The Demise of the Elderlings (Spoilers for all books, especially RWC)

[Farseer]

8. Frengong is the buried elderling city near Trehaug. I think Farseer already said that. Here's a question - why are Frengong and the city on aslevjal built like burrows, with all of the buildings interconnected, but Cassarick and Kelsingra are built more like `regular`cities?

Sorry to only keep picking out one or two things at a time...I can type about the things I don't have to think on too much but not enough time for me to have to 'ponder'...actually, I don't have time to do this either but I am addicted !

Hmm, this is a good question. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that it is only Kelsingra, of all of the Elderling cities, which the dragons remember as a city built to accommodate them as well as Elderlings eg with its wide streets, enormous buildings etc. Quite a number of times it is mentioned by the dragons that it is only in Kelsingra where their dragon ancestors met with the Elderlings to go over things of an administrative nature (a little like the Traders' Concourse is the seat of administration in Bingtown)?

From what I can determine, Frengong/Trehaug and Cassarick were simply Elderling-only cities that were originally placed in those locations so that Elderlings could assist the serpents with their migration up the river and then also their cocooning/emergence? Of course, they were still quite large, to the point that they were large enough to accommodate a great number of serpent cocoons (when it came to require such a space during the flood or volcanic activity etc) but they were mostly raised as Elderling residences.

If this is the case, it does beg the question...if there was a purpose for Fengong/Trehaug, Cassarick and Kelsingra, what was the purpose of having an Elderling city built on Aslevjal, or any of the other sites where Elderling city ruins are apparent eg in Buck (or wherever it was that Fitz and Fool visited that had the wall of memory stone, not to mention the humps Fitz saw from something buried beneath the earth)?

Was it merely a place for Elderlings to exist, such as how we humans spread, or was there a purpose for each Elderling site? Or, was it simply that these cities were placed where they were due to the close proximity of memory stone quarries? Hmm...there are certainly quarries close enough to the Rain Wilds and Aslevjal cities but what about in the Six Duchies? How did the memory stone get there?

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Told you I'm busy...juggling lots of things while here so didn't read the question thoroughly but my other post still stands.

re Cassarick being built like Kelsingra...is this the case? I can't quite remember what, if much, was mentioned regarding the design of the rooms themselves but I got the impression that it wasn't unlike Frengong/Trehaug (buildings interconnected), particularly around the area of the Star Chamber (I think it was called)?

If it's not similar, and therefore more open than Trehaug, possibly this is because it was only the secondary site for cocooning, and by far less busy for the Elderlings (I think one of the dragons mentioned that Frengong usually held all of the cocoons and it was only a couple of times throughout history that some of the seprents needed to go further on to Cassarick due a lack of room/larger than normal numbers of serpents).

Maybe they were built the way they were simply to accommodate the surroundings? Just realised Nuytsia may have mentioned some of these sorts of things in her reply...will stop waffling and wait for a time when I can cover this properly!!!