Terry Pratchett and Cosmere dragons

[Ixthos]

There are so many things to say about Terry Pratchett, one of my favourite authors, and someone who often made you both laugh and think (though someone who I disagreed with on many of his points). My favourite scene is in Witches Abroad, where Granny Weatherwax turned the powers of a voodoo witch against her, using the voodoo witch's own perception and beliefs against her. Pratchett was a brilliant writer, albeit one who in several fundamental philosophical ways I disagreed with, but his writing always made you think. And one of the main forces on the Discworld is that what you thought could define reality.

 

Now, in the Cosmere, this is tied to the interplay between physical reality, cognitive concepts, and spiritual nodes, and so I doubt there could be any argument that in the Cosmere there is indeed an atom of justice, etc., because there would be, just in the cognitive realm, which is just as real as the physical world, and its hard to argue with that when a blade made from one of the inhabitants of that world can cut right through anything physical.

This has got me thinking about something, about Cosmere dragons, and about Discworld dragons. It has been a long time since I've read through the series, so if someone who are read Terry Pratchett recently has any corrections, please let me know. As I recall, Brandon is a fan of Pratchett's writing also, and I wonder if he is going to use this idea. And an idea from David Eddings.

 

Discworld deities, like the deities in David Eddings Elenium/Tumuli series, are shaped by belief, and are made by belief. In fact, one of the characters in the Elenium - no spoilers - declares that she willed herself into existence, declaring this in defiance of one of the beings like her, but older. In both Discworld and in one of the books of the Tumuli, lost and forgotten deities are found, desperatly seeking others to believe in them and allow them to become real again. Other stories and games have used this idea, but something I remember from the first Discworld novel is that this idea also applied to dragons.

 

This has me wondering - what if dragons in the Cosmere are a race that willed themselves into existence, or were formed like virtual particles becoming real around the mass of the power of creation, where it settled on Yolen (if dragons are from Yolen, rather than just being life on it), life that congealed around it (with no anti-dragons ... or maybe ... :-P )? What if Cosmere dragons are the first life in the Cosmere (the entire universe or the set of stars / cluster / dwarf galaxy / systems called the Cosmere), and that their type of life being life that willed itself into being due to the mass of investiture near to them, or if it didn't will itself into being was life that eventually learned how to reshape themselves using the Cognitive realm, again to to expose to high levels of investiture from the complete power of reaction, and are now a race defined by belief - their own or others - which accounts for there shapeshifting. As the readable chapters of the original Bridge 4 sequence on Brandon's website show, they are made from, or have skins with, Dragonsteel, an indestructible substance, and seem to have a strong presence in the Cognitive realm. The power of Cosmere healing abilities might be the only thing that could reshape what is obviously invested metal.

And, if that wasn't reaching too much already, what if the power of creation was something they gathered together by their own belief, or shaped by their own beliefs - and what if other races are races they originally formed using that power, the dragons are the original progenitor race whose beliefs either shaped the power, or they themselves were shaped by it?

One possible scenario is thus:

• before there was life in the Cosmere there was an ideal of life in the spiritual realm
• that ideal was a powerful one, a complex one with strong connections to many other ideals due to its diversity and the possible futures it opened up
• that ideal was connected to the power of creation, itself the centre of the spiritual realm, and so at the site where the greatest concentration of that power in the physical and cognitive realm that ideal was able to shape some of it into its most refined form
• that proto-spren was able to cross over into the physical realm at the perpendicularity where the power of creation was - the theoretically strongest perpendicularity there could be
• that proto-spren, by crossing over, became something in both the physical and cognitive realm, and was the first dragon
• that dragon then dreamed the others into being, and together they formed a civilisation which had beliefs that defined the power of creation, and which they worshipped

 

Or:

• Dragons came into being as a species before other species
• They learned about the Cosmere, its nature, and discovered the spiritual realm
• At the centre of the spiritual realm was the power of creation, which they were able to make manifest on their world
• That power allowed them to reshape themselves into the ideal of their life, making themselves strong and more capable
• That power also allowed their beliefs to shape the power slightly
• They then made or encountered other life, and discovered that sufficient belief would change them

 

Or:

• the power was already alive, and already connected to the idea of life
• it made dragons to express its desire to make life, as it might have done elsewhere in other star systems
• those dragons beliefs formed a feedback loop with the power, and then made new types of life
• those new types of life had beliefs which allowed them to redefine dragons, causing dragons to withdraw

 

I know there isn't much to support this, but the idea of dragons as a type of spren that became the first physical life in the Cosmere is possibly an interesting one, especially if they made other life, which had the unfortunate side effect of making them susceptible to being reshaped by the beliefs of their own children.

 

What are your thoughts on this? Thanks :-)

[Halyo_Alex]

Dragons being highly susceptible to Cognitive perception and belief would be INCREDIBLE as a gimmick in the Cosmere. Even if it wasn't actually dragons, any species with that trait would be absolutely fascinating to read about, and see where it goes when a character inevitably tries to believe something into existence about the creature they encounter.