Personally I might put my stronghold in the Spine or somewhere in Du Weldanvarden.
Personally I might put my stronghold in the Spine or somewhere in Du Weldanvarden.
I have to admit though that Vroengard is the easiest solution. Though it limits the amount of time Eragon would be able to spend with Arya if she stayed in Ellesmere.
It’d take thousands of years for it to dissipate naturally, we’re talking about using magic to do it like the Elves did; I think they got it done in weeks? & they didn’t have the Name & a legion of Eldunarí
Du Weldenvarden might be viable if they went way into the far expanses of the North, but dragons don’t like cold weather. They can survive it, but deserts n such invigorate them.
Yeah but I'm pretty sure that Doru Areba is a much larger city than Ilirea.
It’s much larger but you have to understand that the size of a person is not very different, even elf versus human. The elf could not have released more radiation than Galbatorix; he only has so much mass.
Now, his radiation likely diffused much more widely, around the entire island I’d say, but that’s not a problem for magic as we saw with Eragon forming gold spheres. He can recall anything, no matter how fine and diffuse, into a more solid shape. All they’d have to do is fly around the island (purely to make it easier on the Eldunarí, you could do it from the center it’d just be a bit more taxing over distance) while performing the same cleansing spell until you’ve gotten it all up. It’s the same quantity of radiation, just spread out & maybe somewhat multiplied as it interacts with the environment; the Eldunarí can cover what Elves alone might not.
Now, let’s say you can’t do it in a day, or a week, or a month; Hell, yknow what, for sake of argument, let’s say it’ll take a whole year to cleanse the island. All the Elves, Eldunarí, even the Name on their side; still takes a full year.
That, would still be worth it. It’s going to take years, maybe even decades or centuries, to build a stronghold comparable to Vroengard. You’re already going to be spending a lot of time building a new home, and it’ll be worth it to build a home you’ll be using for the next 1,000 years.
So, why not just tack on a +1, and call it a day?
I understand that. I'm just not convinced that it will take a very short time to cleanse Vroengard of radiation. Especially not with the limits of the bodily energy. If they had similar magic potential to Dr. Strange, then yeah I would say that would be an easy fix. But gold is different than radiation, its solid radiation is not. I'm just not convinced that the elves and the eldunari can cleanse Vroengard with the limitations of magic in Paolini's world.
They are capable of cleaning up radiation but to cleanse an entire island in a decade, or 100 years, you do know that Vroengard is much larger than Ilirea right? If they could cleanse an area the size of Du Weldenvarden in a year with the limits in place, then I would agree.
We can at least agree that its possible to remove the radiation from Vroengard, we just don't agree on the amount of time it would take.
The reason they can't use Vroengard is because there's a lot more magic there than just the radiation left by Thuviel. Since some of that magic was undoubtedly wrought by dragons, or perhaps without the ability to speak, it would be impossible to remove it all using the name of names since not all of it was bound to the ancient language. The remaining magic after the battle on Doru Araeba is substantial, not to mention the radiation has had a century to permeate the entire island. It's created dangerous and unpredictable species, left a myriad of potential traps, not to mention the mysterious people who have already settled there. It's a much bigger job with many more potential dangers than just the radiation left from Galby's death. In Ilirea, they were able to act quickly to contain the radiation before it spread by sealing the citadel, thus making it much easier to deal with. And even though Eragon had plenty of spells to undo afterwards, it's still nothing compared to the magic cast during a battle with harmful intent. Most of Galby's spells in Uru'baen were to protect himself or his followers, not cause horrific deaths and destruction.
I still don't see why he didn't use the mountains in the Hadarac Desert. You can use magic to grow food for the Riders, create fertile fields to raise livestock for the dragons, and create defenses at the peaks of the mountains. With the Eldunari you could make unscalable cliffs. It was already shown that you can make things grow with magic that wouldn't normally survive in that climate. It's isolated enough from all the races, not to mention any attacking army would have to survive for days marching across a freaking desert.
It’d be a titanic drain; Elves as an entire race can make Du Weldenvarden stronger, but they don’t raise mountains. The land of Du Weldenvarden is suitable for forest and so the growth is partly natural. A desert is not suitable for that kind of farm life, and you’d constantly have to battle to keep it alive. Remember that magic comes from energy which comes from food, so if you have to use magic to make all your food then you have a serious problem. The dragons would necessarily have to hunt in the nearby Beors or Du Weldenvarden.
Plus, making a desert habitable is no where near what cleaning up a bit of radiation would entail, which lore indicates is not difficult to clean up. Even the Eldunarí could not so reshape the land, or you’d have seen Galbatorix doing it.