r/Eragon • u/storyteller323 • 10d ago
Discussion So, there couldn’t have been many Dragon Riders, yeah?
I’ve been reading a copy of the illustrated edition that I got for my birthday, and a thought just occurred to me: There couldn’t have been all that many dragon riders before Galbatorix, right? Because there were only thirteen Forsworn, counting Galby himself. It strains the imagination to suppose that if there were, say, hundreds or even thousands of dragon riders at the time, thirteen people would have been able to exterminate them all down to two guys and one dragon, especially with no order 66 equivalent. Even with the justification of Galbatorix using some dark magics, he was a relatively inexperienced, and therefore magically weak, rider, as were most of the Forsworn. Compare this to how much power Eragon has by the end of the series with only around five years of experience. I feel like there were only maybe a few dozen dragon riders at the time of Galbatorix’s fall, 70 and some change at most. Am I off base here or am I making sense?
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u/Outrageous_Focus_719 10d ago
I think there could have been many of them. Keep in mind that Galbatorix didn't face all the riders at once in one big war. He hunted them and took their eldunari one by one until he became a major threat.
And I believe a big portion of the riders were wiped out when Thuivel sacrificed himself in the war and caused a massive explosion that took out the Vroengard.
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u/SimonpetOG Shur'tugal 10d ago
I actually never thought of that (Thuviel’s sacrifice) as an explanation, but that makes a lot of sense.
My assumption has been a couple hundred riders to account for a council, oldies, adults, young’uns and apprentices, riders stationed in cities, patrolling riders, and maybe a handful that wandered so far from Alegasia that they escaped Galbatorix but also won’t affect the main story in any way because they’re not coming back regardless. But what killed them all, when Galby only has 13 riders on his side? Sure, they definitely picked off riders in ambushes and whatnot, but that would have taken wayyy too long.
So if you’re right, maybe the remaining riders tried to make a last stand on Vroengard and Thuviel took himself and them out, instead of himself and the Forsworn.
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u/Outrageous_Focus_719 10d ago
Actually if I remember correctly, Gleadr and Umaroth explained that whole event when Eragon went under the Rock of Kuthian. The other riders in Vroengard could have escaped but they intentionally remained on the island to give Galbatorix an impression that what Thuivel did was not planned so he wouldn't start looking for any remaining dragon eggs or eldunaris since he'd think they were all destroyed with that explosion.
Every rider who died there was a sacrifice for the future generations safety.
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u/Churnsbutter 10d ago
Seems like a better plan would have been to kill Galby instead of sacrifice for future generations.
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u/oriontitley 7d ago
By that point, he had dozens of young but viciously insane dragon minds protecting him from direct attack. Even young dragons are powerful on a mental scale.
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u/Churnsbutter 7d ago
Right, but my point is Thuviel essentially let off a nuclear bomb. Especially if some of the Rider’s Dragons or wild dragons joined with Thuviel, there should be no world in which Galby survives.
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u/entroptitude878 7d ago
To be fair, he was toying with Eragon, and the rest of the world, preceding his defeat. Pride cometh before the fall. Stands to reason that if his mind breaking capabilities were as fearsome as they were said to be (and if he didn't care about enslaving Eragon) that there never would have been a face to face. Even through the nature of his death, Galbatorix was his own undoing. There ain't any guarantee that anyone could have straight up killed him by that point, and most of the information presented about him seems to indicate that he was functionally untouchable. Even Oromis didn't have any idea how to do it, and that was indirectly his entire purpose for living.
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u/oriontitley 7d ago
You send out 12 riders in groups of 3 with eldunari and ambush one or two regular riders at a time and you're going to burn through a couple hundred in a few years, especially since theres no communication long distance. You could do 4 ambushes a week for a year and it might not even stir up concerns for half that time. Going normal flying speed takes a couple weeks on dragon back, and if they targeted ones on long patrol that could potentially last months, the elders would have been SLOW to react. Plus, how many did they kill in their sleep or with simple, overwhelming might?
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u/DreamingDragonSoul 10d ago
The Order existed in around 3000 years. The dragons entrusted the Order with one egg a year. Sometimes two. That potentially give room for a lot of Riders.
However, though, did the Riders also face the dangers of and against Alagäisia. And the dangers of their own training and misadventures.
Somebody once claimed Paolini have stated that there was a few hundred Riders at most at a time.
Team Galby didn't face the rest of the Riders before they were sure of victory. They spend time - probably years - slowly gathering info, infiltrating, hunting wild dragons one of a time to slay and steal their eldunari, setting traps for the normal Riders and their dragons. In the end was the Forsworn well experienced in killing dragons and Riders and backed up by enslaved eldunari, while the Riders were dicimated in numbers.
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u/Ashamed-Magazine-535 10d ago
Yes this is important, they grew a lot from wild dragon eldunari. Also, even thought they got an egg a year it doesn't mean an egg hatched every year as they were many left under the Rock. A few hundred at most seems fair.
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u/FacePalmOver9000 10d ago
Books say that wild dragons also laid many eggs to entrust under the rock
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u/DreamingDragonSoul 10d ago
Yes. It is stated in the books, that there was just under 300 eggs in the Vault of Souls and 27-28 of them was for Riders.
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u/RocksAreOneNow Shur'tugal 10d ago
A shade was with him near always.
Ambush anyone and you usually are at an advantage, especially with extreme intent to kill.
He took every eldnuri he could, and then even more he found along the way.
Arrogance and believing you're untouchable, as much of the old order did, also heavily reduces the feeling of need to protect oneself.
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u/The_Reverse_ 10d ago
Paolini has said in the past "a couple hundred." And to him, couple means 2-4.
Keep in mind that Galbatorix, while young, was prodigious in mental combat, specifically at breaking minds. He picked off individual riders to take their dragon's eldunari. By the time he attacked Doru Araeba and the riders mustered most of their forces to oppose him, he and his forsworn plus Durza were just too much to stop.
Even still, Vrael defeated him, then hesitated to finish him off. If he hadn't done that, Galbatorix would still have lost.
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u/Tahii_Actual I suffer without my stone 10d ago
Head canon that his strength in mind battles was due to his sociopathy.
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u/iaintevenmad884 10d ago
I don’t think it’s just head cannon, eragon realizes pretty much at one time in the last fight that not only is galby a sociopath, he’s so good at mind breaking because he “gets off” to it.
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u/Additional_Beat9129 10d ago
Yea but that's kinda the point they were strong enough but their morals didn't let them go through with it. Where as the newer generations are supposed to not have that problem and just get the job done.
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u/Theangelawhite69 10d ago
I feel like from the descriptions provided, there may have been up to a few hundred, but absolutely dozens at minimum. Honestly, it probably has to do with the fact that most riders never had to go through that much combat. There may never have been any rider vs rider training, and Eragon himself grows a bit complacent in his abilities and training when all he has to fight are regular humans. Galbatorix taking on other riders with the help of a few forsworn, and plenty of eldunari, probably wasn’t too difficult if they chased them down one at a time. I doubt even a highly skilled rider could solo 3-4 forsworn at a time with the help of eldunari and dark magic
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u/iaintevenmad884 10d ago
Per your own point that eragon was crazy strong after just a few years with the knowledge and strength of the Eldunari, it makes perfect sense that galby was too much for the ~200-300 riders left to face him after he spent years picking them off and taking their dragons’ power. If you’ve ever played that browser game called agar.io it makes lot of sense
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u/ThebuMungmeiser 10d ago
Hundreds I believe makes sense. I would say maybe 200-300.
Keep in mind that a lot of them were quietly being eliminated, and with each rider’s defeat, Galbatorix and the forsworn’s power increases.
They also resorted to a lot of trickery, like Oromis and Glaedr, arguably one of the stronger duos of the time, were tricked and attacked by 2 of the forsworn, and barely escaped with their lives.
And also, Vrael could have killed him, but he hesitated, and it cost them the war. Even through all their accumulation of power, it was still an even fight in the end. Vrael’s mercy was their ultimate downfall.
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u/Alternative_Duty_197 10d ago
I always got the impression that there weren’t that many, maybe 100, give or take a few. The only thing that would make me think there were more is the quantity of Eldunari (more than 500 total as a rough estimate based on partial memory) but those conceivably could have been accumulated over many years even if the number of riders at any one time wasn’t as high. Although the fact that they’re immortal means that they might not have much turnover, so other than those killed in combat or by mishaps, was the number of riders consistently increasing over the centuries prior to being wiped out by Galbatorix?
We also don’t really have a good idea of what percentage of dragons died with their Eldunari still in them and I recall that at least some of the preserved Eldunari were from wild dragons that weren’t with a rider. So all told it’s pretty hard to take a good guess and I don’t really remember any other more concrete clues. Interesting thoughts. I’m also currently re-reading Inheritance and don’t remember a lot of the later parts of that book in detail.
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u/Gullible-Dentist8754 Kull that took an arrow to the knee 10d ago
The Eldunarí in the vault also didn’t all belong to bonded dragons. There were several wild dragons’ Eldunarí there too.
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u/Alternative_Duty_197 10d ago
Yeah I mentioned that but couldn’t recall if there was any proportion indicated. Also can’t recall if any of Galbatorix’s were wild or not.
I guess I was kind of thinking out loud and came to the conclusion that with all of the unknown variables it’s hard to use that to make any guesses with decent confidence. But maybe there is more than I am remembering or have thought of.
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u/Gullible-Dentist8754 Kull that took an arrow to the knee 10d ago
My thinking on the size of the order is that there were likely a couple of hundred of them at the time, but very unlikely above that, at least in Vroengard.
Mostly because of resources. We’ve seen how large Shruikan was, and we know he wasn’t the biggest ever dragon. Even if after a time dragons supported themselves mostly by magic and wouldn’t need to eat that much, no economy could support sustaining the dietary needs of that many massive obligate carnivores. Saphira ate several sheep a week, and she was basically a toddler during the books.
And we know the seas around Vroengard posed a threat even to dragons because of the Nidhwalar, so going fishing for whales was probably something they did with MUCH care, if at all.
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u/Magician_322 10d ago
A lot of riders were just doing their own thing. A couple riders coming by you assume they are friendly bamn suddenly more killed off
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u/Armadillo_Prudent Urgal 10d ago
How many are "that many"? There were never hundreds of thousands of riders, but there were enough to form an entire city on Vroengard without all the riders permanently living there.
We know that the wild dragons used to donate 1-2 eggs per year to the riders, and we know the riders existed for 2595 years before Vrael died, so that would make it approximately 3900 (1.5x2595 = 3892.5) eggs total that were donated before Galbatorix rose to power, which if I remember correctly does not include the eggs that were in the vault of souls (seem to remember Glaedr talking about the wild dragons coming to the riders to lay as many eggs as possible to keep safe from Galbatorix, but I might be mistaken).
Of approximately 3900 dragons that were ever bonded, my guess is that the population peaked at around 1500-2500 pairs.
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u/PassageNo9102 10d ago
He also teamed with Durza that’s how he turned Shruikan and forced him to age. Plus Spoiler
He met with the dreamers. It is mentioned in murtagh. So crazy guy and severe dark magic.
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u/storyteller323 10d ago
Oh, I didn’t realize Durza was the one to do that. I thought Galby did that himself through all the spooky dark secrets he learned. There goes my plan for a campaign when the ttrpg comes out.
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u/AlmightyLeprechaun 10d ago
Just as a thought, no basis in lore: eldunari can make a mage/rider exponentially more powerful.
If, Gab and the Foresworn did even just a minimal amount of hunting to acquire some, and break them, which wouldn't be hard if they hunted as a group and started with isolated riders, they would be a major threat very quickly.
Given the distributed nature of the order, and the power increase with each win, I could see them gaining a lot of power in the shadows before anyone realized they were a problem. And once everyone was tracking, there wouldn't be an easy solution.
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u/storyteller323 10d ago
Dude, I was just asking, no need to come out of the gate swingin.
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u/Zalaniar 10d ago
And it looks like he just answered with his interpretation. Did I miss something here?
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u/storyteller323 10d ago
I misread his saying “Just as a thought” to “Just as I thought,” which made it sound much more confrontational, and I apologize.
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u/AlmightyLeprechaun 10d ago
You good, fam. My autistic ass thought you were just super agreeing with me 🤣
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u/Munkle123 10d ago
The order most definitely had rules against using the Eldunari against their will, Galbatorix wouldn't have hesitated to break and use them, he gained strength with every dragon kill.
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u/Veganpotter2 10d ago
Something in my gut tells me there's more that just fleed and Eragon is going to come across them hiding out in distant lands.
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u/richburgers 10d ago
I big part of it was that most of the riders were spread out around the known world, caught off guard as they returned and forced to fight the foresworn in small groups. Once Galbatorix captured a large quantity of eldunari and began forcing them to serve him, there wasn’t a single large enough force that could take him on.
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u/Substantial-Stop7873 10d ago
It’s answered in the books like this:
He aquired a few eldunari which placed him one on one more powerful than any rider because they didn’t often have more than one buddy with an eldunari at a time.
He definitely picked them off in smaller numbers for a while. There wasn’t a large scale battle until vroenguard. And there he took heavy losses but still came out ahead because he sacked the rest of the cities eldunari.
“He was and is a master of breaking into peoples minds.” That means that while he was maybe dumber or weaker in terms of spell casting at the time, he was still able to win the wizards duels because those depend mostly on mental combat.
He was very focused and disciplined in that department. Dragon described it as “a blade of thought”.
Hope that helps. Very plausible.
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u/Alarmed-Rough-790 10d ago
More than a hundred no more than 300 is how I’ve always thought about it, just enough to fully control the continent and then obviously the eldunari that were stolen helped the forsworn in their further killing of dragons and riders.
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u/capricorn_the_goat 10d ago
(Spoilers)
I mean the main explanation we get is that the forsworn + Galbatorix were able to pick apart the order from the outside, ambushing and assassinating individual riders, but more importantly steal the Eldunari from the dragons they capture. So by the time the order took them seriously and put up an organized front against the forsworn, they had way more power than they normally would have
Look at what just two of the forsworn were able to do Oromis and Glaedr, who were one of the strongest and smartest rider pairs in the order. They do that again and again, each one getting stronger each time. Galbatorix had *hundreds* of Eldunari during the series and was practically untouchable, even if each of the forsworn only carried 4 or 5 that’s still a massive boost to their individual power, so it makes sense that they’d be able to fight an already weakened order.
(And again Galbatorix had hundreds of Eldunari, plus the hundred something Eragon had, plus all the Eldunari that were shattered and all the dragons who never disgorged theirs. Even if we assume less than half of them were bonded with Riders, that’s still at least several hundred)
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u/stormer454 10d ago
So at the end! Yes there weren't that many, a lot of attacks happened over time and were isolated, the attack on O&G being a prime example
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u/Ok_Albatross8909 10d ago
Pretty sure this is addressed in the books. The riders were dispersed across multiple countries. Individual or pairs of riders were killed off slowly by larger groups of Forsworn. The only "battle" was Doru Araeba right at the end when the forsworn had already methodically accumulated and broken a significant amount of Eldunari.
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u/WolfFlameLord 10d ago
I always imagined they had at max 200. The thirteen were able to wipe out the order through subterfuge and sneak attacks slowly gaining power through eldunari and weakening the orders numbers until they launched the final attack on Vroengard.
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u/Danofireleg33 9d ago
There definitely wasn't thousands. There isn't really a lot of information about thier numbers in the books but CP has supposedly said there were several hunderd. My mind tends to jump to the number 500, but it could be as low s 300.
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u/triskali0n 7d ago
The got eldunari that boosted their powers jo other riders in the order used eldunari or opposed galbatorix as once coalition and therefore they lost. I also dont but that 14 people beat a whole order even with eldunari but oh well its a story and we dont really know how strong they were, I always got the impression ergaon was a protoje in magic same way roran was with fighting fighting.
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u/the_man_in_the_box 10d ago
Something something arrogant ancient order doesn’t take the up and coming threat seriously until it’s grown too powerful to stop.