Mythical Creatures/Folk (Spoilers ALL Books, including Words Like Coins)

[Nuytsia]

I am only kind of skim reading this thread as I haven't actually read Words Like Coins or some of the other short stories so don't want to get major spoilers!

Anyhoo, this doesn't really fit anywhere else that I can see - we don't have a thread on 'religion' do we?

I thought this may have been mentioned elsewhere already but I can't find it. I was just wondering if Eda and El of the Six Duchies came from Cariandra the Fecund and Sessicaria the dragon (in the frieze at Kelsingra)? Eda is the deity for farming, and El is deity for the sea, which doesn't strictly relate to dragons but certainly they have a close link to the sea as being required for the continuation of their life cycle.

This would be a dragon link to El...? I doubt that 'current day' El is thought of as a dragon (surely it would have been mentioned somewhere?) but he may have been originally...

[Farseer]

^ Yes, yes indeedy! And I have more to add/flesh out on that when I can get back here!

Hmm, would it be a stretch then to assume that there is a possibility that Eda/El/Sa does exist but as a dragon-like divine being, and not the usual human-like god we may be expecting (hence the addition of "in a tangle")?

Ah, I have just had a quick re-read of this post and feel a little silly at present! While we don't know if El/Eda/Sa is actualy a "dragon-like being", we DO know that there is a connection with Sa and a dragon-like being, as we learnt from Wintrow's visit to Cress in LST. Odava, the serpent god (which could be considered dragon-like as dragon begin as serpents?) is said to be one of the facets of Sa, along with the male and female aspects (giving Sa at least three aspects that we know of).

While followers of Sa accept this 'serpent' aspect of Sa, those who exclusively follow Odava do not believe that the Odava-deity is a facet of Sa but is a singular being in his/her/its own right. In a way, it could be said that they give Odava sole ascendancy over the other aspects, rather than accepting it as being a part of a whole (in much the same way that Paragon once held ascendancy until he moved to a place of union with his Greater and Lesser dragons or how Vivacia and then Bolt held ascendancy until they merged). I have spoken a lot more re ascendancy in the RotE vs Gernia thread...

Back to Odava...! Odava was a manifestation of Sa so it would stand to reason then that Sa has serpent or dragon-like traits, as well as others?

Could it also be (whatever form Eda/El/Sa takes) that Fitz and Dutiful actually have "touched" Eda/El/Sa during their experience on Others Island? Dutiful's experience of that great presence was that of a fatherly being whereas Fitz experienced a more feminine manifestation. Later, Fitz was of the opinion that this was because they were each drawn to that gender which had been mostly lacking in their lives (Fitz mourned the loss of his mother whilst Dutiful longed for his father). Is it possible that this is a correct assumption on Fitz's part BUT, to take it further, what they actually experienced was the two facets of Sa within the Skill River? That the Skill River is of Sa (especially given the previous discussions we've had concerning the connection between the Skill, priests, Elderlings, artworks etc?).

Wintrow also tells us that Sa is said to be 'mother to all' and 'father to all'.

More to add on Sa but it doesn't belong here...!

Sorry to requote this whole thing but, I thought I'd better refresh the main points so you know what I'm going on about!

At the outset, I spoke of the saying, "El and Eda in a tangle" and how this could give simple clues as to the possible form/identity of our RotE dieties.

Well, what about, "Sa's breath"? While expressions such as "El's balls" or "Eda's tits" simply speak of aspects of the male or female physical form, what else could "breath" be for but...well, literal breath?

This, for me, just cannot be some careless or silly expression. It is far too similar to the breath a dragon breathes to be so. It just has to have a foundation in truth or history. Elderlings of old, and ancestors of ones such as Fitz, were considered to have had the stuff of dragons enter their family line or, more importantly, to have "breathed the dragon's breath". Surely then this dragon's breath must be, or be firmly linked/related to, Sa's breath?

['thul]

Indeed it could be linked to that, farseer.
Dragons breath means one of two things. Glamor, or death. (acid).

[Farseer]

It is why I believe that we will yet see giants emerge in the upper regions of the realm's maps!

Between here and the Moonseye thread, *sigh* okay, everywhere in the RotE room , well, yes, I have a bit of a 'giant' fixation going on. Having this in mind, I just went

[Image: eek2.gif]

when I first read about certain animals in the region of *City of Dragons spoiler*

Spoiler

Kelsingra (Chapter Three). Not only had Carson seen "big predators", and so all members of the Tarman expedition had to have two people working together when going out hunting but, while Thymara and Tats were out hunting, they came across a "hoofed creature" of "great size", "the largest" Thymara had seen yet. After this Heeby ate the big buck and Thymara noted that she had "never seen any animal that big, except dragons".

After moving on from there they both noticed score marks on a tree that they had passed but Thymara could not decide if they were from claws or antlers.

So. Thoughts? I'm not sure if light is shed on this later in CoD but are these creatures 'large' large in that they have undergone some physical change in size due to their proximity to Kelsingra (like the Elderlings were/are larger and longer)? One major point to contradict this could be that Fitz had never noticed a significant change in size of the dogs and cats he had seen while in Kelsingra in AQ. Still, the size of the trees around the region also comes to mind as I think of 'large' here. Larger-than-usual trees, larger-than-usual humans (Elderlings), larger-than-usual buildings and larger-than-usual animals...

OR are they large due to some other magic/reason? Related in some way to giants or some other element?

OR do they just *seem* large to the Rain Wilders in comparison to those animals which they all would have seen in the past eg large land-dwellers as opposed to tree-dwelling creatures or simply moose-sized or panther-sized animals in comparison to gazelle-sized or house cat-sized ones?

OR something else?

OR maybe just dragon-sized portions...!

This ^ is what I really want to talk about but I can't help throwing in the fact that wolves had been creatures of legend to the keepers (interestingly not capitalised like the Elderlings, the Others etc...but that's another thread! ) and thus they were terrified when they heard wolves howling from the distant hills from Kelsingra. In this the wolves were not unlike the other legendary or mythical creatures and folk from my opening post in this thread...

[Valarya]

Spoiler

OR do they just *seem* large to the Rain Wilders in comparison to those animals which they all would have seen in the past eg large land-dwellers as opposed to tree-dwelling creatures or simply moose-sized or panther-sized animals in comparison to gazelle-sized or house cat-sized ones?

I edited out your spoiler to leave just the part I think it is, Farseer. I'm sure it simply has something to do with the fact the Rain Wilders are used to tree-dwelling creatures and smaller house-cat-sized things.

.....and thus they were terrified when they heard wolves howling from the distant hills from Kelsingra.

Am I the only one who wished Fitz was still camping out in the Mountains before Tawny Man here and that it was Nighteyes they heard howling?

[FoolishGirl]

...when I first read about certain animals in the region of *City of Dragons spoiler*

Spoiler

Kelsingra (Chapter Three). Not only had Carson seen "big predators", and so all members of the Tarman expedition had to have two people working together when going out hunting but, while Thymara and Tats were out hunting, they came across a "hoofed creature" of "great size", "the largest" Thymara had seen yet. After this Heeby ate the big buck and Thymara noted that she had "never seen any animal that big, except dragons".

After moving on from there they both noticed score marks on a tree that they had passed but Thymara could not decide if they were from claws or antlers.

So. Thoughts? I'm not sure if light is shed on this later in CoD but are these creatures 'large' large in that they have undergone some physical change in size due to their proximity to Kelsingra (like the Elderlings were/are larger and longer)? One major point to contradict this could be that Fitz had never noticed a significant change in size of the dogs and cats he had seen while in Kelsingra in AQ. Still, the size of the trees around the region also comes to mind as I think of 'large' here. Larger-than-usual trees, larger-than-usual humans (Elderlings), larger-than-usual buildings and larger-than-usual animals...

OR are they large due to some other magic/reason? Related in some way to giants or some other element?

OR do they just *seem* large to the Rain Wilders in comparison to those animals which they all would have seen in the past eg large land-dwellers as opposed to tree-dwelling creatures or simply moose-sized or panther-sized animals in comparison to gazelle-sized or house cat-sized ones?

OR something else?

OR maybe just dragon-sized portions...!

I'm rusty on RWC at the moment, and haven't read any of CoD so I can't really comment, except to note that I'm curious to see

Spoiler

how all these dragons are really going to be fed, and how they were fed in the past. Gigantic animals need TONS of food, especially animals that need energy to fly. Where is/did all of this living game coming/come from? I know that dragons can fly far afield to find their prey, but there must be some major herds of something out there, unless dragons feasted on...Elderlings?
Zoinks! [Kidding...kind of...I think! Umm, anyway, back to what ya'll were talking about...]

['thul]

CoD class

The description of the animals near Kelsingra remind 'thul a little of animals that lived near the end of the last ice age on Tellus. But it could also just be that it was a normal moose-like creature from temperate regions in prime condition. (animals from the last periglacial era were considerably larger than their more "modern" descendants.

The thing with dragons that fly is that they can range very far, and the thing with the wildlife around Kelsingra is that it has not had any real human/dragon interference for several centuries. Thus it does not have the built-in safeties that other prey might have. yet.


One key difference between wildlife near kelsingra and in the rain wilds is that the rain wilds quite simply can't support heavier wildlife. heavier wildlife would sink in the ground there.

[Farseer]

That being said it'd be interesting to know which religion they follow in Chalced, as a god with a female aspect usually reflects positively on the attitude towards woman in a society.

In GF, Chalcedian captain, Captain Slyke, wrote about Duke Sidder in his execution verdict after the event with Tintaglia in Bingtown. He wrote of him as being "God-born" and addressed him as "my most gracious and divinely just Duke Sidder". Not sure if there was anything else!

---

Hmm...religious views in Chalced...something for us all to keep an eye out for during City of Dragons reads and, eventually for most of us, Blood of Dragons.

[Narya]

I'm rusty on RWC at the moment, and haven't read any of CoD so I can't really comment, except to note that I'm curious to see

Spoiler

how all these dragons are really going to be fed, and how they were fed in the past. Gigantic animals need TONS of food, especially animals that need energy to fly. Where is/did all of this living game coming/come from? I know that dragons can fly far afield to find their prey, but there must be some major herds of something out there, unless dragons feasted on...Elderlings?
Zoinks! [Kidding...kind of...I think! Umm, anyway, back to what ya'll were talking about...]

Warm blooded (endothermic) animals spend 90% of their calories just stoking the furnace to keep warm. Cold blooded (exothermic) animals need far fewer calories to survive. Some snakes eat just once a month, for example.

[FoolishGirl]

I'm rusty on RWC at the moment, and haven't read any of CoD so I can't really comment, except to note that I'm curious to see

Spoiler

how all these dragons are really going to be fed, and how they were fed in the past. Gigantic animals need TONS of food, especially animals that need energy to fly. Where is/did all of this living game coming/come from? I know that dragons can fly far afield to find their prey, but there must be some major herds of something out there, unless dragons feasted on...Elderlings?
Zoinks! [Kidding...kind of...I think! Umm, anyway, back to what ya'll were talking about...]

Warm blooded (endothermic) animals spend 90% of their calories just stoking the furnace to keep warm. Cold blooded (exothermic) animals need far fewer calories to survive. Some snakes eat just once a month, for example.

Very good point, Narya. I didn't really consider that point when I originally posted, that the same size warm blooded animal would need significantly more food than a cold blooded animal. What about the following?
1. A very large animal needs more food than a small one
2. Dragons grow very fast so they need more calories/building blocks for that purpose
3. Dragons would expend a lot of energy moving around a larger frame
4. Dragons appear to eat as much food as they are ever offered
5. Dragons seem to me to be much more active than a standard large cold blooded animal, e.g., crocodile
5. Presumably, the dragon population of old was much larger
Taking the above into account, I would say I'm still of the opinion that a lot of food would be needed to sustain this species.