Green Brick Commentary
Mar. 25th, 2022 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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antishurtugal_rebornChapter Fifty-Six: Lacuna, Part the Second
Following the revelation to be had last chapter (and for the rest of us to go “Yeah, like we totally didn’t see that coming!”), Eragon tells us that he can’t move or breathe. Unfortunately, he doesn’t die from self-asphyxiation, but instead he tells Saphira that there are eggs. Saphira shivers and in this moment I wonder if her true name changes because now there’s that huge maybe about her not being the last female dragon, which is a big facet of her true name, by the way. So how does she deal with that? Answer is she doesn’t. The true name thing only existed to get them in the door, and now it doesn’t matter.
Eragon then asks who this presence is, and he asks if they can trust said presence. Glaedr is the one who answers:
They speak the truth, Eragon, said Glaedr in the ancient language. I know, for Oromis was among those who devised the plan for this place.
Which doesn’t make sense if you think about it too hard, because this would mean that they knew an attack was inevitable and they were preparing for the worst, but instead of saving any brand new Riders, they instead saved Eldunari and eggs for possible future Riders and a population of wild dragons. Doesn’t that just sound weirdly cruel? We’re going to take this bunch of eggs and store them underground, putting spells on them to prevent their hatching, until such time as the Chosen One appears before us and frees them all. What if the Chosen One never showed? What if he was already enthralled by Galby? What if Eragon died early on? What if Eragon was never chosen? What if Galby recovered Saphira’s egg and she hatched for Murtagh instead? We’re going to condemn a bunch of people to die for the sake of something maybe happening in the future. Super needlessly cruel.
Eragon is confused at the fact Oromis had anything to do with this, but before Glaedr can elaborate, the other mind speaks again. This guy is Umaroth, who just happens to be the dragon of Vrael, who was the leader of the Riders during Galby’s time. He says he speaks for the others but he doesn’t command them. This is because many Eldunari here were once bonded with Riders, but more Eldunari are from wild dragons, and they don’t listen to anyone but themselves. Umaroth is described to be exasperated by that fact. Little wonder that is, considering the not-so-closet racism the bonded dragons had for wild dragons and vice versa. Eragon then asks if Umaroth is Robo-Cop, but he says no. Robo-Cop is an Eldunari named Cuaroc, He Who Hunts Nidwhal and Bane of the Urgals. Are those titles really necessary? Anyway, he says Silvari the Enchantress made Cuaroc this body so that the vault would always have a guardian to protect them. You know, in the event that Galby or any other enemy figured out the Vault even existed and attempted to get inside.
Hm. Where have I seen the name Silvari the Enchantress before?
Oh. Yes. Now I remember.
She’s the mother of a certain Enchanter in a certain spitefic.
Which means somebody’s going to need to come up with an explanation as to why Silvari made Cuaroc his mecha.
Actually, now I think I have a reason why. (Which was partially discussed in the comments for last chapter)
The Riders did manage to hunt her down, and they threatened to kill her son if she didn’t help them in the coming battle. So, to save her child, Silvari agreed to build the metal body Cuaroc now has, but she unfortunately wasn’t able to escape the island before Galbatorix and the Forsworn attacked, and she perished there, leaving a certain Enchanter on his own.
Also, fun fact: according to the wiki, Paolini stated in an interview that he always imagined Silvari to be an elf because her name is “elfish”. Why couldn't she just be a human with an elfy-sounding name? Or a half-elf herself? Or three-quarters elf? Or her great-great-great-grandmama was an elf who got in on with a human and just when the human side of the family thought elves had been bred out of the family line (because despite her "elvish" name, Silvari didn't have any elfy-features), along comes Silvari who gets it on with an elf and bam! Baby half-elf Enchanter person. I'm having way too much fun with conspiracy theories, can you tell?
Back to the story... As Umaroth describes the whole anachronistic metal suit Cuaroc wears, the guy goes and opens his chest-plate to reveal a purple Eldunari surrounded by silver wires that are no thicker than a hair. Then he closes his breastplate and Umaroth tells Eragon he’s somewhere else, and directs his attention to an alcove containing a large white Eldunari. Eragon sheaths his sword and then decides he isn’t mentally capable of handling this much revelation at one time. He says his thoughts feel slow and sluggish, like he got kicked in the head by an angry donkey, which he supposed he did, because he was mind-raped. He starts toward the tiers and then stops to ask Cuaroc permission to go touch things. Cuaroc basically says yeah, whatever, go for it, and takes a few steps away. Eragon approaches the eggs and stands before a red and gold egg that’s almost as tall as he is. Eragon is suddenly wearing gloves and apparently no longer has the scrapes on his palms from his rock-throwing a few chapters ago, because we’re told he peels off the glove he’s wearing and touches the egg. The egg is warm, so he decides to mind-rape the hatchling within, and finds it sleeping. Saphira joins him and he tells her that her egg was smaller than this one. She replies:
That is because my mother was not so old and not so large as the dragon who laid this one.
This bothers me because I start thinking about food supply and survival of the fittest. It’s not all that strange to have some baby animals start off larger than their siblings, and in a large litter, there’s almost always a runt in the litter. But if the egg is this big, will the hatchling be that big? And if so, it would easily bully any smaller dragon out of food, if not make that smaller dragon food. Not only that, but what would the development rate be? Would the large hatchling develop at the same rate as a smaller peer? Or would it develop faster? Slower? It doesn’t make any sense that these eggs would be different sizes if they are from the same species. A robin’s egg won’t hatch an ostrich, after all. There are species of birds that’ll put their egg in another nest and have that momma bird raise their chick, but I can’t see that happening here. Worse, the logistics of it doesn’t make any sense either. Saphira’s egg was only a couple of pounds, but this five foot tall egg probably is at the very least a hundred pounds, if we’re going by proportion. Things like this bring a whole slew of questions, and I really don’t think they were answered in the context of the story except by “it’s cool so therefore it exists”.
Eragon says he hadn’t thought the size of the egg would be in direct proportion to the size of the mother. Then we’re off and looking around again, and Eragon says there are so many. He and Saphira cuddle a bit, and he says that he can tell Saphira wants to celebrate and touch all the minds present, but she can’t bring herself to believe that all of this is real. She snorts then and turns her head until she’s looking at the rest of the room, then roars. She demands how this can be, how they could’ve escaped Galby, because dragons don’t hide when they fight, and they aren’t cowards to run from danger. She demands them to explain themselves. And typical of a man chiding a woman that she’s being “too much”, Umaroth tells Saphira to quiet down or she’ll upset the babies. Saphira tells Umaroth to tell them how all this can be real. Umaroth is amused by her anger and then answers her by saying that she’s right, dragons aren’t cowards, and they don’t hide from a fight. But dragons might lie in wait so they can surprise their prey. He asks her if she agrees with that assessment. Saphira’s response is to snort and whip her tail back and forth. Umaroth continues:
And we are not like the Fanghur or the lesser vipers who abandon their young to live or die according to the whims of fate. Had we joined the battle for Doru Araeba, we would only have been destroyed. Galbatorix’s victory would have been absolute—as indeed he believes it was—and our kind would have passed forever from the face of the earth.
But how would his victory be absolute? You had thirteen people and their dragons (so twenty-six) going up against hundreds, if not thousands! The odds are not in the favor of the twenty-six! Especially not with hundreds of Eldunari ready and willing to go to bat for the Riders! There’s no way that Galby should’ve won! Absolutely no way. His side should have lost with flying colors, not just lose one poor bastard to a nuclear bomb and then kill the rest through “overuse of magic” and suicide. And murder, because we know Brom murdered a few of them. Each of the Forsworn would’ve had to have the power of a god and then some, and their dragons would’ve had to have some semblance of godlike power, and they’d all have to have FUCKING WARDS for days! You can’t just handwave away numbers like this! You can’t ignore the centuries of experience the oldest of the Riders had, the oldest of the Eldunari! Sure, if Galby lost, there’d be no story, but even if he had to win, make it believable! This just sounds like the Riders gave up and killed themselves rather than change the entire order to make everything equal and fair. This, to me, screams that this was pulled out of the ether at the last minute, that none of this was planned. If it had been, then maybe there wouldn’t be so many questions and disparities.
Once the true extent of Galbatorix’s power and ambition became evident, said Glaedr, and once we realized that he and the traitors with him intended to attack Vroengard, then Vrael, Umaroth, Oromis, and I, and a few others, decided that it would be best to hide the eggs of our race, as well as a number of the Eldunarí. It was easy to convince the wild dragons; Galbatorix had been hunting them, and they had no defense against his magic. They came here, and they gave charge of their unhatched offspring to Vrael, and those who could laid eggs when otherwise they would have waited, for we knew that the survival of our race was threatened. Our precautions, it seems, were well thought of.
But what exactly tipped them off that Galby intended to attack Vroengard? Did his Vroengard attack come before or after his attack on Uru’baen? It would make sense if the attack came after Uru’baen, because Vroengard was where Brom’s Saphira was killed and Glaedr specifically says that Brom and Saphira I were alive when they fled Uru’baen, but they couldn’t possibly have known that Galby was going to attack the stronghold of the Riders with only thirteen people and their dragons on his side. He attacked Uru’baen because it was defenseless. Nearly all the Riders fucked off and abandoned the place. The only ones left were likely the humans, dwarves, the few Riders who actually had some sense of honor and obligation, and the wife of that one elf dude who was going to lend Eragon the green Rider’s sword and got all giggly when Eragon decided not to take it. And remember, Wifey was supposedly visiting her brother when the attack came, but everyone knew it was coming, and that’s why a majority of Riders abandoned the place. So by rights, she shouldn’t have even been there unless she was one of the few elves who actually liked humans.
And headcanon accepted. Wifey chose to stay behind to honor the pact between humans and elves, and her brother also stayed to help the humans. Both weren’t killed by the Forsworn but by traitorous Riders who didn’t want them surviving to help the Forsworn and/or hated them for trying to promote equality among the humans and elves. That’s why a fleeing Rider was able to bring her home to her hubby, and why she died of her wounds so soon after - the fleeing Rider killed her to prevent her from telling her hubby about the betrayal.
Still, it’s just too convenient. You have no idea that this move is going to be made by this person, but you’re going to do this anyway, instead of moving everything to a more secure location than the island? Glaedr even states that they should’ve hoarded everything in the elves’ forest rather than the island. It’s stated that Galby was never brought to Ellesmera, so he had no idea where it is, and the forest is way too vast to worry about searching every inch. And why would Galby bother hunting the wild dragons? It would make more sense if he left them alone because they weren’t bothering him. His beef wasn’t with the dragons; it was with the Riders, the institution. There’s no logical reason for him to go after the wild dragons, and before you argue about the whole Eldunari thing, Galby would have to find a way to force those dragons to place their consciousness into that bit of rock first. If they refused and just died without doing it, then the Eldunari would just dissolve with their death and Galby would be right back where he started. There’s no reason for him to take such a risk. He’d be better off getting the already-disgorged Eldunari the Riders seemed to have in droves. Less risk and greater reward. He’d just have to hit Uru’baen to make them gather the Eldunari in one spot - which is what happened, coincidentally - and then hit that place when everyone least expected him to. And like I said earlier and will keep saying - an army of hundred versus an army of thirteen has to want to lose in order to actually lose. And I bet you that there had to be someone who knew the Riders who sided with Galby quite intimately, how their minds worked, their reasoning, who taught them, just as Glaedr describes him and Oromis knowing how Kialandi and Formora operated, and that was how they were able to escape them. So how could the Riders not win?
Like I said before, I’m fairly certain Galby had more help than the history is saying he did. That’s the only way he could fight an order of ancients with twelve other people on his side and win. This crap didn’t happen with the Jedi order, either, by the way. It was a surprise attack that took out more of the Jedi order than the actual fighting did, with Anakin/Vader taking an army of stormtroopers into the temple, where Anakin/Vader slaughtered all the younglings and the stormtroopers killed the rest. Yoda fought Palpatine into a stalemate and Obi-Wan fought Anakin/Vader, horrifically wounding him and leaving him for dead. The whole story of that works because it wasn’t a handful of guys talking on a vastly superior force. It was a surprise attack coupled with a coup that got the job done. This stupid story takes all the best aspects of the story of the Jedi and their fall and ruins them with illogical reasoning.
Eragon rubs his head and asks Glaedr why didn’t he know of this before now, and why didn’t Oromis say anything. He asks how it’s possible to hide their minds, because Glaedr told him it couldn’t be done. Glaedr says it can’t be done, not really. At least not with magic alone. So distance. That’s why this vault is far underground, a mile below Mount Erolas. Even if Galby and the Forsworn thought to search with their minds to find this place, the likelihood of them succeeding is pretty much nil because of the miles of rock. Said rock would have only told them there was some kind of energy beneath it, which they likely would’ve decided belonged to the magma flowing below the ground. Besides that, before the battle, all the Eldunari here were placed in a deep trance so they would be almost dead, which would make them that more difficult to find. The plan was to rouse these Eldunari after the fighting was over, but just in case nobody survived the battle, there was a spell placed to wake the Eldunari up once a couple days had passed. And so it did, says Umaroth. The Vault was also placed here for another reason, he explains. He tells Eragon that in the pit nearby is a “lake of molten stone” that’s been there since forever and that this molten stone provides the warmth that the eggs need to be comfortable. It also maintains the light that the Eldunari need to maintain their strength.
Eragon completely ignores Umaroth and tells Glaedr that he still hasn’t answered the original question, which was why neither Glaedr nor Oromis remembered any of this. It’s Umaroth who answers, saying that everyone who knew about the vault agreed to have their memories wiped clean and agreed to have false memories implanted. This includes Glaedr and Oromis. He says it wasn’t an easy decision, especially for the mother dragons, but they couldn’t allow anyone who was going to be outside the vault to remember anything about it, in the off chance that Galby managed to get hold of the information. So they said bye Felicia to their friends, mates, whoever, all the while knowing they might never see them again - what’s with the might, you will never see them again - and that if the worst came, as it so did, that their friends, family, whatevers would die believing that everyone in the vault had died along with them. So yeah, not an easy decision. But they also erased all the memory of the names of the Euphamism Rock, just as they had erased the names of the thirteen dragons of the Forsworn.
You know, something about this whole thing bothers me, and now I think I know why. We’ve been told that Glaedr and Oromis never participated in the Battle of Doru Areaba. They were “too injured”. So after they broke free of Kialandi and Formora, and after they raced to Uru’baen to alert the Riders of what had happened, they fucked off to Ellesmera and stayed there. So when, exactly, did this whole vault thing take place? The fact that there’s a vault at all suggests that the Riders expected their island to be attacked. They fully expected an attack to come and came up with a contingency plan in the event they were defeated. Instead of taking all of this stuff to the elves’ forest where everything would be, arguably, safer because Galby and the Forsworn would never be able to reach them, the Riders cherry-picked the last survivors and hid them away. Which means that Glaedr, Oromis, Umaroth, Vrael, every Elduanri in here who was bonded and unbonded, and all the mothers of the eggs had to have convened well before Glaedr and Oromis were ever captured by Kialandi and Formora.
The problem with that, though, is that until Glaedr and Oromis were attacked by Kialandi and Formora, they had no suspicion that these two had turned traitor and joined Galby’s side. Which means that the “Banishing of Names” couldn’t have occurred until well after the identities of the thirteen Forsworn were known by all. And considering Kialandi and Formora’s betrayal came days before the attack on Uru’baen, then their dragons couldn’t have been part of the Banishing, unless the Banishing happened after the attack on Uru’baen but before the attack on Vroengard. This also means that nobody should have any inkling of belief that the Rider stronghold would be attacked, that Galby - with only Morzan and maybe a few other people by this point - would have the cahones to attack the bastion of the Riders’ strength.
And yet, this vault and all its contents are put in here with the expectation that there’s an attack coming. None of it makes any sense. I could see the Riders panicking after Uru’baen is attacked and doing this as a last resort measure, like they know the attack’s coming and they have no choice if they want to save their order, like they have no time to ship all the eggs and Eldunari they just brought from Uru’baen back to the elves’ forest and this is the only option they’ve got. But they don’t know the attack is coming. All of this feels like one giant hamster wheel of “I made this up on the fly and now I have to explain myself like I planned this all along this exact way” and yet the plothole just keeps getting deeper and deeper.
And the reason why I say it’s a hamster wheel is because it literally goes nowhere but in circles. Yes, the concept popped up back in Book One, which is where the idea of the vault originated. At that point, there was probably a solid idea of what the vault was, where it was located, and what was in it, but we’re now three books later, and I feel like the original idea of it has been lost. The author was in scramble mode now because he had to turn in a finished project even though he was tired of said project. So the wheel keeps turning and turning and continuing not to make sense if you try to line up the timelines and study the material with the same vigor as literature scholars studying Aristotle. The causation for this event isn’t there all the way. It’s like an underbaked cookie. Yeah, it smells good, but you’ll get food poisoning if you eat it.
Anyway, back on track now. Glaedr says he’s spent the last hundred years believing the dragons were doomed to extinction, but now he knows all that anguish was for nothing, and he’s happy that he was able to keep safe the dragons because he was literally forced to forget about their existence. Then Saphira asks Umaroth why Galby didn’t notice the Eldunari and the eggs were missing from the collection. He answers:
He thought we were killed in the battle. We were but a small portion of the Eldunarí on Vroengard, not enough for him to become suspicious of our absence. As for the eggs, no doubt he was enraged by their loss, but he would have had no reason to believe trickery was involved.
There’s no reason for him not to be suspicious of the absence of over a hundred Eldunari, especially since one of them was the Eldunari of the dragon who belonged to the fucking leader of the Riders. If Galby bothered to cut open Umaroth’s body to retrieve his Eldunari and found it missing, he would reasonably assume that it was part of the hoard on Vroengard. If the Eldunari house wasn’t destroyed like the egg house before Galby could search it, he’d wonder why Umaroth wasn’t among the Eldunari there. There are way too many plotholes in this “reveal”, and because of that, it seems like a total asspull. Nobody knew this vault was here? That’s because magic! We tampered with everyone’s memories! Even though we didn’t know if any of our machinations would bear fruit, we did it anyway because we were too lazy to gang up on thirteen people and decimate them via overwhelming power and numbers. And why wouldn’t he believe there was some kind of trickery involved? Logically the Riders shouldn’t have had enough time to evacuate the Eldunari and the eggs as they did. They couldn’t have known Galby was going to risk a dangerous flight across the ocean to the very stronghold of the Riders, where they had the terrain, the numbers, the power, literally everything going for them, and they basically folded. They gave up. If they had somehow caught wind of Galby’s next plan after Uru’baen, then sure. But there’s no way they could have done this on the assumption Galby would come. Or that he wouldn’t make them come to him and then search the island at his leisure. This is all stupid, and I feel like it’s insulting my intelligence.
Glaedr says oh yeah, that’s why Thuviel blew himself up. He basically committed suicide to sell Galby on the belief that all the Eldunari and eggs were destroyed. Eragon then points out the very real fact that Thuviel killed many of his own. Umaroth answers:
He did, and it was a great tragedy, said Umaroth. However, we had agreed that he was not to act unless it was obvious that defeat was unavoidable. By immolating himself, he destroyed the buildings where we normally kept the eggs, and he also rendered the island poisonous to ensure that Galbatorix would not choose to settle here.
Oh, yeah, definitely a tragedy that this guy murdered hundreds of his own side, thus allowing the Forsworn to, in effect, win, instead of everyone banding together to fight as a unified force against thirteen people. Does that sound logical to you? Was there a different war happening here than the one we all read about in the previous three books? Did something else happen that we don’t know about? Why would Galby want to settle on the island when he’s got a perfectly good castle back at Uru’baen? Settling on this island where nobody can get to except someone with dragons would be quite counterproductive to what Galby was looking to achieve. And I still don’t know how this Thuviel guy is supposed to be a hero. He literally committed infanticide and murder by doing what he did. Because you know they didn’t rescue all the eggs, and if I remember right, the Riders purposefully left Saphira, Thorn, and Firnen to be found by Galby in order to convince him that these were the last three eggs and all the others got destroyed. So if you think about it too hard, all of this is the fault of the ones who chose those specific three eggs to be “captured”. Even if they were intending to rescue them in the future (as was the case, sort of) the “heroes of the only golden age Alagaesia ever knew” condemned these three to be potential slaves from the get go. This is just as bad as realizing that the Varden were killing children if Galby looked at them a little too long. In order to hold on to their fading power, the Riders selfishly destroyed themselves, killing innocents. Are we sure the Riders weren’t actually tyrants themselves and Galby was the one who decided the tyrants had to go in order to have true peace in the world? Because that would make a better story than Galby doing this for pure revenge and omg!crazy! and then seeking to subjugate all magic users to his will.
Eragon asks if Thuviel knew why he was killing himself and the answer is:
At the time, no, only that it was necessary. One of the Forsworn had slain Thuviel’s dragon a month before. Though he had refrained from passing into the void, as we needed every warrior we had to fight Galbatorix, Thuviel no longer wished to continue living. He was glad for the task then; it granted him the release he yearned for while also allowing him to serve our cause. By the gift of his life, he secured a future for both our race and the Riders. He was a great and courageous hero, and his name shall someday be sung in every corner of Alagaësia.
I still don’t know how they needed every single warrior they had to fight Galby. There were hundreds of Riders versus the thirteen, and they were all more powerful than these particular thirteen, too. Plus they had the wild dragons on their side, which boosted their numbers even more. They could’ve destroyed these guys without even trying hard. Even if I buy the answer of “history changes with the telling” excuse, it’s only been a hundred years since the fall of the Riders, and there are those alive who still remember - Glaedr and everyone in this vault, for example - so there’s no way it could be an inaccurate historical retelling with details changed and other aspects blown out of proportion just to make things seem more dire than they really were. And Thuviel is not a hero. He killed himself and took his own side and a bunch of innocent children and non-combatants with him! A hero doesn’t do that! That’s something a villain would do! And yes, I know that it’s inevitable that people die during hero/villain battles (see any of the The Avengers movies) but that’s not usually on purpose. What Thuviel did was on purpose. He went to the egg-house and blew himself up ON PURPOSE just so the Riders could fool Galby into thinking all the eggs save three were destroyed and so were all of the Eldunari except what he had already got his mitts on. Worse, his suicide wasn’t “courageous”. It was the easy way out. His dragon has been killed, and all he wanted to do was die. Someone who was truly courageous would continue to live no matter how painful anything was and they wouldn’t seek death. Courage is the strength to carry on and move forward in the face of adversity. This guy didn’t have that. He was a coward who killed innocents and took his own life because he couldn’t stand living anymore. Suicide is never the answer.
Of course, instead of being disgusted by any of this, Eragon and Saphira just react like it’s the weather report and Saphira just says that after the battle, those in the vault just waited around and knitted some winter knickers. Umaroth says yep, winter knickers in various colors, and there’s a tiny aside for Eragon to tell us he’s a little afraid of the thought of spending a hundred years in a single room buried deep underground. Then Umaroth continues talking, saying that knitting winter knickers wasn’t the only thing they were doing. When they all woke up they started casting their minds out to examine the surrounding area. They did it slowly at first, and then started getting bolder when they realized Galby and his friends abandoned the island. They pooled their powers together, but instead of summoning Captain Planet, they just spied on everything and everyone in the land. They can’t scry, but Umaroth explains that they can see the threads of energy throughout the land, whatever that means, and they can listen to the thoughts of those who don’t defend their minds, either because they don’t know how or because they don’t bother. So these assholes basically mind-raped everyone they could in order to get information.
So the years pass, and they start to worry about the fact nobody’s come along who can defeat Galby. Umaroth says the group in the vault were prepared to wait centuries if they needed to, but they could sense Galby’s power getting stronger, and they started to get scared that their waiting would end up being thousands of years instead of hundreds. That’s just unacceptable, Umaroth says, because the Eldunari don’t want to be cooped up for thousands of years and oh, yeah, the children too. Being locked in stasis for thousands of years would be bad for the health of the eggs. He explains that even though they’re bound with spells that prevent them from hatching and slows their development, and they can remain bound in this stasis for “years more”, whatever that means, it’s still not a good idea they remain frozen in time. If that happens, their minds can take a turn for the worse.
But apparently that couldn’t happen in the intervening hundred years? Or couldn’t happen when the eggs were laced with spells to begin with? Of course not. That would be inconvenient.
Anyway, Umaroth continues the exposition, and says that because the Eldunari in the vault were so concerned about the children - because it’s always for the children, right? - they started to insert themselves into the goings-on around the world and manipulated things in their favor. At first it was only in small ways, like a nudge here, a whispered suggestion there, a sense of alarm to one about to walk into a death trap. They didn’t succeed all the time, but their success rate was high enough that they grew confident in their tampering and more skilled at doing said tampering. On a few occasions, they were noticed, but nobody could ever determine who or what they were, so they were safe. They were able to arrange the deaths of three of the Forsworn and admit that they used Brom as their knife to do the killing. Eragon repeats the obvious, which was that they used Brom, although Eragon uses the word “helped”. I guess to someone who has no qualms about being used himself, “helped” is an accurate word for Eragon to use.
Umaroth admits to making Brom dance like a puppet on a string, and then starts talking about Hefring, who’s the guy who was charged with stealing all three dragon eggs but only got away with Saphira. Umaroth says the Vault-Eldunari helped Hefring get away, but they leaned on him a little too much because he noticed their presence in his head and he spooked and rabbited. He bolted and didn’t meet with the Varden like he was supposed to do. Which ended up getting him killed, if you read between the lines. Later on, after Brom rescued Saphira’s egg and the Varden and the elves started parading children before her, the Vault-Eldunari decided they probably should start setting up a trust fund in the event that Saphira ever hatched. So they reached out to the werecats, who apparently at this point have been “long friends” with the dragons (since fucking when?) and dropped the prophecy that Serious Ass tells Eragon, then wiped their memory of the conversation.
Which, again, lends to the theory that the Vault could be open by any Tom, Dick, or Jane’s true name and didn’t have to be Eragon, and yet it is Eragon’s true name that the vault is keyed to, seeing as Saphira and Glaedr are technically in that “any Tom, Dick, or Jane” category and the doors didn’t open when they said their true names.
Anyway, instead of being completely pissed off at being used and telling Umaroth he can go fuck himself with something sharp and pointy, Eragon’s just impressed that the Vault-Dragonballs did all they did from a chamber deep beneath the earth. Umaroth tells him they did more than just described and then asks Eragon if he ever wondered why Saphira’s egg magically appeared before him in the Spine. The answer is no, in case you’re wondering, beyond Eragon thinking “was I meant to have this?” but Eragon doesn’t say anything. Instead, it’s Saphira, and she’s missing a rather important emotion about all this revelation:
That was your doing? said Saphira, her shock as strong as Eragon’s.
And nobody finds anything wrong with what they’re saying? Nobody is angry that they’ve been played, made to dance as puppets on a string? That their entire lives were never their own? Saphira was abandoned on purpose so Galby would find her and think she and Thorn and Firnen were the only eggs left in the world. The Eldunari manipulated Brom into being their weapon, which brings up a whole slew of conspiracy theories, one of which being they orchestrated Eragon’s conception by having Brom lust after Selena and get in her pants, and Selena was manipulated into fleeing to Carvahall with her baby so that Eragon would be out of reach for both Galby and the Varden, just so the Eldunari could send Saphira to him the moment the opportunity presented itself. It may or may not be true, but just thinking it could be would get my blood boiling if I was in Eragon’s shoes. And I’d tell all of them they could shove it and fucking die down here because of what they did. Not only did they give up to begin with, but then they manipulated events as they saw fit, playing God with other people’s lives and for what, exactly? What if Saphira refused to hatch? What if Eragon died in infancy? What if Morzan had killed Brom and Saphira never made it to the Varden? What if Brom had claimed Eragon as his son and took him to live in Surda, never to be bothered by all this Varden and Galbatorix bullshit? There are too many variables for this kind of manipulation to just be accepted. Eragon and Saphira should be feeling used, if not abused, and should be angry with this revelation. But they’re not. Just as the elves are never forced to take responsibility for putting the world in this situation in the first place, the dead dragons are never forced to take responsibility for the shit they did. Or didn’t do.
Eragon says that he always believed that it was because Brom was his daddy and Arya screwed up and sent Saphira to him because she thought he was his father. Umaroth says no, because the spells of the elves don’t fail that easily, because of course they don’t. He says that the Vault-Balls interrupted Arya’s spell just so they could divert Saphira into Eragon’s undeserving slimy hands, and they did this because they believed there was an itty bitty tiny chance that Eragon would be a fit match for her. He says they were right.
Excuse me while I laugh.
Anyway, Eragon complains about the Vault-Balls not bringing them to the island sooner. Umaroth replies:
Because you needed time for your training, and otherwise we risked alerting Galbatorix to our presence before you or the Varden were ready to confront him. If we had contacted you after the Battle of the Burning Plains, for example, what good would it have done, with the Varden still so far from Urû’baen?
Excuse me? What good would it have done? Uh, it would’ve allowed the Varden to go straight to Uru’baen instead of taking every fucking city along the way needlessly! It would have saved lives! Eragon would’ve had more time to figure shit out, we could’ve cut the entire dwarf section of Book Three out entirely, and there could’ve been actual story that we could’ve enjoyed instead of endless Varden victories and endless traveling and endless complaining about how Eragon was bored as fuck because he wasn’t doing anything. The whole of Dras-Leona could’ve been avoided, Nasuada’s kidnapping could’ve been cut, and maybe, just maybe the battle at Uru’baen could’ve been expanded a little to show a life or death struggle between the Varden and the Empire, between Eragon and Galby, instead of a piddly wrestling match between Roran and some guy we’ve never met before, only heard of, and instead of a whinefest on how life isn’t fair and I’m gonna lose unless my ass gets saved from plagiarized bullshit. I mean, we could’ve had actual battles between dragons and how awesome would that have been? Instead we get training montages, traveling scenes, whine festivals without cheese, and Sue praise complete with ass-kissing. Oh, and a complete lack of holding others accountable for their shit. It’s annoying.
There’s silence for a while before Eragon asks what else the jerks in the underground cave have done for them. Umaroth answers:
A few nudges, warnings mostly. Visions of Arya in Gil’ead, when she needed your aid. The healing of your back during the Agaetí Blödhren.
But no mention of Eragon’s vision of the two figures leaving on the ship, or his vision of the battle of the Burning Plains. So either they were forgotten, which is the likely story, or that Eragon really is prescient and those visions were of his own ability. Of course, we’ll never know, and nobody ever asks. And if they were able to reach out and heal Eragon, why didn’t they heal Oromis? Why didn’t they fucking heal Brom? That’s what gets me about this little confession. They can easily reach out from the island to manipulate events, so why didn’t they warn Brom about the impending Ra’zac ambush? Why didn’t they heal him of the poison? Why didn’t they bother to help him? The same could be argued about Oromis. Why didn’t they bother to heal him too during the stupid elf dance party? You would think Oromis would be the better weapon than Eragon, simply based on power and experience. I really wish someone would have asked this question, even if it was just to get a throw-away answer of “we couldn’t save Brom because we expended all of our energy to send Saphira to you, and we hadn’t yet recovered” and “we chose you because we only had enough power for one and you were the best choice because of the potential you possessed. And Oromis was dying anyway.”
Glaeder makes the Face of Disapproval and accuses Umaroth of sending them to Gil’ead untrained and untried and without FUCKING WARDS, knowing they would have to face Durza. Umaroth tries to save his ass for the terrible decision:
We thought Brom would be with them, but even once he died, we could not stop them, for they still had to go to Gil’ead to find the Varden.
Like I said, nobody asks why they didn’t heal Brom. If they thought Brom was going to be with Eragon, then they should’ve ensured that, just as they seemingly have ensured everything else. Also, if Brom was with them still, why would they go to Gil’ead? Eragon couldn’t have possibly known that Arya was being held prisoner there, even with the visions. He only knew that she was imprisoned. Beyond that, even if Brom was with him, they were too far away for a rescue to be mounted, unless there was a very important reason for them all to backtrack off to Gil’ead, which is on the complete other side of the map from where they were at Dras-Leona. Brom wouldn’t have let Eragon go, anyway. The whole goal was to get him to the Varden, even if Brom stretched it out for another few months to a year for Eragon to get through that initial Rider training, whatever the fuck it was called. If Brom was still alive, Eragon wouldn’t need to go to Gil’ead, because the whole point of that, aside from setting up Arya’s rescue, was because Brom died and Eragon needed another guide to get to the Varden. This is yet another glaring reason why you should take notes and edit carefully.
Eragon doesn’t ask the questions I mentioned, which he probably should have, but instead asks if the dead dragon balls were responsible for elfifying him. Umaroth says yeah, sort of. They sort of touched the naked elf chicks’ tattoo and worked their magic through the thing. He says they gave it the idea, and the tattoo did the rest. Eragon drops his gaze and clenches his fists but assures us that he isn’t angry. He’s just filled with so many other emotions that he can’t stay still. What those emotions are, we don’t know, because they aren’t described. Eragon thinks about everything that befell him and says that he owes all this - from Saphira to Arya to his phallic symbol to his body - to the Vault-Balls. Instead of feeling used, abused, tortured, angry, or any other normal reaction, Eragon just thanks them for it all.
Because Eragon isn’t a person. He’s a puppet.
Umaroth gives Eragon a “you’re welcome” and then Eragon asks if the Vault-Balls gave Roran any help. Umaroth says:
Your cousin has required no assistance from us. Umaroth paused. We have watched both of you, Eragon and Saphira, for many years now. We have watched you grow from hatchlings to mighty warriors, and we are proud of all you have accomplished. You, Eragon, have been all we hoped for in a new Rider. And you, Saphira, have proven yourself worthy of being counted among the greatest members of our race.
Because Roran is Just That Awesome, I guess? It’s also kind of funny if you think about it, in the fact that both of the characters are massive Sues, but Eragon’s a Sue that’s been given a helping hand the entire story, while Roran’s pretty much done everything on his own with zero interference from the dead dragonballs. That makes Roran the Sue to end all Sues. Eragon’s only a Sue because he’s a self-insert and everyone jumps to help him even if he shouldn’t need it. Roran, on the other hand, is a Sue because the Deus ex Machina fairy has taken a life insurance policy out on him. This statement right here, though, can be interpreted to mean Eragon is definitely the Chosen One, as he needed the assistance because he’s a Rider, or it could mean that Roran just out-Sues Eragon because he didn’t need any magical outside help.
From that, Saphira is suddenly affected with joy and pride, as is Eragon. Hey! This is the fourth time they have been considered “Riders in full”. And I know that Umaroth didn’t actually say that, but he might as well have. Both of the idiots kneel down and swear their undying loyalty to the dead dragonballs that manipulated them, used them, abused them, and otherwise altered them for their own purposes, ultimately ignoring Eragon and Saphira’s own agency, wants, and desires. Do they have an issue with that? Of course not. Umaroth responds:
Satisfaction came from Umaroth, and he replied, Now that you have found us, our days of hiding are over; we would go with you to Urû’baen and fight alongside you to kill Galbatorix. The time has come for us to leave our den and once and for all confront that traitorous egg- breaker. Without us, he would be able to pry open your minds as easily as did we, for he has many Eldunarí at his command.
I’m fairly certain that Galby easily breaks into Eragon’s mind anyway despite the fact Eragon’s got his own small army of Eldunari on his side. If I’m remembering right, Eragon realizes that he’s going to lose, and then starts whining about how it’s not fair and he’s not supposed to lose because he’s the hero and heroes never experience loss, and then the Deus ex Machina fairy steps in and makes everything tilt in Eragon’s favor, even though he really should lose. That would’ve been a fun ending, I think. Eragon gets there and loses. But that can’t happen because he’s self-insert and a Sue, so it doesn’t.
Saphira says that she can’t carry every one of the Eldunari, and Umaroth says she isn’t going to have to. Five are going to stay behind to keep an eye on the eggs, with Cuaroc. In the event that Galby actually wins, they won’t do any more tampering with the world, but will just wait around for the day it’ll be safe for dragons to return to Alaglaglag again. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about a thing, Saphira, says Umaroth, because the dead dragonballs won’t be a burden to her. They’ll provide the strength to move themselves. She just has to act as a packhorse anyway. Eragon then asks how many Eldunari exist in this chamber. Umaroth replies:
One hundred and thirty-six. But do not think we will be able to best the Eldunarí Galbatorix has enslaved. We are too few, and those who were chosen to be placed within this vault were either too old and too valuable to risk in the fighting or too young and too inexperienced to participate in the battle. That is why I elected to join them; I provide a bridge between the groups, a point of common understanding that otherwise would be lacking. Those who are older are wise and powerful indeed, but their minds wander down strange paths, and it is often hard to convince them to concentrate upon anything outside of their dreams. Those who are younger are more unfortunate: they parted from their bodies before they should have; thus their minds remain limited by the size of their Eldunarí, which can never grow or expand once it leaves the flesh. Let that be a lesson to you, Saphira, not to disgorge your Eldunarí unless you have reached a respectable size or face the direst of emergencies.
And this is why I’m arguing the fact that the Riders simply gave up when Galby came calling and illogically lost despite the fact they outnumbered the Forsworn. There are 136 Eldunari in this vault, and that’s a SMALL PORTION of what the Riders possessed, along with the dragons that didn’t give up their dragonballs and the Riders that accompanied said dragons. And as you know, Vrael was alive during the war, which means Umaroth gave up his Eldunari the moment this vault was created, which means the rest of the Riders to these dragons were alive as well. Even if you divide it in half, that’s still 68 bonded dragons down here in this stupid Deus ex vault, and last time I checked, 68 is greater than 13. So unless the Riders deliberately threw in the towel and chose to lose, which is literally the only explanation I have, then these Riders absolutely sucked at fighting and magic and were weak as shit. Because there is zero reason as to why an organization of hundreds should’ve lost to thirteen people. There is literally no way that could happen. And I have to say, the whole “Eldunari can’t grow even though they’re literally just crystallized conscious” doesn’t make sense to me. It would make more sense if their energy level is limited by the size of the Eldunari, and even if they learn new things all the time, they still won’t be able to do x-amount of spells in a day or give up x-amount of power because of how small they are. I can’t buy that their brains just stop developing because their Eldunari is tiny. Because if that’s true, then by rights the Eldunari that are huge - like Glaedr’s - shouldn’t be able to develop and learn more things as time goes on. And another argument - why did they pick young dragons to barf up their crystal ball instead of older, more experienced dragons? What, did none of them want to volunteer? And why would the young dragons volunteer if they knew their entire existence was going to be limited? That’s also like saying if a human remains the size of an infant but ages in years, their mind will never grow either. That’s not true. The mind will grow even if their body doesn’t. Intelligence doesn’t stop just because you’re limited to a small size. If that were the case, no sentient creature would learn anything once they stopped growing. It doesn’t make any logical sense.
Eragon states the obvious, which is that the Good Guys are still no match for the Almighty Evil that is Galbatorix. Umaroth says yep, still outnumbered, but don’t worry about that! Now Galby can’t force Eragon to his knees the moment he lays eyes on the kid. They may not be able to best the Eldunari on the Dark Side of the Force, but they could certainly hold them at bay long enough for Eragon and Saphira to do their job. He also tells them to have hope, because the Vault-Balls know a lot of shit and a lot of secret shit, and about war and the way the world works. So they’re going to teach Eragon about all that, and maybe something in that knowledge will give Eragon the edge to slay Galby.
After this, Saphira asks about the eggs and we’re told there’s 243 eggs sitting pretty in the vault. Twenty-six are destined for Riders, but the rest are meant to be wild. Yeah, that’s a lot of wild dragons. But nobody asks about the safety of the wild dragons in a world that has survived ONE HUNDRED YEARS PLUS without them and how they’ll prevent humans from killing the dragons in the same manner as they would kill wolves that predate on their sheep or cows. Nope, none of that. Once Saphira’s curiosity is satisfied, they start talking about the flight to Uru’baen. While Umaroth and Glaedr talk to Saphira about the quickest way back, Cuaroc puts his sword away, drops his shield, and then starts to gather up the chosen Eldunari. He puts each one in a silk purse, which apparently they were sitting on, and piles them on the floor. The largest ball he chooses is so big, he literally has to bear hug it and he still can’t get his arms all the way around. As the dragons talk and Robo-Cop works, Eragon finally starts to feel incredulous. But not about the way he’s been treated, no. He’s incredulous because dragons still exist. He says that he had never really dreams that there were dragons still existing in Alaglaglag, but surprise! Here they are. He talks about the old stories having come to life and that he and Saphira were acting them out.
Good lord, calling this kid cardboard would be an insult to cardboard.
Now we get a short paragraph about Saphira’s emotions. It basically boils down to “yay, I’m not the last! I’m so happy!” But there’s still a “curious defensiveness” to her that stops her from being extremely jubilant, and Eragon says she’s just self-conscious before the Vault-Balls. And that’s the end of Saphira’s feelings. No exposition for her. Because she isn’t important. Then there’s a small paragraph for Glaedr’s emotions, where Eragon says he hasn’t forgotten his sorrow at Oromis’s death, but he’s happy, so happy, he’s getting better, he feels happy! Also, Glaedr doesn’t defer to Umaroth, but he’s respectful of him on a level Eragon’s never seen before, not even when Glaedr was dealing with Queen Izzy.
My cynical self says that’s because Umaroth has a penis while Izzy has a vagina, but it could very well be as simple as Umaroth is a dragon and Izzy is an elf. Or that Umaroth was the “dominant dragon” so to speak, because he was bonded with Vrael, who was the Riders’ leader at the time, and therefore Glaedr owes Umaroth some respect.
Eragon finally goes to the pit and peers down into it, whereupon he sees a shaft sunk deep through the stone for a few hundred feet and which opens into a cave filled with a glowing orange sea. He watches it bubble and boil and likens it to glue (how does he know what glue is? what context would Eragon have to ever been around glue?) and sees fumes rising from its surface. I... seriously hope he doesn’t see the fumes... he could very well die.
Hm.
Maybe that’s how we can explain away the rest of this book. Eragon inhaled the fumes coming from the magma chamber and the rest of this book is just his fever dream in his death throes.
Anyway, he thinks he sees a light, akin to a spirit, streak across the magma, but it’s gone so quick he thinks he imagined it. Then Umaroth calls him over and tells him he needs to cast a spell and gives him the words to use. Eragon doesn’t get it and asks for a repeat. Basically Eragon’s supposed to “twist” something, but he doesn’t know what to twist. Umaroth tries to explain, but he ends up confusing Eragon even more. He tries to re-explain, but Eragon still doesn’t get it. Eventually everyone is trying to explain the concept to Eragon, but they just end up making his tiny brain hurt. Eragon then tells us he’s relieved that Saphira and Glaedr are just as confused as he is, but Glaedr says he thinks he gets it but maybe not really. Eventually Umaroth just gives up and says you get the gist of it, so now just do it. Use our power and just cast the spell already. So Eragon does so and watches as the Eldunari disappear from sight and suddenly they’re all in an invisible pocket dimension of holding. Umaroth says the pocket dimension is going to be at a fixed distance behind and above Eragon at all times, except when they’re in a confined space or someone’s body happens to go through the doorway to said pocket dimension. Though the entrance is so tiny nobody will be able to see it, it’s super deadly and will kill anyone who happens to touch it.
Saphira’s response to this is to sniff the air and say the balls’ smell is gone. Oh the jokes I could make with that line. Eragon is so amazed he asks who discovered how to make this pocket dimension. I’m sure with enough time and energy I could figure out what story it was plagiarized from, but I don’t have the energy and don’t feel like investing the time. Anyway, Umaroth says it was some hermit guy who lived on the northern coast of Alaglag 1200 years ago.
My bet it was Tenga.
Anyway, he also says that this is a valuable trick to hide something in plain sight but it’s a dangerous spell and difficult to do right. WTF. What is it with all these “teacher” characters telling Eragon to do shit that’s “valuable but dangerous and difficult so you’re technically better off not doing this valuable thing”? Good lord... anyway, continuing on, Umaroth then tells them that once they start to leave the chamber, they’re going to forget about the eggs and Cuaroc and whatever else, and by the time they’re back on the surface all knowledge of these things will be gone. Even the Eldunari accompanying Eragon and Saphira will forget about the contents of the vault. This is because they need to make sure Galby never discovers the truth about the vault, and if they’re successful in killing Galby, then all their memories will come back. Eragon doesn’t like the idea, but he can’t think of a better alternative. Saphira thanks Umaroth for telling them, and Eragon thanks him too. Cuaroc then pulls out his sword and picks up his shield and heads back to his chair and sits down. Eragon says he’s unnerved by the sight of Cuaroc sitting there all alone, and he finds it difficult to leave because he doesn’t want those remaining behind to stay behind all alone.
Aw, what a sentimental little twat-weasel.
He says good bye, they say good bye and oh, good luck too, and then the party starts to ascend to the surface.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-26 04:21 am (UTC)Basically the guy was a suicide bomber, and only a deranged terrorist would call that kind of person brave or heroic. There's a reason why in real life suicide bombers are considered some of the lowest scumbags and cowards on the planet. But then this book and series is horribly insensitive and clueless about suicide in general (the nadir of which is definitely poor Galby's revoltingly cruel demise).
I'm going to have a lot of fun with that when I write the next bit. :D
Indeed, plus the Jedi were scattered all over the galaxy and were picked off individually. They weren't all together in a big group with plenty of forewarning, and there weren't hundreds and hundreds of them.
No matter HOW cunning or underhanded he was, there is no way in hell Galby and the Forsworn could have defeated them in open warfare. None.
Well, we could always bring up the fact that the Varden is completely pointless to begin with. In the end this whole conflict boils down to Rider vs Rider, and the armies are nothing but completely unnecessary set dressing. We don't even know what the hell the Varden is supposed to be fighting for (other than it clearly ain't for the good of the oppressed masses. Just the opposite, in fact).
Indeed. He never reacts like a goddamn human being, no matter how outrageous or horrible the situation is. He didn't react like a person upon being elfified without his consent, or when he was bound to Saphira - again, without his consent.
What really slays me about this part is that this is the same kid who threw a tantrum on being asked to co-operate with Orik of his own free will because wah wah my freedom I don't want anyone else controlling me, wah, and yet now he finds out he's been fucking brainwashed and used as a puppet by a bunch of dead dragons without his knowledge or consent and he acts like it's a GOOD thing! So not only is he horribly unrealistic and one dimensional, but what little characterisation he has isn't even consistently written.
Yeah right. Because as was pointed out last time this chapter went under the spork, if anything in this stupid series desperately needs to be explained it's how in the hell Roran went from everyman peasant to a mass murdering invincible super soldier. Eragon's sudden ascent to ubermensch status is ridiculously unbelievable all by itself, but Roran's is twice as bad and doesn't get ANY kind of justification, no matter how flimsy. At least Eragon had to learn how to use a sword - Roran just grabs a random hammer an becomes an instant expert! It's so stupid it's downright insulting.
Oh barf. They're nothing even close to resembling "mighty warriors". Senseless mass slaughter isn't warriorship; it's just butchery. You might as well call John Wayne Gacy a mighty warrior because he had thirty plus bodies buried under his house. And if these two useless idiots who haven't accomplished anything worthy of admiration are good enough to be considered right up there with the greats of the old order, then that doesn't say anything good about the old order in general, does it? What, in order to be considered "among the greatest members of our race" all you have to do is kill a bunch of people in between mindlessly going along with whatever your Rider says? And to be considered "all we hoped for in a new Rider" all you have to do is even more killing when you aren't being a whiny, demanding little hypocrite and an egomaniac. Good god.
And in the end the addition of all this dead dragon firepower doesn't make any damn difference anyway, because they're 100% useless in the final confrontation and Ergy just wins via a stupid out of nowhere Deus Ex Machina anyway. The Eldunari collecting business is nothing but a meaningless escalation of already absurd power levels when you get right down to it.
These chucklefucks have some nerve calling him that given just how many eggs their suicide bomber plan destroyed. And when did Galby go around crushing dragon eggs anyway? And why would he do that? If he wanted to wipe out the entire species, why keep the three eggs he did manage to find? This is just stupid bullshit which makes no sense.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-26 02:05 pm (UTC)The Jedi didn't choose who survived. Those who survived did so by the luck of the draw. The Riders ultimately CHOSE to kill children - both human and dragon, and maybe some elves too - and CHOSE to sacrifice the many for the sake of the few in the off chance somebody would show up who would be able to take down Galby. And when that didn't happen, they began to manipulate events just to suit themselves. You said there were 135 Jedi who ultimately survived the purge. Aside from Brom, Oromis, Glaedr, the 136 Eldunari and the 243 eggs in the vault, Galbatorix and Shruikan, what other Riders survived their purge? And even if you don't count the 136 Eldunari and the 243 eggs in the vault, you can count on one hand how many Riders survived the purge. Those are some pretty crappy numbers for an order composed of thousands.
Edit: I'm not counting Saphira, Thorn, and Firnen on purpose, because though they were "alive" during the purge, they didn't have Riders.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 02:49 am (UTC)The second honker is the fact that the Riders supposedly numbered in the high thousands, and that’s WITHOUT the Eldunari from dragons who decided they’d rather live as a shiny glass balls instead of flesh and blood. Since Riders are effectively immortal, where did Eragon I go? Anurin? They just sort of appear on the scene and then disappear at the same time and nobody knows what their fate is. Nobody knows what happened to them. Yet Riders are supposed to be immortal so you would think those two would still be around along with whoever was a Rider during their time. Taking consideration all the dead dragon balls that the Riders possessed you have numbers that are astronomical. And that’s not considering there were probably freshly minted Riders at that time as well.
Plus if you think about it really hard, it stated that the wild dragons all came to help the Riders against Galby when he attacked the island, which had to have boosted their numbers even more. If everyone knew that the dude was gonna make himself a suicide bomber and turn himself into a nuke then why did we have the wild dragons come and try to help everybody? If they were so concerned with the wild dragons surviving Galby’s attacks on them, then they would’ve told the wild dragons to get away from the island and flee while they could and that way they wouldn’t get caught in the nuclear fallout and/or the nuclear blast. But they didn’t. So you could argue that the Riders even caused the deaths and the near extinction of the dragons because of what they did on the island.
I could go on for a long time. I have a lot of conspiracy theories for this story. Mostly because I have no life and I keep trying to figure out the logic of everything, because the logic in canon doesn’t make sense.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 05:14 am (UTC)I like to imagine that Anurin was assassinated by elf-supremacists who didn't like that he got humans added to the Rider pact and seceded from the elf kingdom.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 12:56 pm (UTC)He's got a lot to answer for...
no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-28 11:15 am (UTC)Plus it's so terrifically dramatic being The Last Of My Kind and all that.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-28 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-28 08:57 pm (UTC)Then, rather than accept that change was gonna happen and they may as well be on the right side of history, the elven Riders turned Vroengard into a trap for Galbatorix's forces. The 13 Forsworn and Galbatorix were the only survivors of the detonation, and the reason two Forsworn are recorded as "dying" in that battle is that they were on the Riders' side until after the detonation so the Elven government found it more expedient to pretend they were dead.
Then the elves retreated because they genuinely truly believed they could wipe out all the survivors on Galbatorix's side with zero losses when their invincible army rolled out. The only complete failure of courage was Islanzadi's, but since she was the monarch then only her courage had to fail. And over the past hundred years she's more or less succeeded at convincing her people that Galbatorix is this invincible mastermind master of all magic or something while Brom is, separately but not completely separately, assassinating every single Forsworn instead of the one or two who killed OG Saphira
no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 05:05 am (UTC)Yeah, the continuity and logic in this chapter is ridiculously fucked. I'm going to have to do a lot of cleanup whenever I go over background stuff in Consequence. At least the rampant use of memory manipulation gives me a very easy excuse for not matching with canon: that much mental meddling has to leave a mark.
Though perhaps the simpler explanation is that they're lying through the teeth they no longer have and Eragon is buying it like the sucker he is.
And the reason why I say it’s a hamster wheel is because it literally goes nowhere but in circles. Yes, the concept popped up back in Book One, which is where the idea of the vault originated. At that point, there was probably a solid idea of what the vault was, where it was located, and what was in it, but we’re now three books later, and I feel like the original idea of it has been lost. The author was in scramble mode now because he had to turn in a finished project even though he was tired of said project.
This is almost certainly exactly what happened.
One thing I have restated fairly often is that throughout the Inheritance cycle, the sense that the author is having fun writing it drops off book by book. It's there for almost the entirety of Eragon and is more or less the whole reason why I still have some nostalgia for that book, but by Brisingr it's almost entirely gone, and I struggled to find any of it in Inheritance. At that point, Paolini was just trying to finish the series; I doubt he cared much for continuity.
It's quite likely that this accounts for other, lesser continuity errors, such as Jarnunvösk being referred to with masculine pronouns in Brisingr and Murtagh's hair flipping between dark brown and black.
What if Saphira refused to hatch?
Honestly? I think she did, and the Dragonballs forced it. Either that, or she really settled.
In Eragon, Ajihad says the following:
"He [Brom] proposed that the egg be ferried between the Varden and the elves every year. At each place children would parade past it, and then the bearers of the egg would wait to see if the dragon would hatch. If it didn’t, they would leave and return to the other group. But if the dragon did hatch, the new Rider’s training would be undertaken immediately."
The wording here would suggest that hatching typically happens very quickly once a compatible dragon and prospective Rider and introduced. If all the children need to do is "parade past" the egg, then it shouldn't take much time for a dragon to decide whether they want to choose someone as their Rider; plus, if there were a significant time delay between that decision and the actual hatching, the child who triggered the hatching might no longer be present to form the actual Rider bond. This is, incidentally, what I based the speed of Verja's hatching in Consequence on.
Eragon finds Saphira's egg in the Spine right off the bat in book one, chapter one. She hatches three chapters later... after at least twenty-two days. Yes, I went through the intervening text and counted the explicit time references.
That is a very long delay.
Excuse me while I laugh.
In light of the above evidence, you are absolutely right to.
Eragon’s only a Sue because he’s a self-insert and everyone jumps to help him even if he shouldn’t need it. Roran, on the other hand, is a Sue because the Deus ex Machina fairy has taken a life insurance policy out on him.
Roran is going to get stripped of his plot armor in Consequence, and it's not going to be pretty.
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Date: 2022-03-27 07:14 am (UTC)Snicker. It would definitely fit with how much this chapter reads like an endless succession of "explaining it all away", often with very flimsy excuses indeed.
I got the exact same feeling when I read Inheritance - not only was the tone constantly full of boredom and indifference but you could tell he was barely even bothering to pay attention to what he was writing. The whole thing was utterly disjointed.
Indeed, and "she was just waiting to make sure it wasn't one of Galby's tricks" reads like another lame excuse. She'd been out of the guy's hands for fifteen years and become bonded with Arya - there's no way in hell she couldn't have known she was well away from Uru'Beans and had been for over a decade.
Even less so than it was in Sword and Shadow, where he went out like a complete bitch. XD
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Date: 2022-03-27 07:38 am (UTC)Inheritance reads like he was writing entirely by the seat of his pants and not bothering to go back and make necessary changes, which is probably how he ended up with shit like the very rightfully cut swashbuckler scene.
Indeed, and "she was just waiting to make sure it wasn't one of Galby's tricks" reads like another lame excuse.
In my mind, this is how Saphira rationalizes what happened, not what actually went through her head at the time.
Even less so than it was in Sword and Shadow, where he went out like a complete bitch. XD
Indeed... No spoilers, though! I know I've worked out the details of his terrible demise with you and Toryll, but I want other people to experience the horror as it comes.
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Date: 2022-03-27 07:57 am (UTC)Even more so than the last three times around. There isn't even decent continuity within individual paragraphs, for fuck's sake.
You know what would be funny? If she hatched and immediately tried to leave but Eragon was like "Oh no ya don't!"
>:)
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:20 am (UTC)The whole thing was utterly disjointed.
There isn't even decent continuity within individual paragraphs, for fuck's sake.
Anti-fan theory: The story is written from Eragon's perspective, as the eldunari progressively mess with more and more of his mind and perception, so the gradual decent into incoherency throughout the series is a reflection of his mind and memories straining under the pressure of so many hastily-patched modifications by the eldunari
But of course if Paolini did that intentionally it would be orders of magnitude less subtle.
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Date: 2022-03-28 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 08:06 am (UTC)Exactly. For Restitution, I will focus quite a lot on what exactly happened during the time of the Riders, as told by those who experienced it themselves.
In this chapter, the Eldunarya are quite delusional. "Poison Vroengard so Galbatorix can't settle there", while there's no reason at all why he would do so. Them having lost track of reality would explain quite well why the blew up their order, by the way.
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Date: 2022-03-27 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 08:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-27 07:46 am (UTC)Oh noes! The puppet rebels! Quick, subdue her!
Wow. Way to be not-so-subtly racist, Umaroth.
My explanation for all this is the following: The Vault of Souls was originally intended as storage for the wild dragon eggs, to prevent the wild dragons from recovering them and so keep them under control. Because of they rebelled too much, they would never see their children again.
They also put in the Eldunarya of the older wild dragons, to get rid of them.
When Galbatorix attacked, they panicked, putting in some random eggs and Eldunarya to ensure some of their order would survive. Umaroth, as lead dragon, also put in his Eldunarí there and then locked the vault, setting it to a true name they wished to see in a Rider.
I'll give a more complete explanation later, because it's pretty hard to distill much from the story.
I think the wild dragons were on Galbatorix's side. After all, they had been severely mistreated by the Riders and they would like to see them fall. That could be why the Riders fell so easy: The Forsworn had inside information from the wild dragons and knew exactly how to push them into self-destruction. The wild dragons who did go to Vroengard then successfully distracted the Riders from the escape of the rest of the wild dragons.
Can't wait to hear ballads about "Thuviel, the nuclear suicide bomber."
I'd do the same. Everything about this is wrong. They never had the right to and should never have done it. I guess I've made up for a lot of his emotions in this respect.
It sounds like they didn't know Brom had been attacked. I'll assume this is part of the ability of the Ra'zac to hide their minds. So they could hide from the Eldunarya too and thus were able to kill Brom.
Exactly what happened.
That's my explanation too. They had to have blown themselves up, quite literally, for the Forsworn to win.
Okay... Even if it was Tenga, someone else should have discovered this or anything like advanced technology in 1200 years. But then the Riders blocked all technological advances, so...
You're really creative at inventing insults for Eragon :D