Jul-06-2010, 10:29 PM (UTC)
The world of RotE is very small. This worked well in the Farseer Trilogy. The Six Duchies were not part of a large empire, appeared to lack any means of fast, long-distance travel and were hemmed in by mountains, the sea and hostile Chalced.
The Liveship Traders Trilogy expanded the world considerably, but not as much as I would have expected. Liveships appear capable of tremendous feats of navigation, yet they hug the coast and voyage only to neighbouring states. There appear to have been no transoceanic voyages of discovery.
Now, dragons have reappeared. They are capable of tremendous long-distance flights and have memories stretching back centuries at least. Surely they have crossed the oceans and ventured beyond the known world?
This raises another issue; why did dragons go extinct worldwide? It seems that some kind of massive volcanic activity wiped out the local population of adult dragons, without killing those serpents still out at sea. Was this the only population of dragons in existence, or are there others across the ocean or further to the East or South? If other populations did exist, why didn't Icefyre (or, later, Tintaglia) attempt to contact them? Perhaps they were perceived as too hostile.
On the other hand, perhaps dragons were very geographically limited. They clearly have an obligate symbiosis with memory stone. Perhaps memory stone is limited to a particular geographical area. This, in itself, would be interesting. Where did it come from? Is it the remains of an asteroid or crashed spacecraft or was it generated by some very rare and specific natural process?
In any case, it seems likely that the world is about to expand. Surely some dragon keeper or liveship captain will want to know what is on the other side of all that water and where do serpents go to feed?
The Liveship Traders Trilogy expanded the world considerably, but not as much as I would have expected. Liveships appear capable of tremendous feats of navigation, yet they hug the coast and voyage only to neighbouring states. There appear to have been no transoceanic voyages of discovery.
Now, dragons have reappeared. They are capable of tremendous long-distance flights and have memories stretching back centuries at least. Surely they have crossed the oceans and ventured beyond the known world?
This raises another issue; why did dragons go extinct worldwide? It seems that some kind of massive volcanic activity wiped out the local population of adult dragons, without killing those serpents still out at sea. Was this the only population of dragons in existence, or are there others across the ocean or further to the East or South? If other populations did exist, why didn't Icefyre (or, later, Tintaglia) attempt to contact them? Perhaps they were perceived as too hostile.
On the other hand, perhaps dragons were very geographically limited. They clearly have an obligate symbiosis with memory stone. Perhaps memory stone is limited to a particular geographical area. This, in itself, would be interesting. Where did it come from? Is it the remains of an asteroid or crashed spacecraft or was it generated by some very rare and specific natural process?
In any case, it seems likely that the world is about to expand. Surely some dragon keeper or liveship captain will want to know what is on the other side of all that water and where do serpents go to feed?
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