Dragon Speculation

[Quantus he/him]

I have a few barely supported and/or entirely unsupported ideas regarding cosmere Dragons, and I was curious if anyone else had any similar wild speculations on the topic. 

 

In no particular order:

-I think that Dragons will be able to absorb Investiture directly the way Larkin aka "Dragon Bugs" do.  I suspect this is their natural food, and being innate and sapient Investiture manipulators is a lot of why they are racially immortal and able to shape-shift. 

-I think Dragons have Gemhearts, mostly because it would make sense realmically and be thematically consistent with the popular trope of dragons having magically significant Hearts.  If true, I would not be surprised if the Singers proved to have originally been a hybrid race of dragons and Humans (or Dragons and Sho Del, I suppose). 

-I would not be surprised to learn that Dragonsteel is an in-world material, something naturally Invested and smelted from their shed scales or some such.  It would please me to find out that this was the closest thing to a pre-Shattering Godmetal, something the vessels later mimicked. 

 

 

[RShara she/her]

Have you read the available exerpts of Dragonsteel?

[+Child of Hodor]

Check out the Dragonsteel excerpts Brandon put on his site last year.  https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/61367-dragonsteel-chapters/

Spoilers for the excerpt chapters. 
 

Spoiler

A dragon appears in dragon form in one of the chapters and dragonsteel is a part of their body although there is more to it than that, there are pools of liquid Dragonsteel in the shattered plains on Yolen. It's not canon anymore since he moved the Shattered Plains to Roshar, so he may change his mind on about exactly how dragons look or what all they can do by the time he gets around to rewriting Dragonsteel in 15 - 20 years.

I wonder how big Larkin can get. We've only the one Nale kept tied up in his coat to absorb stormlight from surgebinders (I hope he let that poor larkin go now that he's not hunting surgebinders anymore ) and Chiri-Chiri who is just starting out. Chiri-Chiri grew just from sucking out all the light from the voidbringer in OB, I'm curious how big she'll get. 

Edited November 6, 2018 by Child of Hodor

[Quantus he/him]

Ive been hesitating to read the Dragonsteel excerpts or any of the Prime stuff, mostly because I heard it's been cannibalized for other stories and I was afraid of it spoiling the later stories with the narrative Uncanny Valley.   I dont mind seeing the spoilers piecemeal here, I just dont know if I want to sit down and read the entire proto-story. 

[Use the Falchion]

14 hours ago, Quantus said:

I have a few barely supported and/or entirely unsupported ideas regarding cosmere Dragons, and I was curious if anyone else had any similar wild speculations on the topic. 

 

In no particular order:

-I think that Dragons will be able to absorb Investiture directly the way Larkin aka "Dragon Bugs" do.  I suspect this is their natural food, and being innate and sapient Investiture manipulators is a lot of why they are racially immortal and able to shape-shift. 

-I think Dragons have Gemhearts, mostly because it would make sense realmically and be thematically consistent with the popular trope of dragons having magically significant Hearts.  If true, I would not be surprised if the Singers proved to have originally been a hybrid race of dragons and Humans (or Dragons and Sho Del, I suppose). 

-I would not be surprised to learn that Dragonsteel is an in-world material, something naturally Invested and smelted from their shed scales or some such.  It would please me to find out that this was the closest thing to a pre-Shattering Godmetal, something the vessels later mimicked. 

 

 

Nice! That's really close to my theories! I think Larkins ARE a form of dragons, at least Rosharan ones. And I do believe we'll see at least one radiant riding a giant Larkin before the end of the series.

[Quantus he/him]

17 hours ago, Child of Hodor said:

Check out the Dragonsteel excerpts Brandon put on his site last year.  https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/61367-dragonsteel-chapters/

Spoilers for the excerpt chapters. 
 

  Hide contents

A dragon appears in dragon form in one of the chapters and dragonsteel is a part of their body although there is more to it than that, there are pools of liquid Dragonsteel in the shattered plains on Yolen. It's not canon anymore since he moved the Shattered Plains to Roshar, so he may change his mind on about exactly how dragons look or what all they can do by the time he gets around to rewriting Dragonsteel in 15 - 20 years.

I wonder how big Larkin can get. We've only the one Nale kept tied up in his coat to absorb stormlight from surgebinders (I hope he let that poor larkin go now that he's not hunting surgebinders anymore ) and Chiri-Chiri who is just starting out. Chiri-Chiri grew just from sucking out all the light from the voidbringer in OB, I'm curious how big she'll get. 

I strongly suspect they're like spiders and can simply grow and grow with no upper limit so long as they have a sufficient food supply.  Normally that would still leave upper limits involving gravity and oxygen levels, but Roshar already has a spren-based ecosystem in place to mitigate those sorts of things.  I think it's safe to assume that a properly fed Larkin could reach at least greatshell sizes.

[Calderis he/him]

5 hours ago, Quantus said:

I strongly suspect they're like spiders and can simply grow and grow with no upper limit so long as they have a sufficient food supply.  Normally that would still leave upper limits involving gravity and oxygen levels, but Roshar already has a spren-based ecosystem in place to mitigate those sorts of things.  I think it's safe to assume that a properly fed Larkin could reach at least greatshell sizes.

I strongly believe that Larkin pupate and turn into Lanceryn. Greatshells in their own right. 

Quote

AhoyMatey (paraphrased)

Are larkin and lanceryn one and the same?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There’s a little bit more than just [being] one and the same, but in some ways they are.

source

 

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

I strongly believe that Larkin pupate and turn into Lanceryn. Greatshells in their own right. 

 

Sweet!  I hadnt seent that but fully support it. 

If Larkin pupate into something so much larger, what then are the greatshells trying to pupate into, and how big might they become? 

[Calderis he/him]

4 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Sweet!  I hadnt seent that but fully support it. 

If Larkin pupate into something so much larger, what then are the greatshells trying to pupate into, and how big might they become? 

The chasmfiends we've seen are the result of a successful pupation. We haven't seen the earlier life cycles. 

Quote

Questioner

Are the chasmfiends that we have seen the last stage of their life-cycle?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you have seen the last stage of their lifecycle.

Questioner

But that's--

Brandon Sanderson

You've seen the second and third stages mostly.

Questioner

Are you counting the cocoons?

Brandon Sanderson

Cocoons are a stage, yes.

source

 

[Quantus he/him]

26 minutes ago, Calderis said:

The chasmfiends we've seen are the result of a successful pupation. We haven't seen the earlier life cycles. 

 

Are you sure he was referring to the chasmfiends on the plains as the Final form?  I know that was the question asked but it sounds like he wiggled sideways a little with the answer.  I was more thinking that the final form that we would have seen would be the island-sized Tai-Na, and that chasmfiends being hunted on the plains being the "second and third stages" he said we'd seen more often.  I also thought we'd seen the biggest plains chasmfiend breeds trying and failing to finish the pupation cycle during one of those hunts? 

[Calderis he/him]

4 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Are you sure he was referring to the chasmfiends on the plains as the Final form?  I know that was the question asked but it sounds like he wiggled sideways a little with the answer.  I was more thinking that the final form that we would have seen would be the island-sized Tai-Na, and that chasmfiends being hunted on the plains being the "second and third stages" he said we'd seen more often.  I also thought we'd seen the biggest plains chasmfiend breeds trying and failing to finish the pupation cycle during one of those hunts? 

I really don't think so. The size of the cocoons compared to the massive size of the greatshells implies that it's a transition from a younger form that we have not seen, to a larger adult form. 

And the Tai-na get much much larger than chasmfiends and have a shell like a turtle. They have a different number of legs. If they were to pupate on the plains from a chasmfiend, how would they leave? 

I definitely believe they are different species.

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

I really don't think so. The size of the cocoons compared to the massive size of the greatshells implies that it's a transition from a younger form that we have not seen, to a larger adult form. 

And the Tai-na get much much larger than chasmfiends and have a shell like a turtle. They have a different number of legs. If they were to pupate on the plains from a chasmfiend, how would they leave? 

I definitely believe they are different species.

Fair enough. Im pretty sure I dont have the taxonomy correct at all, to be honest.  I was imagining greatshells as a broadly related class, but your WOB got me thinking they might all be the same species with several distinct metamorphic stages.  There's also this WOB that previously had me thinking they had not seen the result of a Chamsfiend pupating in a long time.  But in retrospect it doesnt actually say that, just that the reduced pupation is going to have ecological implications. 

 

Granted by that point I was wondering if this might not go full Orson Scott Card with it and have the life cycle jump realms entirely, meaning that Greatshells and their biological ability to distill the Spiritual realm into gemhearts might actually be a system of incubating/birthing new spren.