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Mails shirt with rings inscribed with the names of Mohammed and the five leading imams of Shi'a Islam, possibly Iran, 15th-16th century

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Post war Alagaësia has on one side, the elves, led by Arya as their queen, who is also a dragon rider, knows the Name of Names and elves can freely wield magic and the ancient language.

On the other side, there are humans, with Nasuada as their queen, who banned the free use of magic without her permission, and she wasn't really happy about Eragon keeping the Name of Names in a secret. People in Alagaësia aren't really happy that elves are more powerful than anyone else, and they know that Eragon, who supported Nasuada during and after war, left Alagaësia so humans were left basically defenceless

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absolute fucking creature time

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(Mostly just writing this to keep track for a fanfic so I don’t forget the thought process and my self-canon conclusions.)

Slight warning, if you don’t like the details of sickness or anything. I’m into medical stuff so I don’t really shy away from this. Just thought I should mention.

When Murtagh healed himself of the flu, I remember wondering ‘how do you heal a virus?’ (Yes, it was 3AM.) A virus itself is not damage. It cannot be ‘healed.’ You would have to remove or kill or otherwise extinguish is or render it useless and unable to act. That seems fairly simple.

What it means though is that Murtagh healed the symptoms, not the cause, which might have also accounted for the lingering effects (though maybe he should have just let the spell run for longer. Does Murtagh use absolutes or does he not know about absolutes yet? Anyway.)

So can a sickness itself, its root cause, be removed? And what about symptoms you don’t ‘heal’?

1. Why not remove viruses?

My first guess is that they do not know the true name of most viruses. To remove a virus without the true name, you would have to do one of two things. Either you have to be extremely specific, or you have to use a generalization. Both of which would be very dangerous. Why? Because either way—if you’re not detailed enough or if you’re too general—you could risk also targeting positive bacteria and such in your body. You could easily do harm to yourself in the process. And it could go beyond bacteria, depending on what level understanding of the body is in Alagaësia. I believe Paolini said the elves have an understanding of at least cells. But if you generalize cells? You could kill yourself with that spell! An example of not having enough specific information to prevent consequence would be a deleted scene from Brisingr (I believe it’s posted on Paolini.net) where Eragon removed a woman’s tumor cells with a spell but had the spell target ‘unnatural’ or ‘not belonging’ forms in the body beyond a certain size, possibly rendering the woman permanently unable to have children, because the spell could attack a fetus. Could this be the reason they don’t heal viruses? Or maybe they don’t even fully understand the concept of viruses yet? We know at this point in their history they understand things can be contagious, but we don’t really know beyond that.

2. What do you do about symptoms you don’t ‘heal’?

Ex: Phlegm. You can heal the irritations that causes the production of phlegm, but you’d still have phlegm in your system. Do you break it up with a spell? Can you flush it out entirely? How does this work? Sores, sore throats, ulcers, irritation, inflammation—those could all be healed, and things like abscesses and tumors can be removed with magic as well. But other than preventative spells being placed in the first place (as obviously not everyone has access to magic) how do you bring down (fluid-related) swelling? Do you just, like, extract it from the pores?

3. Can chronic conditions be healed?

As someone with a chronic condition, I feel like this should be on the list. In my case, Mitchell’s Disease. Harmless, inherent (though it’s not always genetic for some people), but very painful. Mitchell’s Disease, also known as Erythromelalgia, is abnormal function in the nerves/blood vessels. Plainly, the small blood vessels over-dilate and the nerves misfire to send signals of tingling, heat, and pain. Could something like this be healed? If so, how? As I see it, perhaps you could address the symptoms—constricting the blood vessels, perhaps. But what about the nerves? Can you block nerve messages? You probably could with the right knowledge and skill, but it’d be too easily to block to much and cause actual harm, especially if you enacted it as a permanent spell (which are difficult, if not impossible, to remove) instead of a temporary one during an episode. What about the cause itself? How would you even address that? Searching it, some cases are supposed linked to mutations in a gene that affects sodium channels in nerves, leading to over-signaling pain. You could remove/nullify that mutation, possibly, but Alagaësia is nowhere near at a point, medically, where that knowledge would even exist—let alone be available to a magician. And what about things like POTS? Or epilepsy, considering how delicate the brain is and how much even the elves avoid touching the brain for fear of destroying a person’s mind entirely. Can magic even be progressed to a point the irregular signals could be remedied, or at least adjusted not to cause the reactions they do? Things like heart disease I could see being addressed (with great care, of course). Blockages could be removed, tears and strains and irritation healed, and maybe spells could even be placed to help keep heartbeats even or strong. But other conditions seem more… difficult. And, especially considering Paolini’s magic system heavily relies on science, Orrin and the other science nerds out there would have century worth of progress to make before they can really leap in the magic-medical field unless those progressions are considerably sped up (likely by magic.)

Which makes me wonder what else can be done. Like major surgeries. Appendicitis, for example. You could remove the appendix (like Eragon did the woman’s tumor) and heal the remaining tissue damaged by the removal with magic—possibly with very little pain/recovery time. Or, maybe they could heal and remove the infection itself entirely, no surgery needed—magical or otherwise. Maybe other surgeries could be done the same.

4. What about nerve damage?

Nerves are, obviously, extremely delicate, and we see examples of this throughout the Inheritance Cycle—the most prevalent of which would be Eragon’s back, which was a mixture of nerve damage and Durza’s magic. When Arya damaged her hand in Dras-Leona, Blödhgarm (an extremely talented healer, which is important to note here) healed the damage, but some of the nerves refused to seal properly, leaving Arya with a patch of skin at the base of her thumb that had no feeling or sensation in it. It is not mentioned whether she felt nerve pain or agitation later. This implies that nerves might be prone to not rejoining and healing. Maybe they’re resistant, or maybe the knowledge needed to handle them properly just isn’t there, or maybe it’s just too easy to reseal them in such a way as to cut off or accidentally modify or hinder signals. The fact that Eragon was offered little to no healing in Ellesméra, where healers were likely a dime a dozen, also gestures at this fact. They may not have have any way of removing the curse, but helping the nerve damage might have at least helped with the agony involved with the seizures.

Are nerves too difficult? Too complex? Those would be my best guesses, though I am curious about if there is anything that actually is genuinely naturally resistant to magic.

I could go on like this all day. Are there any other counter-views or takes, theories, self-canon, or personal conclusions on this? I know there are other people who like the medical side of things in this fandom, or at least are familiar with some of this, and I’m curious if anyone else is in on theories and opinions.

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A lot of post-Empire Inheritance fics have the new Riders be an even distribution between the four races as if the dragons have a diversity quota, but I sorta think they would tend to prefer elves first, then Urgals and humans, with dwarven riders being the most uncommon because their natural dispositions just. don't. match. The evolvement of their race is very territory-specific; namely to the mountains and stones and the world within them - what we get of dwarven culture shows them as a very clan-oriented, closed off group of people. And while that's changing a bit under Orik's rule, it doesn't change the fact that they naturally prefer stones and caves and a set settlement surrounded by clan and kin instead of flying on a dragon all over with multi-raced companions. Orik is as progressive and open-minded as you can get but even he hates flying! So I'd think that amongst dwarves it would take a really unique, adventurous individual to attract - and in turn be happy with - the companionship of a dragon and life as its rider. Such dwarves would be anomalies (in a good way, but still unusal), not the norm for their people.

There'd be more elves b/c canonically I think it's said somewhere that most Riders were elves. Granted the humans were only added in later but the elves' shared history with the dragons and the initial legacy that ties their races together runs too deep; their magic and culture - and even state of being - is wholly intertwined with each other (dragons gave elves immortality, elves gave dragons speech, they literally made each other into what they are) so I'd like to think there's always going to be this natural affinity between them, like a sense of innate kinship. Or a more symbiotic evolvement relationship like that of clownfish and sea anemones.

Urgals are the most similar to dragons in nature - they're straightforward, value strength and hunting prowess, in tune with the land and nature and celebrate all of nature's harsher laws in their constant desire to fight, hunt, and win, but upon achieving that they're content with their lot in life. No intricate politics or bottomless ambitions. All nice and simple and visceral. Aligns with the dragons perfectly. They can be the perfect hunting partners and no dragon bonded with an Urgal would ever need to deal with the vegetarian crisis.

Also the dragon's going to have the best playmate growing up, they can wrestle together and butt horns

Humans are the most unpredictable. And varied. Scanning human minds would prolly be a lot like browsing ao3 tags, whatever niche trait the dragon embryo's looking for in a partner, there's bound to be a human who has it lol.

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One thing I wonder about irt the Fall of the Dragon Riders is the effect the sudden extinction of dragons would have on Alagaësia's ecosystems. Dragons are mega huge super long-lived apex predators that would require a ton of food to survive and would have a key role in the ecosystem in general. Keeping herbivore populations in check. Their waste fertilizing the soil. The big dragons changing the terrain in a similar manner to elephants or bisons, felling trees when they move through forests, burning meadows when they fight one another, creating temporary pools with their footsteps where frogs can spawn, etcetera etcetera

Galbatorix's hunger for power wouldn't just affect the lives of the sentient races, but life on the continent as a whole

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Re: my idea that a group of Ra'zac/Lethrblaka could've been called a plague in human history as an euphemism and the original meaning would've been lost to time so in the current day records mentioning "XY was killed by the plague" and "the villages of A and B were lost to the plague" would have people believing there had been an actual plague, it just occured to me that this would work pretty well with the fact that there aren't (to my knowledge) any mentions of actual plagues, epidemics or diseases in general in Inheritance Cycle. So there could be a belief that medicine has improved over the centuries and that's why we no longer see any cases of the plague of old (maybe they explained it as the elves with their advanced medicine helping cure the mysterious plague that humans have brought from their homeland, which would be true in a way since it was the elven Riders who helped defeat the Ra'zac)

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I've been thinking, isn't it odd that Eragon (or anyone else for that matter) wouldn't know anything about the Ra'zac when they were a plague on humankind for their entire history until some 700 years ago after humans arrived to Alagaësia and the Ra'zac that followed them were driven to extinction by Dragon Riders. Human culture should be full of folk stories, songs and horror tales featuring the Ra'zac and Lethrblaka, same as most European cultures have stories and songs featuring wolves even though they are now in many places pretty much extinct and very much not a threat.

But then I remembered this

Same as how you should not speak of the devil, same as how in Czech death is often called "the toothed one" or "godmother with the scythe" instead

What if the Ra'zac and Lethrblaka were never mentioned by name in humankind's stories, but only by euphemisms and noa-names. And when the monsters were driven to extinction and their last members hid in the shadows, only the euphemisms survived and humanity started forgetting what they originally referred to

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They be really crazy if they think I'll buy seithr oil as body lotion, wtf

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Vroengard was an island located off the coast of northern Alagaësia. It was home to Doru Araeba, the city of the Dragon Riders. Among the ruins of Doru Araeba the Rock of Kuthian, the magically sealed entrance to the Vault of Souls, was located.  

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Pictured: Doru Araeba after Elfenheimer splits the atoms of his body and nukes Vroengard off the face of the earth

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Nothing, just thinking about the Grey Folk unleashing so much energy in their ritual to bind the Ancient Language to magic that it made their entire race disappear, about the crater on Vroengard being large enough to build an entire city inside and the fact that it's been there long before the Riders' time, and about ancient Dwarven myths speaking of dwarves being born after the vanquishing of giants and of dwarven society having to move to the Beors after losing their fertile lands when Hadarac became a desert. And about the fact that an explosion of a certain magnitude may bring on extinction and potentially kickstart a climate change

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That thing the rider (I forgor his name) did in Vroengard to make it unlivable sounds a lot like radiation tbh. Like turn the matter of your body into energy and "poison in the air" and when Galbatorix pulled the same trick, people losing their hair, getting sick, and dying. Radiation!

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I've been thinking, isn't it odd that Eragon (or anyone else for that matter) wouldn't know anything about the Ra'zac when they were a plague on humankind for their entire history until some 700 years ago after humans arrived to Alagaësia and the Ra'zac that followed them were driven to extinction by Dragon Riders. Human culture should be full of folk stories, songs and horror tales featuring the Ra'zac and Lethrblaka, same as most European cultures have stories and songs featuring wolves even though they are now in many places pretty much extinct and very much not a threat.

But then I remembered this

Same as how you should not speak of the devil, same as how in Czech death is often called "the toothed one" or "godmother with the scythe" instead

What if the Ra'zac and Lethrblaka were never mentioned by name in humankind's stories, but only by euphemisms and noa-names. And when the monsters were driven to extinction and their last members hid in the shadows, only the euphemisms survived and humanity started forgetting what they originally referred to

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I stayed up until 3am for this

(subtitles on)

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This scene lives rent-free in my head and I had to try to animate at least a part of it

(audio from Path of Titans)