#yes i know tarvi changed his name it was a stupid thing for anne to have him do

[kariachi]

I am sitting here, checking Dragonsdawn to answer a question. Namely, did the last clutch of artificially-created eggs result in dragons or whers. Because you hear dragons a lot, but I could’ve sworn it was whers, so I went to take a look in the book.

Dragonsdawn, pg 414 (in my copy)

“I heard there were more creatures hatched,“ Drake said. “Is that true, Admiral?“

“Yes, that’s true.“

“Are they any good?“

“Six more dragons,” Paul said, more heartily than he felt.

“Removing six more young people from our fighting strength!“

“Giving us six more potential self-maintaining, self-propogating fighters!“

Dragondawn, pg419-420 (in my copy)

“Actually Paul,“ Telgar said, glancing at Ozzie and Cobber, “those photophobes of Wind Blossom’s have proven to be extremely useful in subterranean explorations. Their instinct for hidden dangers- pitfalls, in fact, and blind tunnels- is infalliable.“ The geologist gave one of his humorless smiles. “I’d like to keep them now that Wind Blossom has abandoned them, so to speak.“ Telgar turned to Pol and Bay.

“It’s a relief to know they’ve some use,“ Pol said, sighing heavily. Both he and his wife had tried to use reason with the indignant Wind Blossom when she had been requested to suspend the dragon program. Though she maintained that the emergency transfer from Landing to Fort had damaged many of the eggs in the clutch she had manipulated, Pol and Bay had seen the autopsy reports and knew that claim to be spurious. They had been lucky to hatch six live creatures.

“Once they get to trust you, they’re quite harmless,“ Telgar went on. “Cara adores the latest hatchling, and it won’t let her out of it’s sight unless she leaves the Hold.“ Again, he displayed his mirthless smile. ”Keeps watch at her door by night.“

Dragonsdawn, pg 421 (in my copy)

“You will, of course, continue to monitor the latest dragon hatchlings.“

“Of course. What’s the latest word from Sean and the others?” Pol asked, a trifle anxious.

~~~

So we see where there may be trouble here. The first part is insistent that these are proper dragons. Meanwhile the second part states that the dragon program has been ended due to resource issues mentioned elsewhere, but then you’ve got Tarvi referring to Cara’s relationship with the latest of the wher hatchlings, which implies that either this latest batch produced more whers or the whers are already breeding, the latter of which would mean that they breed considerably faster than dragons-

The Whers hatched about 6 months after the dragons did, Garben blows about 2 months after that, Boll’s accident seems to happen within a few days of the eruption (though with Anne who can tell) around the time the dragons figure out Betweening, and the end of the book happens ‘weeks’ after that, since that’s how long it’s been since anyone’s seen her... We can assume the new wher clutch happens within that span of time for various reasons, the main one being that these fuckers need time to grow. We learn in Dragons Kin that whers reach full size at 4 months...

Yeah, there cannot be another wher clutch. Unless Wind Blossom was just throwing whers out everywhere in the 2 months between that hatching and the eruption, while also putting in the time to put together the final clutch. Given she produced 5 clutches over 6 months- 4 of which seemed to have failed quickly- that seems like it’d be cutting things close, getting two successful clutches out in 2.

(And yes, I’m going to call the clutch of six successful, the characters can talk shit all they want but Kitti died with 42 eggs maturing and got 18 dragons out of them, while we have no idea what Wind Blossom’s numbers for the last clutch were.)

And there is no way in hell that the whers have produced and hatched clutches by that point in the story. There just isn’t. You can stretch and say they reached full size by the end of the book, but certainly it wasn’t longer than that- for one after a point you stop saying ‘weeks’ and start saying ‘months’, and for another after a point you stop going ‘the governor was injured’ and start going ‘we think they may be hiding the fact the governor’s dead’. But even if we say that whers can breed as soon as they reach full size- which is unlikely given dragons need to reach 2 years for that, are considered full size at 1 year, and we’re given no reason to believe similar ratios at least don’t apply to other dragonkin- there would still need to be time where the gold is gravid, and time for the young in the eggs to grow before hatching, then time after the hatching for Tarvi to learn about the whers and one to latch onto his toddler. Add to that, no fucking way would the whers breeding not be a Big Fucking Deal given it’s the first evidence they have that the dragons will be able to breed, at this point in the story they don’t even know they’ll be able to chew stone, and all they know of them Betweening is one tried and died.

So, the most viable option left there is that the ‘latest’ hatchling is out of the last clutch. But Benden and others insist this clutch is full of dragons. But we don’t get names, for dragons or riders, and if nothing else you would think the other 18 riders would think it worth a mention that they’re not alone now. ‘Second Weyr’ from First Fall mentions ‘eleven queens from the first two hatchings’, but if this hatching was dragons then it should be 13 queens. But then that whole little spot implies that somehow out of at least 10 golds there was 1 gold hatchling in 7 years? When Ramoth was throwing the things like fucking confetti? If we assume the estimates given in Dragonsdawn- that they’d be laying 10-20 eggs each- are accurate then that’s at minimum 600 eggs that somehow only got 1 gold out of them.

And again, it doesn’t account for where this mystery wher clutch came from for there to be a ‘latest hatchling’ from it, because it sure as fuck wasn’t laid by the whers, they’re too young at that point to have had a successful clutch, and for it to not be the same as the last clutch then that means that Wind Blossom, who took 6 months and 4 false starts to make 1 viable clutch, somehow managed to make a 6th, wait for them to hatch, then make a 7th in the 2 months since that clutch.

Plus, if this is a dragon clutch then apparently either nobody thought to mention it to the riders or their reaction was somehow not worth including?

Basically the characters say the last clutch is dragons but all evidence that isn’t their word (including the babies being referred to as ‘creatures’, let’s be real these characters would never) points to the last clutch being another batch of whers. Because Anne was fucking Anne and we can’t have clear and consistent writing with this woman lest we, I don’t know, rip off our clothes and succumb to a life sucking pond scum or some shit.