Epigraphs - Book 3

The epigraphs of Book 3. Click here to return to the index page.

## Epigraphs by Chapter

### Chapter 69: A Gift From The Heavens

**Theodora Porphyrogenita** (AD 980 – 15 April AD 1068) was a Byzantine Empress whose rule typically marks the beginning of the Dragon Era in most histories.  Born into the Macedonian Dynasty, which had ruled the Empire since AD 867, and the niece of the popular emperor, **Basil II,** she was the final ruler of that dynasty; upon her death, the empire fell into a period of decline from which it never truly recovered.  Noted as highly intelligent, capable, and possessing an extremely strict moral character, she spent the majority of her rule attempting to repair the damage inflicted on the empire by the mismanagement of her immediate predecessors.  During the nearly twenty-six years of her reign, she disciplined the feuding nobility and blocked numerous abuses.  However, her reign was also marked by considerable strife due to the growing chaos and conflict of the Dragon Era…

—Encyclopedia Norlandia, 7th Edition, AD 1642, Edinburgh, Scotland

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### Chapter 70: Red Sky at Morning...

By promoting the young Sigurd Trondsson to high ranks in the political and military spheres, Empress Theodora made him into a target for the intricate power plays of the highly corrupt imperial court.  This was not lessened by the fact that, by rewarding him so, she made her favoritism obvious.  This simply meant that all of the myriad kinds of attacks and seductions that he faced had to be more subtle than a knife in the back, although those were tried as well.  At first, Trondsson was very much a liability to the Empress, who had to spend time and effort to protect him, although there are counter-arguments that she was using him as her stalking horse in order to draw out dissatisfied members of the court so that she could deal with them. It was not until later that he…

—Constantinople: The Child Of Rome's Empire, Venice, Italy, 1795

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### Chapter 71: Next to Godliness

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantine Roman Empire had inherited the full formalized legal and political structure of the old Roman Empire itself, without needing to reinvent it. This structure gave it the internal cohesion it needed to maintain its political and military strength. As part of that political strength, the Empire was noted for playing its various rivals and neighbors off against one another in order to keep threats at bay.

One of the core aspects of Byzantine military policy was their use of diplomacy and foreign influence in the furtherance of military strategy.  They maintained active ambassadors with every neighboring state and many that were further away, and did not hesitate to meddle in the internal affairs of other states.

This made the Byzantine Bureau of Barbarians (Greek: Skrinion tōn Barbarōn) an office of considerable influence and importance in the intricate bureaucratic and political structures of the Byzantine government, and it did its job masterfully.  Suspected of having been the espionage office of the Empire by modern scholars, it was, officially, a protocol office for dealing with the ways of foreigners.  However, the office also maintained lists of rivals to foreign thrones, and would happily supply those individuals with money and support if it looked as if the current throne-holder might become a threat, or possibly merely uncooperative.

The Empire also made use of a similar tactic on a larger scale—supporting rival states if their neighbors threatened the Empire.  If the Rus' threatened war, then the Pechenegs could be subsidized.  If the Bulgarians grew restive, then the Rus' could be contacted and favors called in.  A noted exemplar of such divide-and-conquer tactics was Emperor Heraclius, who once intercepted a note from the Persian king ordering the execution of a general and his staff.  The emperor added 400 names to the execution list and sent the note on its way, and watched as the Persian empire fought itself to put down the rebellion that ensued.

Another example of such manipulation occurred when it came to light that Sigurd Trondsson (see Chapter 21: The Dragon Riders) was actually Snotlout clan Jorgenson, effectively next in line to inherit the chiefdom of Berk after Hiccup clan Haddock and his issue.  The Bureau…

—Constantinople: The Child Of Rome's Empire, Venice, Italy, 1795

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### Chapter 72: How The Wheel Turns

There are two great dangers with using dragons for military purposes—overuse and underuse, and frequently they mirror each other.  As with any fighting resource, the temptation to concentrate everything you have into a single hammerblow will always be there.  And it is worse with the use of dragons, due to their high mobility.  One can easily rationalize to oneself that the utility of keeping a mass formation of dragons that can rapidly deploy outweighs the risks of raids and other high-speed attacks.  But the mere fact that dragons are fast doesn't mean that they can fly across Midgard in a day.  Time is still needed to get any army moving, and that is still the case for flocks of dragons, regardless of how well-trained or well-drilled they are—and that still allows for a window which someone alert and ready to attack can use to their own advantage.

—The Wing And The Ax, Queen Marshal Astrid Haddock I, undated draft, Waterford University Archives

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### Chapter 73: Harthacnut Is Better Than None

Harthacnut (Danish: Hardeknud), occasionally named as Canute III, was King of Denmark from AD 1035 to AD 1042, and King of England from AD 1040 to AD 1042.  The son of King Canute the Great and Emma of Normandy, he was born, in July 1017, in England, shortly after their marriage.  As part of the negotiations of surrender in the aftermath of King Canute's conquest of England, Harthacnut took precedence in inheritance over his older half-brothers from his parents' first marriages.  When their father died in AD 1035, Harthacnut was left ruling Denmark, while his half-brother Svein (son of Ælfgifu of Northampton) was faced with a revolt in Norway, and Harold Harefoot (also son of Ælfgifu) took control in England.

[...]popularly seen as little more than a brutal tyrant without virtue or redeeming value, Harthacnut has usually been presented in a highly moralistic fashion in most popular media over the centuries.  In these stories, he is used as an archetypal figure of the corrupt and brutal nobleman whose own evils bring about his downfall, an almost idealized villainous figure from whose tyranny and grotesque abuses the populace are freed from.

As such, in contemporary media, there is little interest in conflicting perspectives on his family background and upbringing that produced him.  This is not helped by the recorded accounts of his actions, including massacres, repressive taxation, executions, feasts in the midst of bad harvests, oathbreaking, violations of hospitality, loyalty purges, and even the posthumous beheading and disposal of Harold Harefoot, his paternal half-brother, in retribution for the death of Ælfred Æþeling, Harthacnut's maternal half-brother.  His death on 11 June, AD 1042 is seen as appropriately fated, but even then, he is typically overshadowed by the other events of the day...

—Dragons of the North: Profiles Of The Viking Lords, Waterford University Press, 1733

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### Chapter 74: It's Planting Seeds In A Garden…

He said to himself: Is there really a person who can sleep and dream for seventy years? How is it possible to compare the seventy-year exile in Babylonia to a dream?  One day, he was walking along the road when he saw a certain man planting a carob tree. Honi said to him: This tree, after how many years will it bear fruit? The man said to him: It will not produce fruit until seventy years have passed. Honi said to him: Is it apparent to you that you will live seventy years, that you expect to benefit from this tree? He said to him: I found a world full of carob trees. Just as my ancestors planted for me, I too am planting for my descendants. Honi sat and ate bread. Sleep overcame him and he slept. A cliff formed around him, and he disappeared from sight and slept for seventy years. When he awoke, he saw a certain man gathering carobs from that tree. Honi said to him: Are you the one who planted this tree? The man said to him: I am his son's son.

-The Parable of Honi and the Carob Tree, The Talmud, Taanit 23a

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### Chapter 75: ...You Never Get To See

The roots of the foundational Imperial welfare institutions that provide food, shelter, education and medical care to all Imperial citizens predate the beginnings of the Dragon Era by nearly eighty years, dating back to the middle reign of Stoick's grandfather, Chief Hiccup II.  Despite a tumultuous early reign, Hiccup II's grip on power stabilized during the AD 960s, and with the aid of his friend and confidant, the scribe Dror ben Ezra, he began a period of systematic cultural change; the ad hoc literacy classes that Dror had been holding were formalized and made mandatory for all children, a yearly census was instituted that also functioned as a minor form of taxation, and the formerly orally transmitted laws were scribed and codified. As part of that codification, the Hooligans took the earlier basic necessities that they had provided to temporarily homeless or destitute members of the tribe and made them universal, with Dror drawing on his Judaic background and training for direction in how to implement them...

[…] These educational and welfare systems became one of the core pillars of the Imperial social contract between the State and its citizens; there is no question that, without the economic pump-priming and social cohesion that they created, the young North Sea Empire would have never survived its initial challenges…

—Origins of the Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631

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### Chapter 76: A Grand Tour

The early Dragon Mail stations were an earnest and generally successful effort in standardization; Haddock and Ingerman explicitly acknowledged the degree to which their designs were inspired by the Imperial Roman Castrum system of standardized layouts.  Having experimented with the design in the earliest mail stations in the Alban Isles and Norway, Haddock and his initial construction expedition were able to build the mainland continental stations extremely quickly, typically completing each within a matter of days.  Once the physical stations were built, the local merchant partnerships would take over with maintenance, staffing, and other logistical needs.

These early stations, while they had their problems, were generally well-designed, featuring a landing platform on the roof, housing for the staff, temporary quarters for dragons and riders, resting and feeding stations for the dragons, and mail intake and output offices.  Due to space requirements, they were initially built outside of the local city walls or municipal limits, but quickly accrued settlement in their immediate vicinity, as additional shops and services found the traffic going to and from the mail station to be a natural draw.

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

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### Chapter 77: All Roads Lead To Rome

Another—typically overlooked—area that was tremendously impacted by the integration of dragons was city planning and design.  Human cities prior to the adoption of dragons were universally two-dimensional (with noted exceptions such as Shibam and Derinkuyu), originating from a smaller settlement, typically next to a river or water source, and sprawling extensively across the landscape with greater or lesser degrees of urban planning, guidance, and support infrastructure.  Buildings were typically only a few stories tall and close together, with narrow, twisting streets.  The reasons for this, of course, are obvious: digging underground without the aid of Boulder-class dragons is time-consuming and labor-intensive, as is constructing high-rise buildings without the use of structural steel, even discounting the additional labor involved in climbing up and down such structures.

Modern cities, by contrast, sometimes seem almost as deep and tall as they are wide, with terraurban spaces extending far below the surface, and high-rises extending far above.  Streets are multi-level and broad, with gentle curves to allow for ease of aerial traffic, and elevators and draconic flight connect the various levels together.  Balconies and bridges are typical building features to allow for ease of transit and landing, while buildings themselves typically have high ceilings and wide corridors to allow for draconic foot traffic.  Additionally, the small infrastructure access tunnels are typically designed with the sizes and capabilities of the small dragons employed as maintenance workers in mind.  Some cities are even formed out of hollowed-out mountains and carved into the sides of valley walls; while to our modern eyes these emplacements seem natural, to our ancestors they would have seemed miraculous, something out of fantastical tales.

The transition, of course, was not smooth, and remnants of the transition are easily found and well-documented, despite the loss of some of the key transitional elements to time and demolition.  But still, while they are humble in comparison with their descendants, those first 20-story steel-framed towers constructed in the 1200s cast long shadows through human history…

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 78: …Sailor Take Warning

One of the great advantages of dragon-mounted warfare is the freedom of movement it grants.  Control of the air grants incredible supremacy over those below; a simple rock dropped from above becomes a deadly weapon, and the armory available to a dragon-rider is vaster than mere sticks and stones.  But the weapons alone are only part of that supremacy.  Ground-level enemy forces cannot stand in your way unless you choose to fight them.  Enemy leaders become targets or traps, huddled under half of their army for fear of being plucked like ripe fruit.

For all of the peaceful uses of dragons and their abilities, in war, they make it so that the only thing that can fight or defend against a dragon-armed force on anything resembling equal footing is another dragon-armed force.  And while exceptions abounded in those early years—at the First Battle of the Seine River, for example, or the New Year Fire-Rout—part of that was due to a lack of understanding in how to properly use dragons on the battlefield.  But it swiftly became apparent to everyone in those early days that there were two options: Either one has dragons, or one is beholden to one who has dragons.

There was, and is, really no middle ground.

—The Wing And The Ax, Queen Marshal Astrid Haddock I, undated draft, Waterford University Archives

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### Chapter 79: On The Threshold

One of the great paradoxes that comes from the study of history is that historians are forced to simultaneously speak in both concrete and abstract terms.  We say 'the society decided to change' at the same time as we speak of the leaders making specific decisions.  But the society did not decide to change.  The Hooligans of Berk, for example, did not, as some abstract whole, decide to adopt dragons and grow to become the core of a new sovereign nation over the next five years.  Nor did then-Chief Stoick's decision to allow for the adoption of dragons force this decision.  No.  Individuals within that society decided to change, in how they acted or how they viewed the world, while others did not.  And yet we are forced to speak in the aggregate, the cumulative, taking the broad trend of the social unit and applying it to all members inside.  We can recognize the individual dissenters when their dissent from the mean is sufficient to stand out, and yet this very recognition paints a degree of uniformity on the rest that is both unrealistic and unearned.

Furthermore, referring to the aggregate of the society in the abstract creates a false impression of their numbers, simply due to the common fallacies of equivocation and false equivalence (i.e. we call them the same thing, ergo we see them as being roughly the same).  We project ourselves and our own modern expectations and experiences with current political entities onto the past, despite those historical units being vastly smaller, simpler, and less developed).  We speak of the Byzantine Empire and the North Sea Empire as two simple units.  Due to the difficulties that many have with comprehending large numbers and larger scales, the typical comprehension of the concept of "Empire" lends itself to a false equivalence, that one Empire is much like another Empire in size, population, economy, culture and so forth, but that mental abstraction again does a disservice in scale.  To illustrate, consider that, in AD 1040, there were more people occupying Constantinople and the Thracian farmland immediately outside the city's famous walls than there were in all of the island of Eire in that same year.  Meanwhile, Sweden, Norway and Denmark together had less than a million people combined, while the city of Baghdad alone had over a million people sheltering behind its walls.  And again, in making such comparisons, we fall prey to the lure of the abstract, of referencing the masses of otherwise anonymous people as conglomerate wholes.

But at the same time, such abstraction is necessary; we do not have the data to be able to conclusively say that, out of the approximately 300,000 Albans who lived under King Mac Bethad's rule, 68,821 agreed with his stated desire for continued independence from Berk's influence, while another 121,749 would have been happier if he had made overtures of integration prior to his fatal duel with Astrid clan Haddock.  Such precision is not available to us and we are thus forced to speak in the abstract and the aggregate, erasing the heterogeneous beliefs and attitudes of entire generations—save those individuals who had the foresight to record their thoughts, or the impact that inspired others to record them.

—To Label The Stars: The Cultural Impact Of Names, Kyoto University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 80: Alea Iacta Est

In the study of ecology, there is the concept of 'carrying capacity'—the amount of a given population that a given region or ecosystem can support.  Various factors limit carrying capacity, typically basic needs like food, water or shelter, but exceeding carrying capacity means that the population can no longer support itself on the resources that were available and will undergo a dieback to below the capacity limit.

A common misconception is that humanity managed to escape the carrying capacity of the environment by shifting from hunter-gatherer to agricultural, but in truth, we only managed to shift the nature of the carrying capacity limit.  Instead of escape, we had just begun to manipulate the environment to increase the carrying capacity in our favor (and to the general detriment of other species in the environment).

But the process of that manipulation was and is incremental, and there were and are still diebacks in the form of famine, disease, and other mass fatality events.  Excess capacity for the support of populations and the related productivity surplus rarely kept complete pace with population growth, and was frequently taken from one group by another for their own support (either in the form of external raids/conquest or internal taxation).  The investment of surplus resources into continued growth and environmental manipulation—as well as increased infrastructure designed to help promote per-individual efficiency—was primarily the domain of large empires, many of which fueled their own internal growth by taking resources from conquered populations and regions, and even then, much of these resources were wasted (wars, upper-class lifestyles, etc).

One of the single largest bursts of surplus and productivity in all of human history occurred with the human-dragon species alliance.  This singular event allowed the two species—similar in social structures and temperaments—to benefit from each other's strengths.  Prior to their alliance with humanity, dragon society was based around small, autocratic hunter-gatherer chiefdoms centered around nesting sites and food sources.  These societies faced horrendously high mortality rates, due to famine and conflict with humans.  Even with several nests having begun a tentative shift to agriculture and fish-farming in the decades before Hiccup Haddock meeting and sparing Toothless, those early farms were limited in output and generally primitive in design (and, according to modern analysis of their design, would have resulted in a population explosion followed by a crash when the new carrying capacity was exceeded and the farms failed from the strain).  It was only a general alliance with humanity that allowed both species to thrive in a true positive-sum manner.  Dragons gained the benefit of humanity's experience with food production, processing and, most importantly, preservation, along with medical care, prenatal care, and more, while humans gained access to dragon labor to help with the construction of infrastructure that would benefit both.  Together, the two species became more than the sum of their parts, and it took decades for the subsequent 'hiccup' of productivity to fully unfold and be integrated by population growth and social development.

What occurred as a result was an explosion of social upheaval.  In the countless generations beforehand, both human and dragon societies had evolved strong traditions designed to maximize the chances of survival, of the individual and of the society as a whole, identifying limits to the environment and behaviors that would result in negative outcomes, resulting in fairly rigid/conservative social expectations and behaviors across politics, economics and military activity.  And, suddenly, much of that traditional wisdom was in doubt—if not outright obsolete—because of the new capacities that abruptly existed.  It took most of a century for new norms to establish themselves, and in that chaotic gap as the carrying capacity increased for both species, truly extraordinary events occurred.

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 81: Channels Of Communication

Given the variation across the breadth of dragon biology, it is ultimately self-defeating to speak in anything more than the broadest of generalities on the topic of draconic senses, as there are specific types and breeds and even individuals with exceptional versions of each of the main senses.  However, broad trends can still be observed.

Dragons tend to have high visual acuity, especially for low-light environments: the majority of dragons are trichromats, but one genetic line possesses a mutation that grants them tetrachromacy, and another line being bichromatic but with exceptional low-light vision (highly prevalent among Boulder-class dragons).

Hearing nearly universally manifests in a wider range than that of humans: the common range reaches down to 15 cycles per second and up to 22,000 cycles per second, with some lines having greater or lesser limits, the lowest limit ever documented being 3 cps.  The majority but not totality of draconic communication conveniently happens in the same vocal range as available to humans, but dragons use the lower-frequency ranges for long-distance communications.  While only simple information can be communicated using this method, historically it was used for navigation to and from nests and over long distances.

Smell is significantly more acute in comparison with humans, with some lines having acuity on par with canine bloodhounds, but all dragons are highly sensitive to scents…

—An Introduction To Dragon Biology, 17th Edition, Oxford University Press, 1793

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### Chapter 82: Shackles Of The Past

"Why didn't you?"

That's what she asked me.

"Because I looked at him and I saw myself."

Toothless was every bit as frightened as I was.  Here we were, two kids, both of us still growing up, pushed into a war because our elders told us that was how things were, how they had been, since man and dragon first fought and killed each other.

When she asked, first I said that I couldn't kill a dragon, but then I realized that I wouldn't.  Three hundred years and I was the first Viking who wouldn't kill a dragon.

I was the first to ride one, though.

We were the first to look at the cycle of 'they kill us, we kill them, back and forth until everyone is scarred and dead' and say 'no.'

I looked at him and I saw myself.  Someone who had grown up with this, who had been told that it was fight or die, who was scared out of his mind at what the other would do.  Who, when he had the chance to kill, chose not to.

I've thought about that choice a lot, especially over the last few years.  So many people are afraid of us—of me—for what I might do to them.  Because that's what they would do, or that's what others would do, and why should I be any different?  Or what my kids might do after me.

I don't know if I can look at them and see myself, but that doesn't matter.  Because, when it came down to it, in that moment, I looked at someone that I had been told for my whole life was a monster, was the enemy and who had to be killed without mercy.  "Extremely dangerous, kill on sight."  I looked at him and I said…

"No."

And I broke the cycle with that choice.  I cut the ropes that bound him—ropes I had put there—and I set him free.  And I could have died.

But I didn't.

Because Toothless made the same choice as he saw me make.

We were both scared kids, not even really adults yet, and we made that choice.

And that's what I'm going to keep on doing, making that same choice, over and over and over, and seeing who I can get to come with me this time.  And if they try to kill me, I'll stop them… but I'll give them a chance first.

I have to.

Because to break the cycle of fear, someone has to stand up and show trust.  Even if they don't deserve it.  Maybe especially if they don't.  Because they might be caught in that cycle and have no one to trust.

After all, I was told that a dragon always goes for the kill.

Except when they don't.  Because Toothless had been told that a Viking always goes for the kill.

Except when I didn't.

Since then, there have been people who slapped my hand away and forced me to defend myself and my people.  More than I want to count.  I've killed thousands of people, man and dragon, defending my people.  Tens of thousands.  But I give them a chance to change the path that they've set themselves.  I have to.

Because sometimes…

Sometimes they change.

And how could I live with myself if I didn't give them the same chance as I gave my best friend?

—From the journal of Hiccup Haddock, AD 1045

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### Chapter 83: On The Shoulders Of Giants

A much more potent and frustrating miss on Haddock's part came from his invention of the pantograph (from the Greek for 'all-writing'), when he would soon have all of the parts necessary for the creation of the printing press—which would languish in unrealized potential for more than a century and a half, eventually being realized by Hiccup's descendant, Kamikaze clan Frelsifrædi.  At the time Haddock created the pantograph, he already had the concept of identical production via stamping from his drop-press, along with molds and other forms for creating interchangeable movable type, and would be introduced to the concept of movable type itself from his visits to and trade with Zhōngguó within only a handful of years after his creation of the pantograph.

But instead of building the revolutionary printing press, he created the pantograph as a scribe's aid, as an extension of how things were done in his time rather than expanding outwards into new possibilities.  And the pantograph did change the rate at which books could be copied; a simple pantograph could be made in an afternoon by a competent carpenter or blacksmith, and allowed even illiterates to help with copying books simply by tracing text and diagrams.  But it did not change the method by which books were copied, as a printing press would have.  Books were still copied by hand, one page at a time.

But due to its simplicity, the pantograph quickly became the dominant form of text reproduction, a position it held for the next two hundred years.  There are arguments that Haddock's status as the creator of the pantograph alone pushed the creation of the printing press back by generations, as the more efficient text-copier directly challenged and threatened the supremacy of a device tied to Haddock's legendary reputation.

—The Genius Has No Clothes: An Alternate View Of Innovation, 1818

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### Chapter 84: Generation Unto Generation

The draconic mating period is primarily instinctual, although that is not to say that dragons are completely ruled by their instincts during this time.  The mating period is triggered approximately two weeks before the Autumnal Equinox by hormonal changes; dragon populations living in the tropics often have idiosyncratic mating periods as a result of the region's reduced/eliminated seasonal cues. During the mating period, all sexually mature adults in a flock of sufficient size go into a mating frenzy for a period of six to nine days.  A variety of secondary factors play into the mating trigger, including nutrition levels, access to a suitable nesting site, and the size of the flock.  Below a certain threshold of any of these factors, the mating instinct effectively does not trigger for the affected dragons, beyond perhaps some pair-bonding and reduced levels of mating that will result in undersized clutches, if any eggs at all.

—An Introduction To Dragon Biology, 17th Edition, Oxford University Press, 1793

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### Chapter 85: Inheritors Of Strife

With each day, the world we live in is made anew.

I say this not as a religious mystery or philosophical quandary, but as a statement of fact, because each day, we rebuild the world that defines us and that we ourselves define, based on the world that defined us yesterday.  All of us, man and dragon alike, are defined by our histories and choices.  Consider this conundrum. Suppose that tomorrow, upon rising, I were to state that the ancient laws and duties incumbent upon my station and status did not apply, and that I owed no man my efforts or time.

Well, I would be seen as mad by all of those who had risen that day and expected that those laws and duties would apply to me.  How they would react would depend on many things, but what manner of things tells them that such laws and duties should apply?  Nothing, except for their own histories and choices, the teachings and expectations passed down by our predecessors.  And so, for all that the world is made anew, it resembles the old one quite well in its fidelity.

But now consider: suppose that I taught my own children that the expectations upon them are different than my own?  Or suppose I taught such a thing to all of the children?  Would I be freeing them from my own history, or freeing myself?  Or both?  Is such a thing possible?    Would the definitions shift?  What if I had a particular vision of how the world should be?  Or if I saw the world I live in now as an ideal to be cherished and preserved?

As the world is invented anew with each day, we each have a choice whether to accept the world of yesterday or create the world of tomorrow through our choices of what we accept from our predecessors and and what we teach to our inheritors.

I myself choose to try to make a better world, one where I feel that I am fulfilling my responsibilities to my ancestors and to my descendants, and hope that they, in turn, will work to preserve or improve upon what I have given them.

—Fyrir Hiccup House Haddock VI, Collected Public Sermons & Private Contemplations

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### Chapter 86: For Everything There Is A Season

One of the more serious diplomatic errors that Hiccup made was failing to pay a visit to the King of Francia, Henry of the Capets, until late in AD 1042.  He made multiple visits to Normandy, a visit to the Holy Roman Empire, and visits to many other monarchs and high lords, but seemed to avoid a visit to Paris and King Henry until circumstances forced his hand.  This apparent snubbing in favor of more powerful and connected nobles, including some who were nominally Henry's vassals, combined with Hiccup's later actions, served to highlight Henry's lack of power and influence, and the king did not take the lack of interest well at all.  Simply put, it seemed he wasn't important enough for Hiccup to bother with.

While Hiccup had his reasons for his decisions—setting up the Dragon Mail being one of them, following the coastal route of his merchant contacts—the implicit lack of importance his actions assigned to King Henry soured relations between them before they even had a chance to formally open.

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

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### Chapter 87: Maneuvering Room

The legendary Zhou general Sun Tzu defined strategy, bing-fa, as a set of rules to help make decisions about possible situations and decisions that a person might encounter on the battlefield and off. Personally, I prefer to define the concept somewhat more broadly: A strategy is the set of approaches one takes towards a goal that one has selected.

On a gameboard, the goal is to defeat the opposing player.  At war, the goal can vary, from conquest to defense to punitive measures or other such possibilities.  But the strategy is how one goes about implementing those goals.  On a gameboard or at war, the strategy might be aggressive or defensive, offensive or reactive, straightforward or subtle.  At play, my strategy might be to capture as many pieces of my opponent's as possible, or to outmaneuver them so that I can capture the enemy's key pieces without a protracted struggle.  At war, the possibilities are even more numerous; I might have the goal of conquest, in which case, occupying and seizing control of the enemy's territory is my strategy—or, alternatively, I might strike at the head directly, aiming at the enemy leader with the intent of capture in order to force a surrender and settlement.  In either case, the goal is served and possibly fulfilled.

But the goal is the why and what, and the strategy is the greater how and the when and where, and it is important to never lose sight of that distinction.  You do not have a battle just because you wish to have a battle; no, battles are done in service of a greater strategy, and while stirring tales of heroism might seem like incentive to some, oftentimes it is better to not fight at all, or only fight on one's own terms.  Many of the ruminations on dragon combat in these pages are seen by many as glorifying such battles, and I will certainly agree that there is glory and honor in fighting when necessary.  And that is key.  When Necessary.  But if it is not necessary, then it is just a waste—and there is no honor in that.  To win without fighting should be the strategy any commander worthy of being followed should aim for, and to preserve their forces for another day.

—The Wing And The Ax, Queen Marshal Astrid Haddock I, undated draft, Waterford University Archives

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### Chapter 88: Systems Of Direction

…another factor in the effectiveness of both decision-making and law enforcement is entrenched interests and their associated corruptive influence.

These originate from a simple principle: In any large formal organization of people, there will generally be two types of people of consequence—those who are motivated to help fulfill the purposes of that organization and those who work for the structure and institutional power of that organization.  Over time, the latter group comes to dominate the management structure of the organization, due to their interests and personal direction, combined with the fact that the people who actively wish to fulfill the purpose of the organization will be reluctant to give up those direct duties.  This is not always a bad thing—a truly gifted organizer can have a multiplicative effect on the efforts of the organization—but in general, the end result will be that the people invested in the institutional power of the organization will gain control of it and dictate the functions of it.  And it is rare that such individuals will give up control over the resulting fiefdoms, even if their refusal to relinquish control ends up damaging the actual effectiveness and goal-fulfillment of the organization that they command.

So doctors who wish to heal will go on with the treatment of patients—and above them will be doctors who are less concerned about the patients, but more concerned with the health of their hospital's finances (and possibly their own).  And government officials who wish to aid with the welfare of their communities will be examining roads and homes and food and other infrastructure, but their superiors will be more concerned with the power of their offices.

If left alone long enough, such systems often breed literal dynasties of institutionalists through nepotism—indeed, we get the word nepotism from the Latin word nepōs, for nephew, noting how the Popes of the Catholic Church would elevate their nephews and other blood relatives to high offices in the Church's bureaucracy, including that of cardinal—who then, in turn, would elect the next Pope from among their number, perpetuating the system.  Meanwhile, far below them in the hierarchy were the humble parish priests, administering to their flocks.

This tendency of all organized systems of management must be actively guarded against in order to diminish corruptive effects on the efficacy and speed of decision making, as such individuals often form bottlenecks in the decision-making process, either through incompetence or through willful obstinacy. Considerations of law enforcement are also paramount, as being in a position of power often gives them significant chances for corruption and self-dealing, which are often acted upon.

—Nationbuilding: How People Move, Talk, Think, Organize, & Structure Themselves, 1888, Amsterdam University Press

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### Chapter 89: Initiation

**Weregild**: Archaic term for a fine made as legal reparations for an unlawful death at the hands of an offending party to their victim's family or clan.  The precise value of the payment was based on the legal and social standing of the victim, with no division set between murder and manslaughter.  A freeman was generally used as the base payment amount, with 200 shillings being the value assigned in 8th century Anglo-Saxon law, and this amount then modified appropriately according to the local mores—for example, among the Alamanni, the weregeld for women was twice that of an equal-status man, while among the Saxons, it was half.  An envoy from Charlemagne was worth three times his normal value if killed while in active service to the king, and a priest was worth an extra hundred shillings if he was killed during the reading of Mass—presumably, both of these circumstances occurred enough to warrant the variance in the legal codes.

While these payments seem to be preposterous to a more modern outlook, it is important to note that, in their era, which lacked centralized law enforcement and more modern legal punishments, weregilds functioned as a system that allowed for deescalation of tensions, as opposed to the other option for restitution that was available: the victim's family going out and killing the killer, which would spark a cycle of revenge that would spiral into vendettas and feuds.

—From Aesir To Yggdrasil: A Norse Primer

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### Chapter 90: Ties Of Blood And Seed

One particularly thorny problem that faced the Imperial Assembly Of Law was the question of legal definitions of marriage.  At the time of the Assembly, there were no less than twelve legally and culturally distinct practiced forms of marriage within the bounds of the Empire, and the general legal chaos this caused was part of the impetus for the Assembly in the first place.  The jurists thus assembled faced a significant problem in trying to reconcile the various forms.  Consider the difference between Latin Catholic marriage, which did not allow for divorce, and every other form, which did allow for divorce (and several forms were, in fact, explicitly temporary unless renewed).

Divorce was just one area of consideration, albeit a contentious one.  The necessity of witnesses (needed in Christian forms, not needed in Judaic forms), multiple spouses (allowed in Norse, Islamic, and Gaelic forms, recently outlawed in some Judaic forms, and strictly forbidden by Christian forms), the necessity of clergy or ceremony, the obligations of the spouses to each other, the allowance of same-gender marriages, and, most contentious of them all, mixed marriages between members of different groups… all of these and more were potential problems that needed to be overcome.

The solution which was eventually adopted was, in the general vein of the Assembly's solutions, a broad secular code that stepped back from the religious arena and concerned itself strictly with recognition by the state.  Under that code, any consenting group of adults (barring certain degrees of consanguinity, itself a topic of debate) could choose to register as "married" in the eyes of the state, so long as the group—ranging from the typical two to a record nine—had an agreement arranged beforehand on the particulars of their nuptials in regards to divorce, inheritance, descent, and marital obligations (there were a number of rules instituted there as well, to avoid cases of marital slavery and other abuses).

A number of standardized formulations were likewise hammered out to suit the needs of particular forms of marriage, but these were not required by the law, and it was completely within the realm of acceptability to submit more esoteric arrangements (and often needed in the cases of the larger marriages).  In effect, it was the official legal position of the Empire that the relationships between the marriage participants and their religious and social home groups were not a concern by the Imperial state, at least not beyond how those relationships informed their marriage contract.

While this was strongly opposed by social conservatives, the fact was that bickering between the conservative groups sabotaged their efforts to stop it.  No one group of them could get the rest to agree on *which* implementation of marriage they desired to be backed by law, even as all of them agreed that they did not approve of the more broadly defined version.  This strife among those who wished to have marriage be more narrowly defined according to their own desires allowed for the passing and implementation of the law in the Grand Thing.  And while this did not bring an end to strife regarding marriage within the Empire, it at least allowed for a legal unity in terms of recognition of what a marriage was and wasn't.

—Origins of the Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631

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### Chapter 91: Ceremonies Of Light And Dark

The "Species Problem" is the general term in the biological sciences for the difficulty in defining what a "species" is, with literally dozens of recognized methods and criteria for the definition of a "species."  And in the context of this text, one of the more well-known examples—which has literally been known to start fist-fights among biologists of the author's acquaintance—is the question: are dragons one species, or many? (Note that first priming the biologists with strong drink or a lectern podium aids in achieving the desired results).

The issue with defining dragons as a species is that dragons are, both in their genetics and phenotypes, a "terrible mess," to quote Frelsifrædi, Haddock, Levi and Lewis in their seminal paper "Genetic Variety Of Worldwide Draconic Populations: Diversity And Bottlenecks" [Journal Of Genetic Studies, Summer, AD 1781].  Dragon genetics and populations resemble a river delta, with numerous braided tributaries and links of gene flow between different populations.  In general, the archaeological record tells us that ancestral dragon population originated on Syndriland and migrated to the Javanese archipelago between 18 and 15 million years ago, where the numerous volcanoes and rich fishing waters of those island arcs helped define the dragon species' specializations as flying, fire-breathing semi-obligate piscivorous social animals who use geothermal hot spots as breeding sites.

However, genetic analysis shows that, even during those early days, dragons were already specializing into different forms that were still part of a larger population capable of interbreeding and gene flow.  After leaving the Javanese islands and spreading out over the rest of the world, population isolation and mutation resulted in the creation of more breeds of dragon—but, like dogs, they are still generally capable of interbreeding with other members of their species.  *Generally*.  And here lies the headache of defining dragons as a singular species or as several distinct-but-closely-related species.  Because where does one draw the lines for the distinctions?

To illustrate this, consider that there are a number of general parent categories of dragon, with the precise count depending on the schema used.  The ancient Norse used a six-category system based on the dragon's general affinity (Stoker, Sharp, Boulder, Strike, Tidal and Mystery), a system which has survived to the present in various technical vestiges and common parlance.  Other systems have been devised in the years since those days, many of them more accurate but also more technical, and we will be addressing those later in this text.  But to use the familiar terms from the archaic system, generally speaking most Stoker-class dragons of the same size are capable of interbreeding and producing viable young.  The same goes for most Boulder-class dragons and so forth.  However, a Boulder-class and a Stoker-class might not be able to interbreed as successfully, although such crosses are known.

To quote Dr Susana Fyodorna, the leading dragon geneticist at the University of Kyiv, "It looks as if the dragon genome takes the feature sets from the parents, smashes them together, and sees if it explodes or not.  Six limbs?  Four limbs?  Heptane or kerosene?  Spawn it and see if the build works!"  (Further note: Dr Fyodorna has a very potent left fist).  And her statement is essentially accurate; if the genetic code proves viable then a dragon is hatched, possibly one with unique features.  If the genes aren't viable, then the fetus might miscarry, with the most extreme examples resulting in the egg exploding in a manner similar to embryos with developmental defects.

In essence, the more similar two dragons are, the more likely they will be able to mate and produce viable offspring, but, to the frustration of biologists—and the amusement of their onlookers—this does not preclude successful matings and breeding between dissimilar dragons.  And while there are populations which are so dissimilar that there are no records of successful crosses, a line still cannot be drawn around one population separating it from another as "one species," not when there is still gene flow.  Yes, a Terrible Terror and a Bewilderbeast are certainly not capable of mating together, much less producing viable offspring… but the Terror can mate with breeds adjacent to it in size, as can the Bewilderbeast, and, via a dozen or more intermediary breeds, there can be gene flow between them—and drive the recording biologists to drink and pugilism.

The reigning theory at present is that most dragon breeds are simply specific sub-populations of the greater dragon species which have achieved self-sustaining population numbers, and as a result can find similar mates without too high a degree of consanguinity.  Some of these populations have almost completely diverged from the greater species, such as the multi-headed breeds, where others, especially among the Strike-class dragons, have small populations and require regular interbreeding with other dragon breeds in order to avoid dangerous levels of inbreeding.  Strike-class in particular have high rates of egg miscarriages due to this factor—the biological tolerances on their plasma-generating organ systems are simply so stringent that developmental disorders are nearly always fatal, but their numbers are often so small that they must mate with dragons from different breeds to avoid inbreeding, meaning that the parental differentials often have terminal results for the embryos.

—An Introduction To Dragon Biology, 17th Edition, Oxford University Press, 1793

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### Chapter 92: The Exercise Of Vital Powers

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

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### Chapter 93: A World Richer And Fuller

**Empress Valka Zephyr Haddock II** (November 3, AD 1042-December 30, AD 1131): First titled Empress elected to the Imperial Council of the unified North Sea Empire.  Firstborn child of Hiccup and Astrid Haddock.  Much like the rest of her extended family, the actual details of her life, while well-documented, have been embellished over the centuries to the point of near-absurdity.  This is not helped by the fact that her actual accomplishments, much like those of her parents, offer a starting point already suitable for high drama and adventure.  For one extremely well-known example, while she was indeed the undisputed leader of her cohort of children, including her future husband Emperor Olaf III, and while it is also true that the Haddock siblings, their cousins and their friends were the first Norse to see the famous Niagagarega Waterfalls of the Vestrilands, the famous and nigh-ubiquitous story of the dragon race down the length of the Ongtupqa Canyon is completely false…

—Dragons of the North: Profiles Of The Viking Lords, Waterford University Press, 1733

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### Chapter 94: For Our Inheritors Standing Before Us

**Princess Asta Rhonda Haddock** (November 10, AD 1042-October 16, AD 1122), the firstborn child of Hiccup and Wulfhild Haddock, was an early Norse scientist of the Dragon Era, whose areas of interest included biology, anatomy, botany, mathematics, geology, paleontology, and cartography.  Taught by her father, she also completed a full course of education at Waterford University.  As one of the foremost early alumni of that institution, she achieved formal recognition as a Master of Natural Philosophy three times over during the course of her career (and is considered to be the founder of the fields of modern geology and paleontology as a result, based on her published studies of the fossils and sedimentary layers of Europa and the northern Vestrilands), in addition to the collaborative research work she engaged in, especially with her other siblings.

While she advised her half-sister, the Empress Valka II, on scientific matters, she actively shunned involvement into politics, viewing them as a distraction from her scientific work…

—Asta Rhonda Haddock (n.d.) In Wikikenna.  Retrieved May 26, 1855

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### Chapter 95: A Time For Every Matter Under The Heavens

…this is not to say that all of Ingerman's early espionage actions were missteps.  While her first year as Berk's spymaster featured a large number of missed opportunities, other opportunities were seized on, including the creation of a network of information gatherers paralleling the initial Dragon Mail routes and the uncovering of several plots against Berk.  Still, her early focus was, unsurprisingly, more on the recruitment of information sources and potential field agents.  It was not until later that the need for analysts and organizational clerks became apparent in the face of the scope of Berk's potential fields of interest across Europe and beyond.

These early days of the North Sea Empire's intelligence services offer a valuable case study in the field of espionage when it comes to the scale of an intelligence service.  Many of the feudal spymasters of the European kingdoms were around Ingerman's initial levels of sophistication, but their concerns tended to be provincial at the behest of their feudal lords and thus needed no further sophistication beyond what could be handled by a single person or at most a small group of people.  Berk, in aiming for a sphere of influence spanning an entire continent and beyond, required an espionage service scaled to suit.  As such, seeing the early failures and successes of Ingerman's tenure—and the inspirations and lessons that she drew upon, from her husband, her mentor, her fellow agents, and even the more sophisticated espionage services of the Byzantine Empire, the Vatican, and beyond—is a potent reminder of not overreaching one's institutions and structuring them to fit the actual needs facing that institution.

—Statecraft: The Great Game Of Diplomacy, Espionage & War By Other Means, 1732, Rouen University Press

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### Chapter 96: Foundations Of Power

To speak of power in the socio-political sense is a broad and somewhat cloudy topic, but in the broadest sense possible, Power is the ability of one entity to get another entity to do what the first wishes.  More than two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Euripides wrote "The Tongue Is Mightier Than The Blade" on the difference between coercive and social powers, and this distinction is important.  Power can come from a number of sources, ranging from coercive power derived from force, consequences, or threats thereof, to more subtle social powers derived from culture, diplomacy, ideals, values, ideologies and other such institutions.

As the ancient philosopher noted, coercive power has its limits in comparison with more social powers; it breeds resentment and resistance, and its influence lasts only so long as the threat lasts.  In contrast, social powers can be attractive and appealing.  This is not to make moral judgments on either form of power and are simply categorizations of sources of socio-political power; an army liberating thralls through coercive power is unquestionably more moral than a political leader using their social power to agitate for the purging of ethnic and religious minorities.

Furthermore, while coercive power in the form of warfare is a major consideration for international relations, it should be noted that every nation that depends on coercive power for internal cohesion is fundamentally unstable, due to the transient nature of coercive power.  Such nations inevitably disintegrate once the coercive power is removed or weakened and provinces kept under control by the threat of force break away.  In contrast, a nation with a strong social power is more stable over time, from the presence of institutions and a coherent identity.

—Nationbuilding: How People Move, Talk, Think, Organize, & Structure Themselves, 1888, Amsterdam University Press

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### Chapter 97: The Path Of Law

"Tzedek, Tzedek, tirdof."  "Justice, justice, you shall pursue."  This week's parsha has this famous injunction, given by Moshe Rabbenu, on how we shall *pursue* justice.  It is not merely stated, but repeated for emphasis, in the context of instructions on the appointment of judges and enforcers of law, of the treatment and behavior of everyone from the highest king to the lowliest beggar, from the staunches of allies down to the worst of enemies.

And from this we learn much.  Justice is not merely a perfect product, dispensed from a court of law like goods available at the market for purchase.  No, justice is an ideal, one which we strive towards but never truly accomplish, for it would mean that in all times and in all places, we meet the standards to which we are held, and to which we hold ourselves—for the Torah is not in Heaven, and neither is Justice.  No, it is ours, here, in Olam Hazeh, and to *pursue* Justice is to engage in Tikkun Olam, and make of our world a better place in accordance with the Law.

The usual response heard to this perspective is that, as Rashi said, that the rest of the verse goes, "that you may live and possess the land that the Lord, your God, is giving you," meaning that it was only incumbent upon us to appoint judges and hold courts of law while living in the Land of Israel, and is not binding outside of it.  This is not true.  Yes, it referred to the long-ago time when we lived as a nation in and of ourselves, and we are since dispersed, and, as Rashi said, it is on that merit that we held our long-ago home.  But we are still told to *pursue* that justice, even if our home is lost, and hold to what we can, even if we do not live in that land any longer.

But perhaps one might think that our justice is only for ourselves.  After all, the injunction to *pursue* justice was spoken only to the Bnei Yisrael.  But this is also not true. "Mishpat achad yihiyeh lachem", we are told.  "You shall have one single standard of justice."  There is no comment there stating that variation in Law, in the ideal of Justice, is acceptable because we now live in a different land.  And it is to that standard that we hold ourselves, the standard which we were told was holy, which we were told to pursue, no matter where we live, no matter with whom we live.  And too,"Ve'ahavta l'reieha komocha"—"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  "Lo ta'amod al dam reiecha"—"You shall not stand by the shed blood of your neighbor."  From this we see that no matter where we live, no matter who our neighbors are, we are commanded to stand by them and to pursue justice for them and for ourselves.

—Collected Divrei Torah of Rabbi Shihook ben Dror, Rosh Yeshiva of Vedrarfjord, AM 4892-4919 (AD 1132-59)

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### Chapter 98: Extended Family

One of the legal bases that the Imperial Assembly used as their guidance in developing consistent laws across the Empire were the previously answered questions regarding citizenship which had been refined in the years earlier.

Specifically, prior to the political conflicts and developments of AD 1043, the laws regarding citizenship, tribal and clan membership, and other such identities were extremely variable across the Alban Isles and its constituent polities.  Berk and its sister Norse societies had laws that automatically granted freed thralls tribal membership upon arrival in their territories, and the Bog Burglars had similar laws regarding women seeking refuge, both cases of which were laws that had been adopted out of pragmatic need over the previous decades and centuries, to give two examples, but free individuals outside of those classes were not considered to be tribal members outside of specific actions taken to adopt them in, which themselves required particular conditions.

Due to this, then-Chief Stoick's ad hoc mass 'adoption' of Vedrarfjord in AD 1041, bringing the residents of the city into the tribe, was technically not in line with the law.  However, as it solved a moral quandary no one spoke up against the action at the time.  Still, the action ended up creating an effectively new class of tribal citizens who held their citizenship by dint of their residence within Berk's territory.  This new class quickly grew to be overwhelmingly demographically dominant as new outsiders came in and took up residence in Berk's new territories, becoming tribal members as a result, on the technicality of being a resident in a region under Berk's control.  The annexations that followed on that precedent made legal matters worse in this regard, and the need for an overhaul of the tribal citizenship laws became quickly apparent.

Further complicating matters in this regard were the interactions between tribal citizenship, clan membership, and the various permutations of life.  Was an individual who had been brought in as a clan citizen due to annexation of their home territory still a citizen upon receiving a sentence of temporary exile due to the commission of a crime, either during their exile or upon their return?  What citizenship rights could a transient merchant claim?  Was it based on his home port, origin of birth, or some other factor?  What rights and privileges were granted to outsiders adopted by citizens, or even directly into a clan, especially with adoption law itself being a complicated tangle of precedents? What status, if any, did an individual claiming sanctuary or refugee status, still hold with their old community?  And so forth.

—Origins of the Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631

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### Chapter 99: Astride The World

…varied widely.  In particular, while the relationships of East Asian humans with the local dragons was superficially more accepting than those of European and Mediterranean humans, the simple fact remained that the two species were in competition for food and other resources.

Generally speaking, the various cultures of the region—Nippon, Huáxià, Việt, Goryeo, Khmu, Java, and others—revered the dragons who lived in the plentiful volcanic peaks spread throughout their region of the world, often as divine or elemental in nature.  This reverence did not prevent conflict between the humans and dragons, however.  Either in spite of or because of their cultural status, dragon poaching was common throughout history, especially due to the medicinal values (perceived or actual) of a number of parts and extracts from various dragon breeds, and rates of poaching spiked notably in times of political instability.

Likewise, the reverence shown by humans in some eras and locations could disarm a nest when the attitude reversed itself.  More than one East Asian nest was devastated, if not wiped out entirely, in periods of famine when desperate humans raided the nest, as the dragons were not used to the dangers that humans could pose to them—or, worse, being acclimated to the presence of humans in the form of monks and monasteries established near the nest in acts of veneration.  This particular cruel irony, that the monks who tended to and revered the dragons also led the human mobs to their targets, was not something that went unnoticed in various records, but it still happened repeatedly nonetheless.

Furthermore and most importantly, the human and dragon populations both needed the productivity of the land and sea to sustain their populations, and every population crash from the dragons gave the humans more room to expand into the vacated space—which they did, resulting in less room for the next generations of dragons.  And this would lead to further conflict.

In Zhōngguó, for example, farm raiding by hungry dragons could be and was seen as a sign that the reigning dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven.  More than one Emperor reacted to this by attempting to bring the unruly servants of Heaven back into proper action, authorizing or even leading organized hunts.  Some of these were more humane, intended to simply scare off the dragons from raiding livestock.  Others were not.  Legal attitudes towards dragons varied over time as well, with some dynasties having more protectionist attitudes towards dragons and passing wide laws protecting them, and others choosing a more narrow outlook.  One major contributing factor of the events of the early Dragon Era was that the Song dynasty had passed a number of strict laws protecting various species in their lands, including dragons...

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 100: The Turning Of Years

**Yule:** Traditional term for the Norse holidays marking the beginning of the Winter season, as well as to the general early winter months.  The holy days proper begin with the Winter Solstice in late December and run for a period of one week in total, although preparations and lead-up activities occupy many of the weeks beforehand.  During the Yule-time, numerous feasts, sacred meals, and sacrifices are made in the hope of a good harvest in the following year.  Of primary focus are the deities **Frigga**, **Freyja**, and **Freyr**, with some traditions also paying homage to **Sif**.  These gods, in their roles of fertility, growth, and prosperity, are petitioned for their aid, and in the cases of Frigga and Freyja, for intercession with their husband **Odin** as he rides at the head of the **Wild Hunt**.  It is specifically noted that one does not invoke Odin during Yule, for fear of drawing the attention of him and his hunting party.

The Yule traditions are rich in symbolism, with ham and boar served for Freyr and Freyja's honor, an entire log burned for Frigga's hearth and hanging mistletoe in remembrance of her son **Baldr**, and a straw goat for Sif and her husband **Thor,** among others, including traditions which honor specific Valkyries.  All in all, the holy days are a bright, festive time, a celebration of light and life in the midst of the darkest winter…

—From Aesir To Yggdrasil: A Norse Primer

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### Chapter 101: Virtue Finds And Chooses The Mean

**Buffalord**: Mystery-class dragon

**Overview**: Metaturnal infrastructural dragon, medical.    One of the primary dragons on the International Model List of Essential Dragon Breeds, the Buffalords form the backbone for much of the worldwide health systems in the treatment of acute infection and disease, thanks to their medicinal saliva and venom.    Militarily useless, the deliberate killing of a Buffalord has been classified for centuries as a war crime by multiple international treaties, since the only purpose in such an act would be to promote disease.    Docile in temperament unless deliberately provoked, they are easily kept in a positive mood by providing them their preferred food: human-produced refuse.

**Breath Type**: Aerosolized Kerosene; due to some of the Buffalord's adaptations, they have difficulty controlling their fire and prefer not to use it.

**Identification**: Medium-to-Large size.    Brown, bronze, green, yellow, purple or blue hide and scales, with lighter underbellies and darker dorsal surfaces.    Bronze, green or brown eyes.    Four pillar-like legs with basic digging claws, large single wing pair.    Large egg-shaped central body studded with rows of launchable spikes.    Blunt head with one horn spike growing atop the skull and two forward-curved horns growing from the cheeks.    Can inflate its central body to twice its usual size as an intimidation tactic.    Proportionately small tail, with vestigial thagomizer.

**Strategic Role**: Strictly rear-echelon medical supply, and disposal of hazardous waste and spoiled foodstuffs.    Buffalords are too valuable as medical support and too fragile to be allowed anywhere near active combat.

**Known Weaknesses**: Slow airspeed.    Large target size.    Hide comparatively unarmored to allow for stretching of signature skin-inflation.    Poorly controlled fire-breath.    Extreme docility.

**Phenotype Cluster**: B8!F6+S ØSØS2+M7TØT2+

**Populations**: Significant and widespread, and found in nearly all human settlements of sufficient size.    As carrion and detritus eaters, Buffalords are also used as organic waste disposal, which further aids in priming their symbiotic bacteria to the antibiotic, antitoxin, antifungal, and antiviral needs of the communities which they serve.

—North Sea Empire, Office of Draconic Intelligence, Dragon Breed Profiles (Declassified), 1822 Edition

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### Chapter 102: Echoes In Eternity

A 'Chain of Events.' Let us meditate on that image for a moment. A *chain* of events, where one event leads to the next, and that one leads to the next, on and on. But events do not work that way. One event, one action, one *choice*, can lead to many more events spiraling out from there, making the 'chain' appear more like a net, or a web.

Still, the image does hold for many uses, where we trace back one step at a time to an instigating cause. And the image of a chain, or a net, does function metaphorically in other ways. Like chains, or nets, events can lift us up. They can also restrain us, bind us, imprison us, hold us back, limit us to a specific area. They can help anchor us to safety. They can be fine and delicate, almost ornamental or even unobtrusive, or stout and strong, made of thick links that bear titanic forces. And, with the proper effort…

They can be broken.

Their effects can be halted, through recognition and choice. A blood feud can be stopped, with the chain of tit-for-tat injury and death ended. A system of injustice can be shattered and rebuilt with an eye for greater goodness. A legacy of brutality can be overcome.

A new chain can be forged, one attached to a hoist to raise, instead of a shackle to bind.

—Fyrir Hiccup House Haddock VI, Collected Public Sermons & Private Contemplations

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### Chapter 103: Roots And Wings

The ancient Hooligan tradition of absurdist or otherwise unconventional personal names that was in place during the time of Hiccup Haddock III (himself a prime example of the tradition) originated, according to tribal legend, with Hiccup III's ancestor, Hiccup I. According to the sagas, his parents named him when the baby had nonstop hiccups prior to his formal naming—and then a plague broke out which decimated the other infants of his cohort, and young Hiccup I not only survived, he never contracted the disease at all, a pattern which persisted through the next two years of plague outbreaks. Then, according to the saga, another toddler who had contracted the plague and was in danger of dying from it had his name changed from Varg to Catbrains in desperation by his parents, and was healthy within a week.

This resulted in absurdist names for nearly all of the tribe's children over the next generations, a situation apparently enhanced as a result of the difficulty which the tribe had in bringing pregnancies to term due to Nadder venom-induced miscarriages. With the birthing of children being so hard to achieve during this period, children were prized and even coddled as much as the harsh environment allowed them to be. The prizing of *any* child, no matter how sickly or bastard-born, reached the point where the tradition of exposing sickly infants which was the norm in other Norse cultures was rejected emphatically by the Hooligans.

Further reinforcement of the naming tradition came from the extinction of several other clans during this time, as well as Clan Hofferson's near extinction in the late-900s AD all of which were seen as being the natural consequence of failing to heed the tribal wisdoms of unconventional names. Over time, this tradition eventually grew to encompass a protective aura against other childhood threats to life and limb, both real and mythical.

—To Label The Stars: The Cultural Impact Of Names, Kyoto University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 104: Proliferate And Disseminate

Much like birds and bats, dragons have an aggressively active immune system in comparison to humans, and for much the same reasons.  Simply put, for a flying animal, an inflammatory response in the face of an infection is often a death sentence, so there is significant selective pressure for immune systems which can deal with an infectious agent quickly.  In the case of draconic immune systems, this goes one step further, as an unchecked infection of the dragon's hydrocarbon organ system can have literally explosive results.

As such, while there *are* diseases that can affect dragons—especially ones that target the dragon's symbiotic bacteria—on the whole, a typical dragon's immune system resembles a military base swarming with constant armed patrols and barriers of razor-tipped wire.  A disease attempting to stage an infection of such a system needs to be extremely effective at intrusion, starting with thwarting the symbiotic bacteria in the salivary glands that are the immune system's first line of defense.  These bacteria not only help dragons create the biofilm mucuses that aid with fire resistance in the otherwise vulnerable soft tissues of their mouths and throats, they are primed to help their host with fighting off any microscopic invaders who attempt to get a toehold in the tissues of the mouth and gut, as the bacteria secrete a variety of antibiotics, antivirals and antitoxins—this last being significantly important in breeds whose breath can have toxic byproducts—all of which are refined by selective pressures on the symbiotic bacteria for maximum efficaciousness.

That being said, there is still a range within the greater dragon species in terms of immunological effectiveness.  If a typical dragon's immunological response is akin to a military base on high alert, then those dragons whose diets expose them to biological hazards up the ante, to being more akin to a forward artillery base with active minefields and with gunnery crews in possession of itchy trigger fingers.  The saliva of many Boulder-class dragons are rich in antitoxins, including ones that can encapsulate elements such as arsenic, rendering them relatively harmless and ready for expulsion in the dragon's fecal waste (although this is not a universal defense, as the radiological poisonings from the ingestions of radioactive materials and the cancers caused by the ingestion of asbestos both demonstrate). Meanwhile, Buffalords, the premier example of a draconic immune system taken to extremes, consider botulism to be a spice in the vein of how humans consider mint or caffeine, raw pufferfish is seen as a tasty snack, and cyanide is a treat.

—An Introduction To Dragon Biology, 17th Edition, Oxford University Press, 1793

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### Chapter 105: No Greater Fear Than That Of Love Standing Helpless

The idea of blood is ridiculous.

And while I have some complaints to Odin about the red stuff that runs in our bodies and leaks out when you poke too hard, that's not what I'm talking about here.

The idea of *good blood* or *bad blood* or *bloodlines* or 'they take after their father or mother,' or, going bigger, *that's just how they are because of who they are*, **what** *they are*, that's absurd.

I'm proof of that. I grew up as my father's runt of a child, someone who was strange and who didn't fit in, despite all of my efforts to be just like them. How can I say to other people that that's what I would expect of them because of who their parents were, who their family is, when I remember so strongly that I *wasn't* like my own father?

'That's just how they are'. Oh really? That's just how 'they' are? Why? It didn't matter to me how much 'Vikings' were like that, even as I tried to be one with all of my (rather sad) might. I wasn't an ax-wielding warrior.

Yes, there are *tendencies* across groups of people. But those come from how the child is taught, from what the people around them say is acceptable on how to behave, and also from their own personal gifts and temperaments. Everyone likes to say now that *my* eldest kids are *'geniuses, just like their father'* since they started reaching adulthood and I'm finding out *exactly* what my father and Gobber meant by "the Grandparents' Curse". And yes, part of me would like to think that it's all my 'blood'. But it isn't. It's because when they were little, I helped them ask questions and *grow*. I encouraged the parts of them that wanted to know, wanted to understand the world and how it is put together. And not all of my kids are that kind of 'genius'. Oh, Asta and Magni definitely are, and it's been a joy to watch them scare and upset the old scholars as they've finish their schooling—or in Valka's case, scare the lords now that she's starting to take some responsibility in leading. But Hamish, ahem, 'takes after his mother,' and while he's certainly smart enough, he's not *interested* in being a philosopher or a lord or an artist or a priest like his brothers and sisters are. He's growing up to be a warrior, a soldier, an officer and general like his mother is, and I'm just doing my best to help him be a man of honor and not a bully. And I'm not going to force him to be like me if he doesn't want to be. I know how much that hurts.

But that's just my own family. I wasn't a model Hooligan growing up, no matter how many tales people tell now to the contrary. Fishlegs grew up around books and cultivated that in him, but he wasn't a perfect warrior as our people pictured it either. Hel, Mildew, may Nidhogg gnaw on his bones, was *one of us*, and look at how he acted! It was as if every law and rule we had was something he viewed as a challenge to break!

So when I hear people say in the Thing that that's 'just how the Turks are', or 'everyone *knows* that's how the Han people are', or any of that…

I always end up asking sarcastically about what 'everyone knows'. After all, 'everyone knows' that Jews are weak scholars—and some of our most highly honored soldiers come from their people. I've had my own people comment to me in private that 'everyone knows' how Franks are untrustworthy fanatics who will betray oaths to outsiders if they can find an excuse. And, sure, there have been examples of that… and there have been many more examples of good and kind members of their people, who repay decency with decency and honor with honor.

No. Blood is ridiculous. I grew up with a smith for a guardian and became a craftsman. My wives grew up in the homes of warriors and leaders, and that's what they were *taught* to become.

And that is why I do my best to help my people, regardless of their 'blood', to grow and fly on their own.

Because I know what it's like to be a square peg in a round hole, even if people now are saying that the hole was always square.

It wasn't.

—From the Journal of Hiccup Haddock, October 12th, AD 1067

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### Chapter 106: Rally

Wild dragon hatchlings would typically spend their first two to five years being heavily dependent on their parents and extended family for food and care, despite being able to fly on their own after a period of only a few months. This childhood stage would typically involve the education of the young dragon in language and culture, with a strong focus on practical hunter-gatherer skills. This education would continue into pre-adolescence, during which time the young dragon would venture further and further from their home nest, gaining more and more independence from their parents. Upon reaching adolescence, most dragons would leave their home nest, searching for potential mates. Some would stay together as a small flock for mutual support while others would travel alone. Both strategies had their advantages and disadvantages: going as a group would lessen their chances of acceptance at a nesting site, but would increase their chances of finding sufficient food, and as such it was common among young dragons with close or extended relatives; traveling singularly lessened their dependence on others and increased their chances of finding a place, but also increased their risk of starvation.

Finding a nest willing to accept new members was usually a matter of luck; such nests would broadcast a call in ultra-low-frequency infra-sound that triggers an instinctual homing response in dragons, useful for helping both newcomers and established residents find their way home even under adverse conditions. These nest calls would also have the unfortunate side effect of possibly causing feelings of fear in humans in its radius, and are thus rarely used anymore.

—An Introduction To Dragon Biology, 17th Edition, Oxford University Press, 1793

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### Chapter 107: The Third Principle Of Sentient Life

The New Year's Fire Rout was a pivotal military battle between the Pecheneg-led conqueror coalition and the Song Dynasty. While Song casualties were heavy—estimates range between 45,000 and 70,000 dead between the initial attack and the aftermath—they also dealt the Pecheneg coalition their first significant defeat after a string of unresisted conquests. Proportionately speaking the Pecheneg losses were heavier than that of the Song, and the complete rout of the Pecheneg forces and the subsequent political developments began a short-lived period of political infighting and consolidation among the coalition, buying the Song and their neighbors time to prepare a response…

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 108: By Their Fruits

Pre-modern dragon social structures and culture were based around the institution of the nest, a result of the necessity of these sites for breeding. Due to the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of the dragons, all pre-modern nests had a finite ceiling to the population they could support, which led to a lifestyle that was a hybrid of sedentary and nomadic elements, with many dragons moving from nest to nest over the course of their lives (especially in early adolescence), and yet still spending a large portion of their lifespans in one location.

At the center of each nest's social structure was the nest's lord, the *Thengill*, typically the oldest, largest, and most powerful dragon present. The Thengill would—ideally—protect the nest and the eggs and hatchlings inside, organize and direct the nest's members (including banishing excess members when the nest had exceeded the number the region could support) and act as a social and military leader for the members of the nest. Regardless, their word was law and their decisions final.

While abuses by Thengills were sadly common as a result of this unchecked power, the resource they commanded in the form of access to the nest and the breeding potential it represented was such that the vast majority of dragons would accept their terms without question. And due to their age and experience, few other dragons could challenge the Thengill—and often the second-strongest dragon in the nest was the Thengill's auxiliary, or even their chosen successor. Still, when a Thengill weakened from hunger, illness, or injury, challengers would appear.

—The Life Of Dragons, Ánslo Academic Publications, 1563

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### Chapter 109: Shift Happens

Prior to the Norse Reformation, the ethno-religion of the Norse people was technically a folk religion with mixed shamanistic practices and no centralized doctrines.  Lacking a canonical unifying text and relying primarily on oral transmission, the particulars of practice and belief differed from region to region, with some particular beliefs and practices being idiosyncratic in comparison to the whole of the religion—which was itself an offshoot of the archaic Germanic religion that had existed in central and western Europa during the prior eras.  While pre-Reformation texts which are not from Berk and related tribes are comparatively rare, idiosyncratic differences can still be seen between what examples we do have.  It was only later, with Berk's doctrinal canonization which overwrote a great deal of the variation in regional belief, that the Norse religion adopted a set of canonical texts.

One such example of a divergence in belief is that of Sif, Thor's wife.  In eastern Norse beliefs, she was primarily an Earth fertility and farming goddess, with her golden hair being an allusion to fields of grain and her marriage to Thor being a symbolic bond between the earth and sky—especially that of life-giving rain on farmers' fields.

In contrast, Sif's depictions are expanded in the beliefs of the Eirish Sea Norse which were eventually canonized by the Norse Reformation.  Textual analysis and primary sources show the primary movers of the divergence being the Bog Burglar tribe, which began as a breakaway Sif and Freyja cult sometime in the 800s AD.  Here, Sif is still a goddess of the fertility of the earth—a fertility which is enhanced by the blood spilled on the ground by killing attackers attempting to destroy her home, hearth and family.  In these depictions, Sif's role is expanded to be similar to that of Freyja, as a deadly warrior woman.  However, in contrast to Freyja's focus on the offensive aspects of warfare, Sif's focus is decidedly defensive, that of a mother protecting her children and standing her ground with a refusal to retreat, and a fertility goddess who is *completely* willing to use the blood and bones of the fallen to enrich her fields.

—The Second Flowering Of Yggdrasil: An Analysis Of The Norse Resurgence, 1710

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### Chapter 110: A Unity Of View

**Bewilderbeast:** Tidal-Class dragon

**Overview:** Amphibious-aquatic infrastructural/industrial dragon. In modern economies, they are helpful with construction of aquatic and submersible infrastructure and mining, as well as offering chemical and traditional refrigeration services. Militarily useful primarily in naval defense, as their speed is too slow to keep pace with a modern fleet, but are extremely useful for securing harbors and amphibious landing zones when called for.

**Breath Type:** Flash-Frozen water mixed with Ammonium Nitrate.

**Identification:** Medium to Gargantuan size. White, gray or black scales and hide, studded with large blunt spines along the back, neck, and tail, holding up a vestigial pair of wings along the lateral sides of the thorax. Four pillar-like legs. Two large tusks jut forward from the temples, aiding in water streamlining during swimming. Long tail with wide fin at terminal end, supported by more spikes. Overall teardrop body profile.

**Strategic Role:** Naval auxiliaries, submersible ship protection, mine-sweeping, submarine hunters, logistical support, construction support, amphibious assault support.

**Known Weaknesses:** Slow speed, semi-obligate aquatic, with larger individuals able to spend increasingly less time out of water without risk of harm. Modern mines and torpedoes can easily penetrate their hide in the absence of armor or countermeasures. Needs to breathe.

**Phenotype Cluster:** B5F3+SØSØSØT7+T5!

**Populations:** Moderate, but restricted to coastal and riverine regions, for obvious reasons.

—North Sea Empire, Office of Draconic Intelligence, Dragon Breed Profiles (Declassified), 1822 Edition

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### Chapter 111: Need To Know

Another advantage that the Byzantines inherited from the Roman Empire and subsequently refined was the control of information in their bureaucracies. Perhaps best exemplified by their control over the knowledge of Greek Fire, they arguably perfected the use of information compartmentalization, where the weapon system of Greek Fire was broken down into many parts, and no one group had access to the full information required to create and deploy the feared weapon. The knowledge was instead spread between those who had the formula for its creation, the builders and operators of the specialized dromon ships that carried the Fire into battle, the specific chamber used to heat and pressurize it for spraying, the crafters of the *siphōn* that sprayed it, and the *siphōnarioi* who used it in battle. No one group in the entirety of the Byzantine government had the full picture of how it was made or used. Thus, even when portions of Greek Fire were captured—such as in 814 AD by the Bulgarians—the enemies of the Byzantines could not make use of the weapon.

—Constantinople: The Child Of Rome's Empire, Venice, Italy, 1795

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### Chapter 112: Bonds Of Friendship And Ties Of Duty

One of the interesting points to consider when analyzing warfare is to remember that the individuals who decide the course of it make decisions within their own biases and perspectives. While this may seem to be an obvious point—Emperor Romanos III, an inexperienced commander, thought that war was decided by large battalions and thus it was on these large, ponderous formations he depended and lost at Azaz, to name a memorable such defeat—this fact also plays off in more subtle ways.

Consider the case of Kagan Drago Bludvist. The man reportedly spent several years hunting and poaching dragons, and resented the anti-poaching laws put into place and enforced by the Song Dynasty protecting those same dragons. This attitude managed to embed itself deep in his psyche by all accounts, informing his strategy when he advised his predecessor, Kagan Berk, on the conquest of the Song Dynasty as a first step prior to taking their dragon nests.

But from an objective viewpoint considering objectives and strategy—gaining dragons and using them in conquest—such a strategy was foolish and pointless! What could the Song have hoped to do to prevent Drago's dragon riders from flying past them, and forcibly enthralling the nests deeper in their territory? The few token guardsmen working to prevent poachers from accessing the nests that the Song held as sacred would have been easily dealt with and the dragons forced into subjugation. Once that was done, the Pechenegs could have then used their augmented force to conquer not only the Song, but all of the empires and kingdoms in the region and beyond in short order.

But Drago, by his own admission later on, saw the Song and their laws as a barrier that prevented him from accessing those self-same dragons, and thus, to his mind, they had to be dealt with first before the dragons could be accessible. To him, the dragons were *owned* by the humans who claimed the land their nests sat upon, and thus those humans would have to be conquered before the dragons could be taken as spoils of war.

For another example, consider Emperor Henry the Black and his actions…

—The Wing And The Ax, Queen Marshal Astrid Haddock I, undated draft, Waterford University Archives

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### Chapter 113: Knotted Heartstrings

Furthermore, while Haddock was indeed responsible for a large number of scientific and technical advances in the aftermath of his taming of dragons, it is inaccurate in the extreme to assign *all* of these advances to him. Other individuals, spurred on by the new capabilities that now existed, began to develop their own innovations and insights.

Haddock invented many things, that is without question, with a lengthy list ranging from the famous wingsuit that allowed a person to glide through the air and land safely, to the more prosaic infrastructural and production tools such as the elevator, drop-forge, and spinning wheel, but within his own lifetime, as a direct result of exposure to dragons and the possibilities and necessities they opened up, others also showed that they were capable of innovation in the right environment. The list of inventions from this period as a direct result of interactions with dragons includes such things as the barometer, the canal pound lock, buttons, eyeglasses, and stern-mounted rudders, while still others worked on refining and isolating chemical compounds and elements extracted from dragons.

More people also aided in developing the area of cartography, with leaps of innovation in surveying and mapmaking—the first "dragon's eye" maps, showing the layouts of cities and regions from above, were made within two years of Haddock's taming of dragons. And, despite the efforts of those who wish to assign him the credit, he had nothing to do with any of these beyond preparing the ground for others.

—The Genius Has No Clothes: An Alternate View Of Innovation, 1818

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### Chapter 114: The Paragon Of Animals

The **Saami** are a Finno-Ugric ethnic group indigenous to the Sápmi District of the North Sea Empire. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Saami's ethnic roots originated from the Uralic peoples to the southeast in the Volga Region between five and four thousand years ago. Migratory tribes of these people eventually pushed towards the Finnish Lakeland region approximately three and a half thousand years before present, and eventually spread through the highlands of the Scandinavian and Kola Peninsulas, mixing with the isolated groups already present and integrating them, creating the predecessors to the Saami people…

As one of the Sovereign Peoples of the North Sea Empire, the Saami, as a political unit, have the legal right to organize their own Things for internal self-government in their District, full representation in the Grand Thing, and to determine Saami tribal identification according to their own criteria…

Many Saami who live in the Sápmi District continue to maintain their traditional lifestyles, with herding reindeer, fishing, hunting, and forestry being dominant activities, while Saami who live outside of the District are noted as being disproportionately employed by House Haddock as Dragon Tenders for the Imperial Brooderies and Rookeries, a tendency that goes back to the founding of the Empire.

—Saami. (n.d.) In Wikikenna. Retrieved January 8, 1891

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### Chapter 115: Visions, Obscure And Otherwise

There are mountains on Magni's *back*.

I have just seen them for myself, and wonder at the literal new world that my son has just shown me.

Recording this now, so Fishlegs doesn't get upset with me later…

After dinner, my son Magni came to me, holding a synlengra clutched in his hands, and wanting to show me something. For a moment, I almost told him later, due to my duties, but I remembered being fifteen and my father not being interested in what I had to show him—and how I had vowed to do better.

So I did.

He took me up to the rooftop and told me to point the synlengra at the moon, which was a quarter full. I did so, after joking with him for a moment. And once I did so, I almost fell down in shock.

There are ***mountains*** on Magni's ***back***. I could see their shadows, cast by the light of the sun. There are great circular scars on his flanks, caused by what, I do not know. I have done my best to sketch what I saw below.

But my son wasn't content with merely showing me his namesake. He told me to look at Odin next. Still stunned, I did so.

And I ***saw***.

Odin's single eye peered back at me. Surrounding him were four others—who I can only assume to be Huginn and Munnin, and Geri and Freki.

I made these synlengra for looking down at the ground from dragonback. And all of this time, I never thought to look *up* with them.

Tomorrow, I am going to the lens-grinders, and we are going to plan how to make the biggest lenses we can and how to mount them in a synlengra tube.

My son opened my eyes, and I didn't even know they were closed.

I'm going to give him even better ones.

—From the journal of Hiccup Haddock, June 22, AD 1059

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### Chapter 116: Game, Set, Match

A man of wisdom charts

through shoals of adversity

wracked by dark night waves

their motions unknown.

Tides rage, wind blows

rocks grasp and tear

sea foam and fog blind

hazards to good sailing.

But a course can be charted

the fears of the crew calmed

a steady hand at the rudder

and the foresight to go on.

Sailors unsteady themselves.

the face of the unknown, fear,

what is not understood, panic.

Snared beasts lashing out

Key is knowledge and insight

therein lies wisdom, direction.

A course plotted through danger

the final sinking forestalled.

Comprehend the battering waves,

learn of the scudding shoals,

watch the sky with a fair eye,

and consider their motions.

See the crew and know their fears.

The wise, the weak, the new, and the bleak.

Know your crew, know your course

And chart accordingly to never sink.

—Raðsnjallamal, The Words of The Wise Counsel, from the Saga of Forseti

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### Chapter 117: Reverberations From Silence

Espionage is one of the dirty secrets of statecraft, in that everyone does it, even on their allies, even if no one wants to admit it. Generally such spying takes mild forms that aren't even considered to be such—an attache officer at a consulate simply keeping their eyes and ears open as they walk around the capital city is technically spying if they report back their findings, even if the information is freely available for the local citizens with their own senses.

Deeper levels of espionage tend to be reserved for opponents and threats, and it is these methods that are popularly associated with the term in the public awareness. Informant networks, agents-in-place, penetration agents, disinformation agents, double agents, and other such human assets make for the common concept of the term 'spy'—often conflated together in popular imagination and lurid novels—and in modern times, the official reactions to such individuals can be anything from banning them from the country for those with diplomatic immunity, to arrest with an end result of imprisonment, asset trades, or even torture or execution.

—Statecraft: The Great Game Of Diplomacy, Espionage & War By Other Means, 1732, Rouen University Press

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### Chapter 118: Something Wicked This Way Comes

One of the core tactical principles of an ambush is to attack from a prepared position onto an unprepared and unsuspecting enemy force, thus taking full advantage of the element of surprise as a force multiplier…

Note that an ambush can be spoiled and turned around if the targets of the ambush become prematurely aware of the trap. In such circumstances, a retreat by the aggressor force is suggested, as they are no longer in a position of tactical superiority and face prepared opposition.

The worst time for the ambush target to become aware of the ambush is when the ambushers are only partially but not fully situated…

—NSE Skytrooper Tactical Manual, 19th Edition

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### Chapter 119: Dust To Dust

On the topic of the Red King, Mac Bethad mac Findlaích, the man is primarily notable in terms of the legacy he left behind, as opposed to his immediate actions. Even his apologists, of whom he has few, admit that their primary defense of the man is to plead ignorance and lack of awareness on his part of the possible outcomes of his deeds, for the facts are indisputable in how the Red King's legacy was, on the whole, a negative one. He fomented wars and mistrust, attempted to cripple and attack out of needless suspicion and fear, and many of his deeds directly led to an escalation of conflict.

One area of argument is the point that, if not for his actions, the Norse Reformation might not have happened, as he spread the seeds of conflict that began to sprout the year after his death, seeds from which the Norse Reformation sprang. However, even among those Norse adherents who subscribe to this viewpoint, the sore point remains in how much his behavior was antithetical to their faith's teachings. And his actions also helped accelerate Berk's territorial growth, by setting Harthacnut the Dane upon his perceived foe, as well as other such actions that stemmed from his time.

But, ultimately, he failed in his goals. Alba became an integral and important province of Berk's territory, and eventually became a core component of the North Sea Empire in the coming years. His family line ended with him, and his stepson never ruled. All the Red King arguably succeeded in doing, in the end, was adding to the casualty counts of the coming wars that he helped spark and escalate, and adding a morality lesson for parents and entertainers on the costs of baseless suspicion, and how such things can spiral into chaos and death.

—A History Of The Isles, Oxford, England, 1591

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