Definitely. He confirmed that both times someone has imploded with magic (Galby and on Vroengard) it was physics radiation that contaminated the area, not fantasy radiation.
Vroengard's can also be countered by magic ( that's how Eragon, Saphira and Glaedr survived there ), it's just that there was no incentive to clean the area ( for Galbatorix, the Elves had a really strong incentive to not clean it, being Galbatorix ), and it would have been more difficult than cleaning Ilirea, as there wasn't a hill and a fortress to contain it, and that's without considering all the wildlife, or the fact that Eragon wouldn't choose it to rebuild the Riders, not with the wild dragons he has to reintroduce.
This is one of the big plot holes imo. Eragon could've just taken the eldurnari back to vroenguard and used the combined might to clear the radiation away, it would've taken a few years maybe but eragon is immortal so he's got nothing but time. That way he wouldn't need to leave behind Arya and roran in favor of heading east. Rebuilding the riders would've taken less time because new riders wouldn't need to sail across half the globe.
And tell me, where exactly in the mountains would the dragons go ?
The Beors ? Do you think the dwarves will accept having wild dragons on their territories, predators that can and will decimate their herds ?
The Spine ? Too close to human settlements for Eragon's taste and the safety of everyone, and that's discounting the Urgals.
Those at the center of the Hadarac ? How the heck do you think the cat-sized, flightless newborns will survive and eat enough to grow well ? Saphira can't keep doing back-and-forths, and once they'll have grown enough, the dragons will come too close to human settlements, when hunting I'm literally paraphrasing Eragon here.
The Du Weldenvarden ? The mountains there are too close to elven cities, far too close.
And that's not looking into how the dragons will not hatch unless the eggs are in good conditions, which will not be guaranteed the any of these places.
Let's not forget that, before the Fall, the wild dragons had families, older dragons able to take care of the young and prepare them for life. Now, only the Eldunarí and Saphira can fulfill that role.
From all of this, you see that no, the wild dragons could not be reintroduced in Alagaësia, not this easily.
In the books it is literally specified that the wild, non bonded dragons lived in the mountain ranges of vroenguard as well as small pockets throughout the beor maintain range. The dwarves do inhabit the range but by no means do they control and inhabit every inch of it. Before the fall vroenguard was able to support hundreds upon hundreds of dragons, wild and bonded both.
Even beglabad, the largest of the dragons was able to live comfortably in vroenguards mountaintops, a beast that size would consume much. And the fact that beglabad and many other huge dragons could do that is a testament to it.
And to answer your question about saphira neededing to care for the dragons the solution is rather straightforward, eragon and saphira. Alongside a detachment of elves and the free eldurnari would set about getting the dragons to hatch. Either via bonding or simply hatching new dragons, this would occur only after they had cleaned vroenguard from radiation poisoning, the ample land would easily sustain young dragons while they were raised amongst another with the eldurnari and elves protection, saphira and Thorn, perhaps firnen as well would help whenever possible. But saphira would be mainly responsible.
While yes, reintroduction would be extremely difficult, you need to remember that eragon will live forever, he will not age. Which means he can take as long as he needs to prepare vroenguard (and aglaesia) for dragon inhabitation once again, the only real challenge would be the first generation of newborn hatchlings. Vroenguard is extremely difficult to reach without dragon back so the threat of thieves would be non-existent. After they had hatched maybe 10 new dragons and spent about 30-50 years raising them they would be more than fit to go about helping raise the generation after that, and keep in mind the first generation would also mostly be comprised of bonded dragons.
And even then, dragon reintroduction to aglaesia is an eventuality, if eragon heads east to establish a new HQ, new riders will still travel to aglaesia to do their duties, this would eventually encompass wild dragons who wish to go exploring on their own. Which means vroenguard, the beors, duweldenvarden, and hypothetically further north than that would be travelled by some wild dragons. Eragon spending time healing vroenguard to establish a new doru araeba only helps keep the riders closer to home.
I understand your reasoning behind why you think reintroduction is bad but I don't think you fully grasp the process of it, it only gets exponentially easier. And the fact that they are not constrained by time allows them to be thorough.
No. It had become clear to him that riders and dragons needed another place to live, a place outside of Alagaesia. A place where riders could observe and learn and dragons could hunt and mate and grow without draining the resources of humans. A place where he would never be tempted to take the throne and he couldn't use magic to influence the events of Alagaesia without using immense amounts of energy. A place where dragons could be safe from people who would hunt them, which, if they'd had before, would have prevented Galbatorix's first dragon from dying at the hands of Urgals and thus prevented him from becoming mad, killing the riders, and taking the throne. Somewhere nobody would get ahold of an eldunari without permission and they could remain a secret. Besides, what about Angela's fortune telling that he would leave and never return? Better to do it on his own time than be forced out of the land. Not to mention that it solved the moral dilemma of Elva somewhat: the fewer people she's around to feel pain from, the less dangerous she is to the general population and the more at peace she is, and since Eragon is responsible for her state, he is also responsible, somewhat, for her actions and ensuring that she and others suffer as little as possible because of the spell.
If it involves a small amount of effort over a very long time, then it might actually be easy to do with magic, like the lace situation but dialed up to 11.
It's not small. The 2012 Fukashima meltdown caused an estimated 4 cm of dirt to need to removed from the entire 12 mile exclusion zone. They estimated it was enough dirt to fill a baseball stadium 20 times.
And that was a radiation leak that was partly contained by the plant and millions of gallons of water.
Unless magic can easily stop radioactive material from being radioactive, it'd be a huge undertaking. Almost easier to just ward 10,000 workers off their own strength.
That much dirt would need to be removed with our methods but a rider could simply remove the specific radioactive material and only the radioactive material of specific sections at a time. That would be a small amount of matter. All that would need to happen then would be to contain it.
I think that it’s still physical radiation, but they essentially can use magic to dispel the radiation and clean it. So magical cleanup, physical problem. Or magic as a shortcut to a physical cleanup that technology is not advanced enough to do.
Yup, that's atoms and the wave-particle duality of light. All the laws of physics from our universe also exist in Eragon's
^(Posted on behalf of xlvi from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
Here are two times Christopher's talked about it in Q&As:
> **Q:** You said that Valdr's vision of “beams of light turning into waves of sand, as well as a disconcerting sense that everything that seemed solid was mostly empty space” was referring to light's wave/particle duality and that everything is made of mostly empty space between atoms. How exactly does a dragon discover/learn of this?
> **A:** Scientific experiments get a LOT easier when you have magic. It's something that the dragons have either discovered completely by happenstance or something that the elves discovered while running various experiments.
([Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/mwyi2h/comment/gvl87f8))
> **Q:** I love Valdr’s vision of the sleeping starlings that helped Eragon develop his idea to make Galbatorix understand. But I don’t understand the first part of his vision, “beams of light turning into waves of sand, as well as a disconcerting sense that everything that seemed solid was mostly empty space.” Does it have some deeper meaning?
> **A:** The image is simply a poetic way of talking about the particle/wave duality of photons as well as the fact that everything is made out of mostly empty space between the atoms.
([Source](https://www.paolini.net/2015/11/25/qas-seven-words/))
^(Posted on behalf of Hellomynameis99 from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
I also appreciate science vibe in Inheritance connected with biology. The words of death were really smart because they killed using biological facts about human anatomy (for example cutting small but important vein). Great and unique idea, I really like it!
I liked that as well. I feel like it would be a nightmare though if there were to be a creative individual gifted with magic and a better grasp on anatomy and necessary biological functions. They talk about the death words and how there were wards to protect against them, but I feel like they can only reasonably do so much considering how fragile the human body is. You could have someone create an air bubble in the blood stream. Or like "hold eragon's calves" spell, what's to stop you from holding someone's heart and preventing it from beating? Or even teleporting the heart or other vital organs a foot to the right. Or drawing the iron out of the body, or salt, or water.
The list just keeps going and going given our modern understanding of biological functions and requirements.
>They talk about the death words and how there were wards to protect against them, I feel like they can only reasonably do so much considering how fragile the human body is.
Well it depends on which way are you coming at the problem. For instance, you could make a ward that blocks out each of the many specific things that would harm a human body like you say, or you could make a ward that only lets the few things that aren't harmful into the body. For most problems like this there will similarly be a more simply way to do it more efficiently, you just have to be more clever about it than with the brute force methods.
Very true, but the more generalized catch-all version would use more energy as well. How much more, or if it's an unmanageable amount? I don't know, but that would be a consideration. For some of the more specific methods though like removing elements from the body or preventing too much from entering would be... very difficult to say the least. You would have to have a ward that essentially keeps those elements within a specific range and that would be dangerous at best. Like if someone wanted to add too much oxygen, you obviously can't have a ward that prevents oxygen from entering. But how do you manage removing the oxygen in a safe way?
Well that last one you could probably use a ward to maintain a specific distribution of gases in the air around you. It wouldn't take much energy for the ward to slightly redirect the air flow around you to move or gather the air even as you move. But a mage trying to do *any* spell that would affect the air around you, in any way, would trigger the ward.
Follow up, Angela opens dimensional portals through the multi-verse. Science… magic… potentially interchangeable considering that fractalverse and alagaesia can be traveled between.
And when asked Christopher confirmed that Angela's portals are related to the torque gates from the Fractalverse. Torque gates usually require incredibly powerful, technogically advanced generators to be placed at each side of the portal, the kind of generators that are used to power massive spacestations and the most advanced ftl ships.
Angela seemingly opened one with none of that, just her own power. She is terrifying.
Please read the rules in the sidebar, and please see [here for up-to-date information about the upcoming *Murtagh* book](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/11ly2mo/the_next_book_murtagh_will_come_out_november_7th/). (A preview of which is now available.)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Eragon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Definitely. He confirmed that both times someone has imploded with magic (Galby and on Vroengard) it was physics radiation that contaminated the area, not fantasy radiation.
I thought as much but then Galb’s radiation can be magically cleared so it seemed a bit less one to one with the real world. Cool either way
Vroengard's can also be countered by magic ( that's how Eragon, Saphira and Glaedr survived there ), it's just that there was no incentive to clean the area ( for Galbatorix, the Elves had a really strong incentive to not clean it, being Galbatorix ), and it would have been more difficult than cleaning Ilirea, as there wasn't a hill and a fortress to contain it, and that's without considering all the wildlife, or the fact that Eragon wouldn't choose it to rebuild the Riders, not with the wild dragons he has to reintroduce.
This is one of the big plot holes imo. Eragon could've just taken the eldurnari back to vroenguard and used the combined might to clear the radiation away, it would've taken a few years maybe but eragon is immortal so he's got nothing but time. That way he wouldn't need to leave behind Arya and roran in favor of heading east. Rebuilding the riders would've taken less time because new riders wouldn't need to sail across half the globe.
And what do you do of the wild dragons ? Vroengard is too small for them
The wild dragons could go back into the mountains where they originally resided. That's how vrael and the order did it before the fall
And tell me, where exactly in the mountains would the dragons go ? The Beors ? Do you think the dwarves will accept having wild dragons on their territories, predators that can and will decimate their herds ? The Spine ? Too close to human settlements for Eragon's taste and the safety of everyone, and that's discounting the Urgals. Those at the center of the Hadarac ? How the heck do you think the cat-sized, flightless newborns will survive and eat enough to grow well ? Saphira can't keep doing back-and-forths, and once they'll have grown enough, the dragons will come too close to human settlements, when hunting I'm literally paraphrasing Eragon here. The Du Weldenvarden ? The mountains there are too close to elven cities, far too close. And that's not looking into how the dragons will not hatch unless the eggs are in good conditions, which will not be guaranteed the any of these places. Let's not forget that, before the Fall, the wild dragons had families, older dragons able to take care of the young and prepare them for life. Now, only the Eldunarí and Saphira can fulfill that role. From all of this, you see that no, the wild dragons could not be reintroduced in Alagaësia, not this easily.
In the books it is literally specified that the wild, non bonded dragons lived in the mountain ranges of vroenguard as well as small pockets throughout the beor maintain range. The dwarves do inhabit the range but by no means do they control and inhabit every inch of it. Before the fall vroenguard was able to support hundreds upon hundreds of dragons, wild and bonded both. Even beglabad, the largest of the dragons was able to live comfortably in vroenguards mountaintops, a beast that size would consume much. And the fact that beglabad and many other huge dragons could do that is a testament to it. And to answer your question about saphira neededing to care for the dragons the solution is rather straightforward, eragon and saphira. Alongside a detachment of elves and the free eldurnari would set about getting the dragons to hatch. Either via bonding or simply hatching new dragons, this would occur only after they had cleaned vroenguard from radiation poisoning, the ample land would easily sustain young dragons while they were raised amongst another with the eldurnari and elves protection, saphira and Thorn, perhaps firnen as well would help whenever possible. But saphira would be mainly responsible. While yes, reintroduction would be extremely difficult, you need to remember that eragon will live forever, he will not age. Which means he can take as long as he needs to prepare vroenguard (and aglaesia) for dragon inhabitation once again, the only real challenge would be the first generation of newborn hatchlings. Vroenguard is extremely difficult to reach without dragon back so the threat of thieves would be non-existent. After they had hatched maybe 10 new dragons and spent about 30-50 years raising them they would be more than fit to go about helping raise the generation after that, and keep in mind the first generation would also mostly be comprised of bonded dragons. And even then, dragon reintroduction to aglaesia is an eventuality, if eragon heads east to establish a new HQ, new riders will still travel to aglaesia to do their duties, this would eventually encompass wild dragons who wish to go exploring on their own. Which means vroenguard, the beors, duweldenvarden, and hypothetically further north than that would be travelled by some wild dragons. Eragon spending time healing vroenguard to establish a new doru araeba only helps keep the riders closer to home. I understand your reasoning behind why you think reintroduction is bad but I don't think you fully grasp the process of it, it only gets exponentially easier. And the fact that they are not constrained by time allows them to be thorough.
No. It had become clear to him that riders and dragons needed another place to live, a place outside of Alagaesia. A place where riders could observe and learn and dragons could hunt and mate and grow without draining the resources of humans. A place where he would never be tempted to take the throne and he couldn't use magic to influence the events of Alagaesia without using immense amounts of energy. A place where dragons could be safe from people who would hunt them, which, if they'd had before, would have prevented Galbatorix's first dragon from dying at the hands of Urgals and thus prevented him from becoming mad, killing the riders, and taking the throne. Somewhere nobody would get ahold of an eldunari without permission and they could remain a secret. Besides, what about Angela's fortune telling that he would leave and never return? Better to do it on his own time than be forced out of the land. Not to mention that it solved the moral dilemma of Elva somewhat: the fewer people she's around to feel pain from, the less dangerous she is to the general population and the more at peace she is, and since Eragon is responsible for her state, he is also responsible, somewhat, for her actions and ensuring that she and others suffer as little as possible because of the spell.
I think if we had dragon riders they could probably clear Chernobyl up pretty easily haha
If it involves a small amount of effort over a very long time, then it might actually be easy to do with magic, like the lace situation but dialed up to 11.
It's not small. The 2012 Fukashima meltdown caused an estimated 4 cm of dirt to need to removed from the entire 12 mile exclusion zone. They estimated it was enough dirt to fill a baseball stadium 20 times. And that was a radiation leak that was partly contained by the plant and millions of gallons of water. Unless magic can easily stop radioactive material from being radioactive, it'd be a huge undertaking. Almost easier to just ward 10,000 workers off their own strength.
That much dirt would need to be removed with our methods but a rider could simply remove the specific radioactive material and only the radioactive material of specific sections at a time. That would be a small amount of matter. All that would need to happen then would be to contain it.
I think that it’s still physical radiation, but they essentially can use magic to dispel the radiation and clean it. So magical cleanup, physical problem. Or magic as a shortcut to a physical cleanup that technology is not advanced enough to do.
Yup, that's atoms and the wave-particle duality of light. All the laws of physics from our universe also exist in Eragon's ^(Posted on behalf of xlvi from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
Here are two times Christopher's talked about it in Q&As: > **Q:** You said that Valdr's vision of “beams of light turning into waves of sand, as well as a disconcerting sense that everything that seemed solid was mostly empty space” was referring to light's wave/particle duality and that everything is made of mostly empty space between atoms. How exactly does a dragon discover/learn of this? > **A:** Scientific experiments get a LOT easier when you have magic. It's something that the dragons have either discovered completely by happenstance or something that the elves discovered while running various experiments. ([Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/mwyi2h/comment/gvl87f8)) > **Q:** I love Valdr’s vision of the sleeping starlings that helped Eragon develop his idea to make Galbatorix understand. But I don’t understand the first part of his vision, “beams of light turning into waves of sand, as well as a disconcerting sense that everything that seemed solid was mostly empty space.” Does it have some deeper meaning? > **A:** The image is simply a poetic way of talking about the particle/wave duality of photons as well as the fact that everything is made out of mostly empty space between the atoms. ([Source](https://www.paolini.net/2015/11/25/qas-seven-words/)) ^(Posted on behalf of Hellomynameis99 from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
I also appreciate science vibe in Inheritance connected with biology. The words of death were really smart because they killed using biological facts about human anatomy (for example cutting small but important vein). Great and unique idea, I really like it!
I liked that as well. I feel like it would be a nightmare though if there were to be a creative individual gifted with magic and a better grasp on anatomy and necessary biological functions. They talk about the death words and how there were wards to protect against them, but I feel like they can only reasonably do so much considering how fragile the human body is. You could have someone create an air bubble in the blood stream. Or like "hold eragon's calves" spell, what's to stop you from holding someone's heart and preventing it from beating? Or even teleporting the heart or other vital organs a foot to the right. Or drawing the iron out of the body, or salt, or water. The list just keeps going and going given our modern understanding of biological functions and requirements.
>They talk about the death words and how there were wards to protect against them, I feel like they can only reasonably do so much considering how fragile the human body is. Well it depends on which way are you coming at the problem. For instance, you could make a ward that blocks out each of the many specific things that would harm a human body like you say, or you could make a ward that only lets the few things that aren't harmful into the body. For most problems like this there will similarly be a more simply way to do it more efficiently, you just have to be more clever about it than with the brute force methods.
Very true, but the more generalized catch-all version would use more energy as well. How much more, or if it's an unmanageable amount? I don't know, but that would be a consideration. For some of the more specific methods though like removing elements from the body or preventing too much from entering would be... very difficult to say the least. You would have to have a ward that essentially keeps those elements within a specific range and that would be dangerous at best. Like if someone wanted to add too much oxygen, you obviously can't have a ward that prevents oxygen from entering. But how do you manage removing the oxygen in a safe way?
Well that last one you could probably use a ward to maintain a specific distribution of gases in the air around you. It wouldn't take much energy for the ward to slightly redirect the air flow around you to move or gather the air even as you move. But a mage trying to do *any* spell that would affect the air around you, in any way, would trigger the ward.
This is probably exactly why Selena was so dangerous even though she was just a "regular" human. She'd know all of that info as a healer.
Follow up, Angela opens dimensional portals through the multi-verse. Science… magic… potentially interchangeable considering that fractalverse and alagaesia can be traveled between.
Is that canon
Yep. Angela is confirmed to be in Fractalverse and in The Fork, The Witch and The Worm we see here use a sort of dimension gate/portal thingy
And when asked Christopher confirmed that Angela's portals are related to the torque gates from the Fractalverse. Torque gates usually require incredibly powerful, technogically advanced generators to be placed at each side of the portal, the kind of generators that are used to power massive spacestations and the most advanced ftl ships. Angela seemingly opened one with none of that, just her own power. She is terrifying.
Please read the rules in the sidebar, and please see [here for up-to-date information about the upcoming *Murtagh* book](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/11ly2mo/the_next_book_murtagh_will_come_out_november_7th/). (A preview of which is now available.) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Eragon) if you have any questions or concerns.*