Spoilers for much of the series. Revise that. Almost all of the series.
In Tui T. Sutherland's series Wings Of Fire, intelligent civilized dragons inhabit a continent known as Pyrrhia, which is shaped rather like a dragon itself. The question is: Does this make sense? And do the various ecosystems of the continent also reflect a realistic world?
First off, how big is Pyrrhia? The Dragonets of Destiny traveled from Scarlet's palace to the diamond spray delta in less than two days, even counting sleeping, and they didn't fly all the way—they drifted downriver for much of the journey.
Assuming they moved for twenty-four hours at an average pace of fifteen miles per hour, they traveled 360 miles. This would make the continent 2,700 miles across (similar to the distance between California and New York) from the southwestern "foot" to the tip of the "wing", and a similar distance from "snout" to "tail".
By that estimate, Pyrrhia is slightly smaller than Australia:
Another measurement can be made by the trek from the cave (marked "under the mountain") to Scarlet's palace, which was made by the dragonets and their SkyWing captors. The amount of time it took, and even whether they walked or flew, isn't stated. However, since Scarlet and her guards had been hunting before, I think a day's journey is realistic, and they probably walked since the dragonets were heavily chained. This gives us a distance of roughly 100 miles max, which matches our first estimate within an order of magnitude but implies a smaller Pyrrhia.
The climate: Does it make sense?
2,700 miles across (or ~1,000, with the second estimation) is small—in fact, probably way too small to host all the different climates. You can't have ice sheets and hot sandy desert a couple hundred miles apart, unless the ice sheets are at a wayyy higher elevation, which is possible. In fact, this "high-altitude plateau" hypothesis has some explanatory power: Deserts are often found in the lee of mountain ranges.
There is in fact an area on Earth with sandy desert and glacial, snowy mountains, just miles from each other. Chara sands in Siberia is a three-mile-long area of sand dunes surrounded by frozen mountains, even in summer.
The desert is certainly not as hot as the Kingdom of Sand, though. During the winter it drops below freezing and sees light snowfall.
We also know the IceWing Kingdom's climate is not due merely to high latitude, because part of the SkyWing Kingdom is nearly as far north (the map kindly provides a compass, clearing up a lot of questions) and it's not covered in thick ice sheets.
Where on the planet?
Now, on which part of the dragon's planet is Pyrrhia? The map shows a compass, so we know that the IceWing's kingdom is the most northernly part of it.
Since the southernmost parts of the continent include lush rainforests, I conclude that Pyrrhia is set rather to the north of its planet, with the equator somewhere between the Scorpion Den and a hundred miles off the south shores.
In the third arc of the series, another continent, called Pantala, is introduced, inhabited by insectoid dragons.
Pantala is visibly more consistent in climate and terrain. It appears to be in a more southern latitude than Pyrrhia. If it's 500 miles across, it could be just barely below the equator, and the "tail" would still experience very warm weather.
I never finished the Pantala arc, and I barely remember it anyways, so I reached out to EmperorHero. He responded:
To answer your question, it takes about two-three days to fly from Cicada Hive to Wasp Hive, so the entire continent should be about a four-five day trip.
In comparison, Pyrrhia is much larger. It is about a seven day journey from the Diamond Spray Delta to the Bay of a Thousand Scales, so in total Pyrrhia is about twenty-five times larger than Pantala. The distance between the two continents is about a week’s flight.
As for size, no actual distances are stated, but estimates put Pyrrhia at:
718 miles
1292 miles (from the Ice Palace to the eastern edge of the Rainforest)
1080 miles by 936 miles
4767 miles
7416 miles
Or about 1/3 of the planet (remember, Pyrrhia has areas equivalent to our arctic and tropical rain forests)
He added:
Acording to more recent calculations, Pyrrhia’s minimum size is over 7,000 miles. Higher estimates put it at over 15,000 miles.
The first group of estimates he cites for Pyrrhia range from 718 to 7,416 miles, with an average of 3,055 miles across—less than 400 miles off my estimate, which is pretty solid for such an imprecise measurement (*pats self on back*).
If, going by the highest estimate, Pyrrhia were over 7,000 (longer than Russia) or 15,000 miles across, suddenly the climate diversity makes at least some sense.
For Pantala, he states that from Cicada Hive to Wasp Hive is two to three days' journey, putting it on a scale well below that of Pyrrhia—perhaps just over a hundred miles from snout to wingtip.
Oooh, cyclones
I just noticed something: Below the "tail" of Pantala is what appears to be a tropical cyclone. It is spinning clockwise, implying strongly that it is in the southern hemisphere. Cyclones don't form within 5 degrees of the equator, so we know the tail of Pantala is at least that far north or south from it (the continent is big enough that it could be straddling the equator).
I'm confused by the mountains in the top left of the continent. They don't form a range. They're clustered together in quite an odd way. Perhaps they're actually weird hills rather than full-size mountains. (Their appearance, and the smaller size of the continent vs Pyrrhia, seem to confirm this.)
How were the continents formed?
Pyrrhia does look vaguely like a dragon, but not too much—it doesn't break my suspension of disbelief. But Pantala... seriously, look at that thing and tell me it's natural geological processes. Nuh uh. Pantala was designed.
By who? Probably an animus dragon somewhere. And if we grant that animus dragons can reshape continents without driving dragons to extinction, it makes sense that Pyrrhia, too, was reshaped. Personally, I think the "wing" mountains were a meeting point for two separate continents, and the "head" and "neck" were bent into place.
For Pantala, the joining point is harder to ascertain. Perhaps whatever process reshaped it was gentler than what happened with Pyrrhia. Or maybe its reshaping was less recent.
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