining an Icon still requires a personal connection and understanding of the concept, you can't just hand someone like Ziel a sword and expect him to get the Sword Icon. And, most importantly, the final step would still need to be taken by Lindon himself, and requires personal awareness on his part, which isn't something Eithan could force.
It made me both very happy and extremely sad to know that Eithan was trying to manifest the Joy icon this whole time. And not yet succeeding.
> for the whole time Eithan knew him Small correction, Lindon took off his "empty" wooden badge after finding the box of badges in Soulsmith. But Eithan did meet Lindon with that badge. No badge outside Sacred Valley has the "empty" symbol by default, which is why Eithan had to carve one when Lindon became a Sage.
"I always know." -Eithan Arelius.
He didn’t know
He doesn't always know. He only knows for sure when you think he doesn't.
I think he steered Lindon in that direction and had hopes for him, but I don't think he thought for a second that Lindon would take it to the extremes he did. Like his Iron body needed a single drop of poison to create, Eithan was going to give him 1000x that amount, but Lindon said nope and did 10x more than Eithan expected. Eithan taught him the HEPW but told him not to do it with the parasite ring on, what does Lindon do at the first opportunity? Puts on the parasite ring to make a difficult thing nearly impossible. Eithan feeds Little Blue to make her stronger so she can help Lindon, only to discover Lindon has already been feeding her and has made such an impression on her that she took the form Lindon wanted not the one Eithan thought she should have. Eithan gambles Lindon's life and basically orchestrates the loss of his arm allowing Lindon the chance to get his first Hunger arm, something that I don't think Eithan planned for at all, but also a major contributor to Lindon's Long term success, Eithan wants Lindon on his uncrowned team, instead Lindon creates/empowers Dross, kills a member of the Akura family, and is chosen to be on the Akuru team where he gets personal training from a sage and a herald. When Lindon becomes a sage he pretty much saves Eithan's ass, not saying Eithan couldn't have gotten out of that situation, but I don't think he had any way to tell how close Lindon was to becoming a sage, and so couldn't have counted on it. It's also specifically pointed out that Lindon is extremely good at Madra control, and that most people aren't, he just didn't realize that he was actually gifted at it. I don't know if Eithan would have had a way to know that in the beginning. Basically I think Eithan took a gamble with extremely long odds, one that if he won would get him someone capable of competing in the uncrowned king tournament, with the possibility of maybe, eventually, going further. Instead he created an absolute monster. I'm pretty sure everything since Lindon took control of the Labyrinth has been far past what Eithan expected, and the time frame of it has been miniscule in comparison to what he had planned.
I think he planned the Arm too, or at least had helped orchestrate it as he went. \-He wouldn't let Lindon out of the Match. Thus he knew Lindon would Die or be Maimed. (Lindon couldn't possibly win). \-He told Lindon about Jai Long's sister and sent Lindon to her during the raid. Knowing that Lindon would earn mercy from Jai Long. \-He knew Lindon had the Hunger Binding. \-He knew Lindon wanted to be a Soulsmith and he brought Fisher Gesha to teach him. \-He knew Lindon was obsessed with the Hunger aspect, at least in the form of making a weapon like the Ancestor's spear. \-If I recall correctly, he secured the Hunger Madra portion of the spear from the match with Jai Long and gave it to Lindon? I think if we allow the idea that Eithan planned for Lindon to be the Void Sage, then we can most probably reason that Eithan planned or at least knowingly orchestrated events as they went that led to Lindon's Hunger Arm. Maybe.
I think you're right on the spear hand, it was good at gold. Then the Archstone at lord.
>I'm pretty sure everything since Lindon took control of the Labyrinth has been far past what Eithan expected, and the time frame of it has been miniscule in comparison to what he had planned. I think it was Ghostwater. No way Eithan expected Lindon to go through a Monarch's pocket world, and even had he known, he probably wouldnt have assumed he would come out okay. Instead, he came out as a truegold with a buttload of stuff, including elixirs for the heaven's drop. And then Eithan found out about Dross, and all his plans and predictions were thrown off in the best possible way. I can only imagine how many options that opened for them.
I'm pretty sure Lindon using HEPW was also training his madra control. It the best multi-use tool that Eithan could give Lindon: deep cores to make up for splitting them, training on using his madra and training on his willpower.
You forgot one: from the start he could no longer become physically fatigued as long as he had madra. That was a huge boon that Erin was jealous of in Blackflame.
Seemed like the whole encounter with Lindon and Yerin was serendipitous and he worked with what he had at first. I just loved the contrast of stabbing Lindon and pouring the blood from 5 (?) of those creatures to create the iron body with the clan using a pinprick once 😂, but that was mostly on Lindon past #1
I would interject that Lindon's regeneration capabilities were pretty staggering from the start. Yerin was shocked all the way back in Soulsmith when she found that he was run through with a spear by a Highgold. She flat out tells him he should be dead, even with an iron body. Six hours later, an injury that should have killed him was practically fully healed. That's not just "accelerated" healing, it's miraculous. Possibly his iron body is significantly better than other bloodforged, due to how far he went into his iron advancement.
I don't think it is a possibility. Lindon's body is absurdly better than other bloodforged. That was the point of all he went through.
I'm pretty certain that's the case (it would be weird if it wasn't) we just don't know how big the gap is between his bloodforged body and the average one. Like, 20% better? 5000x better? What are the capabilities of the standard bloodforged body? I feel like it's a WoW question at this point
Probably a standard bloodforged iron body is much worse at healing, but it doesn’t take an absurd amount of madra to sustain itself. I think most people would have crippled themselves with London’s body do to not having the necessary madra capacity to sustain it
I'm sure Eithan had plans, but I'm also certain that whatever the outcome, he'll take credit for everything that goes good, and work around anything that doesn't.
Well he obviously realised how good it would be with HEPW. As for Iron heart? He probably didn't imagine that specific treasure in that specific way, but he probably had plans on getting something for him eventually anyway. It was a gamble, the real prize in his mind at the time was Yerin. Lindon was a cheap freebie with great potential. Like OBV he knew something was up with him due to having Suriel's favour in the form of the marble but he couldn't what she saw while being stuck as Eithan.
Oh, it was pretty much stated in the books. Eithan had plans layered on other plans for the Void Sage and the Uncrowned Queen. However, he wasn’t rigid in his thinking, like he later admitted to Suriel, he would have let them make their own choices and worked with those choices even if they were suboptimal. Don’t forget, we are talking about arguably the most gifted Sacred Artist to exist, who became Reaper of Worlds. Also, he told Yerin when she was developing her blood shadow that his wisdom was deep and would work with her whichever method she chose for Ruby. So even if Lindon had chosen the path of incompetence, as long as he was willing to work as hard as he did, Eithan would have supported him. Caveat:That doesn’t mean the plan couldn’t have failed, though. Eithan thought he had longer on Cradle, so if Lindon had been less “enthusiastic” with his training and had chosen a diff path, I suspect he would have either died along the way or he wouldn’t have been as strong as he is now, which would mean his inevitable death at the hands of the Monarchs.
Oh he 100% knew what he was doing, the clever bastard.
He always knows.
Whenever you have to ask, Eithen planned it. Guaranteed.
Was his iron body ever mundane? I mean he kept surviving things that would kill anyone else. Including his very first fight with the body against Kral. It was more that his body was a huge liability for everything else. Sure he heals like Cell from DBZ but the cost of it is so high he cannot fight.
> Was his iron body ever mundane? No. It was mentioned by more than one person that his Iron Body was too madra intensive for someone his level.