Where the Heart of Anti-Shurtugal Rises Again.

I just figured out why Galbatorix never invaded Du Weldenvarden and waited until he had a disposable army (the Urgals) to go after the Varden!

Galby KNOWS there were a shit ton of dragon eggs that the Riders had. Galby KNOWS he and the Forsworn didn't break any eggs, and he also KNOWS he scoured the Vroengard trying to find them when all was said and done (probably, he'd have to be insane not to).

The LOGICAL conclusion is that some Rider got away from them with a giant sack FULL of dragon eggs and booked it to Du Weldenvarden. Oromis coming out of hiding only rekindled his fears of a whole new Rider army waiting in the wings, which is why he let Murtagh and Thorn be his scouts. If those two snuff it then the worst that happens is he's back to square one. If he pokes his head out and suddenly a hundred dragons fall on him out of nowhere with Dauthdaerts, then it's all over.

The reason he never invaded is because he doesn't know how many Riders got away from him and he thinks the elves are steadily building up a new army! That's why he needs an Urgal army and the Name of the Ancient Language! He thinks he's about to have to fight a second Rider war without the element of surprise, none of his team and the other side already having seen a lot of his tricks!

He didn't know until Durza caught Arya that the elves are convinced Shruikan is the last dragon standing, and even then he used his disposable Urgal army to go after the Varden in case she was lying. Even then he was still searching frantically for the Name of the Ancient Language to be able to completely shut down the Magic Factor a new Rider army would be using to try to kill him!

The reason he never went and stomped Surda or the Varden into submission is because he thought the instant he did the Elves and their new Riders would come hurtling out of the North to bum rush him.

It wasn't until the end of Inheritance that he started to believe "Ya know, maybe they really ARE convinced that these three + egg are the last ones..."

Thoughts? :D

So something that I know I've heard irk others is that Eragon never actually really uses his bow once he sets off on his journey even though it's theoretically a weapon that he's trained with his entire life. Instead he of course goes for the 'instant master swordsman' and we don't really know how much of his supposed skill was actual skill or people just kissing his ass like I theorized Murtagh was in the spork of Eragon, Ch38 Capture at Gil'ead.

So while he might or might not have been worth a toot as a swordsman, his background would at least theoretically lend itself to him being a decent or even pretty dang good shot with a bow. Given that dwarves are all supposedly master craftsmen and elves are just as much so except with the bonus of infinite time and boredom, I would think it possible that they might come up with some ways to improve archery.

The following is one such way which was recently come up with Joerg Sprave over on the Slingshot Channel and I found it very interesting, so I thought I should share in case anyone hasn't seen it.

It is a magazine clip for a longbow, which Eragon should theoretically know how to use. If the dwarves and elves are so great at crafting things, then it strikes me that they might could come up with something like this. If they did then it would of course be quite a game changer, and an entire plot point could be made of how one or the other is crucial to the Varden/Anti-Galbatorix cause, NOT because it's just more bodies to fling at the enemy, but because one or the other has come up with and begun to manufacture machines like this which will allow them to fight back against the Empire despite being vastly outnumbered (which I'm thinking is probably the only reason the elves and dwarves hadn't already come out to kick the shit outta Galby. If this thing were properly thought out, I think it would be the case. They're outnumbered on a scale of ten or even twenty to one so they need either a dragon or some game changers to even think about confronting the Empire and their endless waves of soldiers).

Alternatively perhaps Galbatorix or some think tank of his could have churned out something like this, and that's why the Empire was able to beat the elves back into their forest. Something like this allowing even a human to shoot as fast or maybe even faster than even elven archers would make sense and set up the Empire as a credible threat instead of them simply having the numbers to swamp and drown anybody and the last dragonrider with the kaiju sized dragon who killed all the other ones.

I'm also including the basically machine gun crossbow which could be powered by magic rather than a drill and would turn even a single weak magician into a whole company of archers for the minute and a half it would take to empty his clip, and would of course be an ungodly devastating advantage on the battlefield.


Here is Joerg and his 'Instant Robin Hood'.

And here is the fellow he made it for with his thoughts...

As well as Shadiversity on the war bow version, the 'Instant Legolas'.

And here is the terrifyingly effective machine gun crossbow.

Thoughts anyone? :D

So we rag on Paolini's purple prose and bad descriptions quite a bit, but to its credit I never had any trouble picturing the locations on my first read through.

This doesn't excuse some of the ridiculous descriptions though, so in the spirit of applying ridicule where it's earned, I propose this! Let's imagine or even make pictures that actually stick to the descriptions Paolini gives to see just how ridiculous the inconsistencies, overblown prose and generally poor choice of words can be!

I'll go first. Here is my re-imagining of Saphira based on what I can remember of some of the weirder quirks of her description across the books. A little bit of lazy illustration on my part, but it gets the point across.



I'm honestly not sure how to post pics here, but hopefully that one works. (update: it did not work. Can someone tell me how to upload pics?) (update #2: Nevermind, I got it to work)