Book III, Chapter 24
One surprising aspect of draconic biology is that there is a limited degree of voluntary control by the female dragon over her reproductive cycle. While the mating urge itself is hormonal in nature and nigh irresistible when the flock is of sufficient size to reach critical mass, the fact remains that every egg produced by the female is a significant expenditure of energy. This is both in the immediate sense, in that each egg contains a yolk rich in hydrocarbons, carbohydrates and proteins sufficient to sustain the embryo for the next half year, and in the long term, as the resulting hatchlings will require parental care through to adolescence.
So while they are hormonally compelled towards mating, female dragons have a crude degree of control over their own fertility, able to choose whether to have none, some, or many eggs in a given year, based on their number of extant pre-adolescent hatchlings, the availability of food, the perceived sense of safety and stability in a given nest, the availability of helpers (and conversely, whether they might be needed to help close kin with their own young) and other such factors.
Current theories as to the origin of this ability simply point to the fact that pre-modern dragon clutches often had horrifying degrees of hatchling mortality, even with the value that draconic culture placed on parental care, so the ability to suppress the production of closely related competitors would be selected for…
—An Introduction To Dragon Biology, 17th Edition, Oxford University Press, 1793
Tropes That Appear In This Chapter:
- All-Loving Hero: Despite acknowledging the risks of this approach, Hiccup vows to treat others as worthy of trust so long as they haven't shown any clear sign of being unworthy of that faith, rather than becoming so suspicious of others that he turns them against him.
- Bad Boss: Downplayed. The Screaming White gives the Nightscreamer grief over not seeing him when she returned, not caring that she was tired, but he does listen to her advice on how to deal with the walkers.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Other dragons call Night Furies 'Nightscreamers'. They also call the Screaming Death the 'Screaming White'.
- The Chains of Commanding / Ensign Newbie: Thuggory feels he is not ready to be chief of the Meathead tribe as the position was given to him after his father died of an unspecified illness. He has been doing his best to lead the tribe but he knows he has made mistakes. Astrid worries Hiccup may feel the same way when Stoick dies and Hiccup assumes the throne.
- Clarke's Third Law: One of the people present at the dragon-training class thinks that the horn used to command the dragons is magical, much to Hiccup's annoyance.Gah! It's not magic! Not any more than a drum or signaling horn is magic! I trained the dragons last winter to respond to the signals from that horn, just like you'd train soldiers to respond to the sound of a battle horn!
- Get Out!: Hiccup delivers this to someone in the current dragon-training class who thinks that dragons just serve the humans without recognising that the humans and dragons choose to work together.
- Hero of Another Story: The Night Fury in Mildew's area is acting to try and release its fellows on its own apparent accord.
- Pragmatic Hero: A good description of Eret, who finds himself forced to kill others to protect those of his village who are planning to escape Mildew's authority but doesn't take pleasure in it or enjoy it.
