36 KiB
An Eragon rational fic?
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4l1p9n/an_eragon_rational_fic/
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Score: 29
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Created: 2016-05-25T20:28:47
Post:
Brothers and Sisters, once I read Eragon, and I liked it. I then read Eldest, and I loved it. Brisingr and Inheritance leave me crying for unfulfilled possibilities still. I had a half mind of writing one such rational fanfiction myself (to improve my writing skills if nothing else), but in the meantime, do you know of any Inheritance fic that could be said to approach rational standards?
Comments:
u/CouteauBleu [+49] We are the Empire. (30 minutes later)
Man, I had many long discussions with a friend about the world of Eragon. It's... actually pretty coherent. You can amass power and store it in containers to be used at will, so the world is dominated by a tyrant who has amassed ALL the magic. Wizard themselves are extremely powerful, but vulnerable to concentrated assault, so they avoid fighting alone and stay behind legions of soldiers. You can make people swear binding oaths by having a wizard find their true name, so the Empire's legions are made of sworn conscripts.
Pity the actual story is a re-hash of Star Wars with a dumb protagonist, under-exploited side characters and a villain so powerful he could not be plausibly defeated without a deus ex machina. Also, prophecies. Stories with prophecies all suck, or at least would be better off without any prophecy (Methods of Rationality being the one exception). Eragon in particular had prophecies that came out of nowhere, acted as significant spoilers for the intrigue, and didn't have any actual impact on the story.
I agree that there's probably some potential for a rational fic here.
u/royishere [+34] (43 minutes later)
It would be the opposite of HPMOR, really. Taking a coherent world and making an engaging plot out of it rather than taking an engaging plot and fitting it into a coherent world.
u/CouteauBleu [+9] We are the Empire. (2 hours later)
So... Animorphs: The Reckoning?
u/dysfunctionz [+17] (7 hours later)
I thought canon Animorphs had a reasonably engaging plot and characters, ignoring the shitty filler books. The real problems (which The Reckoning largely addresses) are the stupidity of the antagonists and the abuse of every scifi trope out there(time travel, Atlantis, space gods, etc) when the only ones needed to tell the story are aliens, FTL, and morphing.
I really enjoy The Reckoning, but I'm not sure even it goes far enough on how effective the Yeerks should really be. Every person you infest infests their entire family the next night while they're sleeping. You infest the president by infesting friends of Secret Service agents' children, inviting the children over for sleepovers and infesting them, infest the agents, then they infest the president. I can't think of a way the Yeerks don't win inside of six months, with no convoluted plans for the Animorphs to sabotage.
u/chaosmosis [+3] and with strange aeons, even death may die (7 hours later)
It could be a tale about one lone human's quest to blow up the world. Better if it's left ambiguous whether or not he's just crazy.
u/None [+8] (47 minutes later)
Exactly, the prefect setting for a rational fanfiction, even more so because in the series magic A is magic A and the author follows Sanderson's first law (define your magic well if you want to solve problems through it).
u/None [+8] (53 minutes later)
Huh. I was curious, so I looked up what Paolini is doing. Aparently his next thing's a sci-fi novel, and the first draft's done. Now that he's matured as a writer, I'll be really interested to see what he's got.
u/whywhisperwhy [+1] (21 hours later)
Thanks for putting this on the radar... Most recent update is here, and he discusses the book a bit- http://www.paolini.net/books/sci-fi-project/
Also, seeing him in that video made me realize how long it's been- the last Inheritance book was in 2011?!
u/thrawnca [+6] Carbon-based biped (an hour later)
I have to agree about the over-powered villain. I definitely had that Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? feeling.
u/GaBeRockKing [+9] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (3 hours later)
Galby at least had his reasons-- spoilers
And considering he managed to spoilers it wouldn't be too strange to think he couldn't do the same to eragon, and he did want to spoilers, which made eragon insanely valuable.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Yeah, but Spoiler? With his dragon in the background, Spoiler? Without Spoiler? Yeah, he didn't read the Evil Overlord list.
u/GaBeRockKing [+3] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
Considering Eragon managed to survive the spear earlier, Galby probably just brushed it off as a threat.
As for the rest, I think that was Galbatorix's way of distracting Eragon enough so that he could smash his mental defenses in a moment of weakness. Of course, he didn't bargain for murtagh to have Spoiler which screwed him over.
It wasn't necessarily the smartest thing to do, of course, but come on-- he has a pretty decent reason for being crazy, if nothing else.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
he has a pretty decent reason for being crazy, if nothing else.
This is true.
u/Kishoto [+2] (a day later)
I read the books but it's really been forever. Can you remind me, just what exactly was the "Spear of Dragon Slaying +20" that you mentioned?
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (4 days later)
The spoiler
u/Kishoto [+2] (4 days later)
Oh yes! I totally forgot about that thing. It really got very little screentime despite it being a veritable Chekhov's Gun. Thanks!
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (5 days later)
Hmm. I wouldn't call it a Chekhov's gun, because its usefulness was recognised as soon as it was discovered, and it was deliberately carried along for that purpose.
If someone's hunting rifle is hanging on the wall, but not being used, then we can expect an attack from a bear, which needs to be shot, or a horrible accident where someone shoots themselves; to me, that's what Chekhov's Gun is about. If someone deliberately takes a gun from the wall in chapter 1 to go hunting, that's just a regular gun.
u/Kishoto [+1] (5 days later)
Fair point. It was directly utilized. As opposed to hinting or showing
u/GaBeRockKing [+16] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (3 hours later)
Please, please write a fanfic. The eragon fanfiction section is such a disappointment, for a series with so much potential.
Tell you what. If you write it, I'll beta it for you. How's that for a little bit of bribery?
u/None [+6] (13 hours later)
Seems like you've got a deal. Fair warning though, I'm not that experienced as a writer.
u/GaBeRockKing [+3] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (15 hours later)
Just PM me whenever you're ready!
u/None [+2] (19 hours later)
Awesome.
u/Celadin [+4] (a day later)
You guys done yet?
:D
...for real though.
u/zian [+1] (4 days later)
Likewise! I'm eager to see what you can put together.
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (4 days later)
Still no word :( hopefully he's just hashing things out. I spent about two week deciding on what to write and building a backlog for my current fic.
u/None [+1] (6 days later)
Hashing things out. Turns out, it's pretty damn difficult.
u/Adreik [+1] (4 months later)
So how did it go?
u/None [+1] (5 months later)
Badly.
u/hoja_nasredin [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (23 hours later)
It is some tiem I wanted to try to beta something. (If you want count me in.)
u/None [+2] (a day later)
It is done.
u/Kishoto [+3] (a day later)
It's been years but the Eragon fanfiction written by this author were pretty decent. Most of them follow each other and focus on OC dragons and King Galby which, in my opinion, makes them all the more compelling. Not particularly rational, but they are intelligently written, from what I remember.
In particular, the story From White to Black, which is longer than the others it relates to, tells Galbatorix's backstory pretty much from childhood to where he ended up in the books. It's not canon compliant (as most of the works were written before book 3 came out) but it is very entertaining and really makes you understand just how Galbatorix could possibly have become what he was in the novels. Especially considering that most of what we know of him in canon in the first two books is filtered through what is essentially propaganda. This author's work really highlights that.
u/Mbnewman19 [+7] (10 hours later)
Oh man, I would read the heck out of something like that.
Also, I'm glad someone else shares my utter disillusionment with the last book or 2 of that series. So many threads not just left untied, but totally ignored and ruined. FOr one example: Lets build up Roran as the leader of the people over and over again, and clearly groom him to be the next king, and then... nothing.
I tell my friends "Just don't read the last book, and imagine that the series was just never finished. you'd be happier that way." Similar to my advice to all dune books after the first (besides for the good scene in the third where he's struck blind).
u/None [+2] (12 hours later)
The last book was actually fairly good, it was the ending that really sucked.
u/None [+6] (13 hours later)
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
More like spoilers
There's a lot to nitpick in the IC, but that decision isn't really one of them.
u/None [+6] (a day later)
can't he take two weeks off from time to time to say hi to old friends? That's what I'm nitpicking about.
u/royishere [+3] (23 hours later)
Reading the last book felt like a prison sentence, and it was only out of some newly-discovered masochism that I gritted my teeth and pressed forward to the ending, which was like a small dollop of shit at the bottom of a mug of dishwater -- one final insult that you suddenly realize has been tainting the previous experience all along, but makes said experience even worse in retrospect.
u/Kishoto [+2] (a day later)
I didn't like how the last 100 pages of the final book was just thread tying. I mean, I get it, we covered a lot. But it really irked me for some reason that so much was expounded on after the final battle. It felt weird to me :\
u/Nevereatcars [+2] The Greatest Is Behind (a day later)
Christ, Makin, you just do not like endings ever, do you?
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I really am not alone in disliking Eragon's ending, come on.
u/360Saturn [+5] (2 days later)
Just saying, an Eragon rational fic would not have let the centuries-old superhumanly strong elf Queen, who is also an archer and a magic user, get defeated in close combat by an enemy who is then swiftly revenge-killed by an ordinary human with a hammer.
u/None [+1] (3 days later)
Shut up, you know nothing of my Roran! (by the way, I doubt very, very strongly that an immortal race blessed with magic would let's say minor worldbuilding spoiler for the fanfiction that I've not yet written )
u/Covane [+3] Dragon Army (6 days later)
Since it sounds like you're interested in writing a fic, here's what I thought of while reading over this thread:
The problem Paolini ran into (which I'm okay with considering he started writing the story at like 13) is that Galbatorix was the ultimate badass who by the rules of canon couldn't really be defeated. There's no way for that fight to end with Eragon defeating Galbatorix without a deus ex machina. Yeah, it's Star Wars, but at least in SW the power difference could be overcome by in-system rules: Luke was trained by the best, and he was a Skywalker. Not the case in a system where power grows with age and power can be stored.
So if I were going to go rational I'd do this: from the moment Galbatorix' first dragon was slain, he was living on borrowed time. Everyone knows he's going to die, and the factions are preparing for the wars that follow. This would be the first one or two arcs.
I would make Eragon the capable student of the rationalist Brom, who learned rationalism (it would be called something else, of course,) as the philosophy of the dragon riders. Because magic is what you say is what you get, "[whatever they call rationalism]" was necessary for optimal spellcasting. Murtagh would be the thematically and canonically appropriate successor for Galbatorix, and I'd remove familial connections, cuz they were shoehorned in not to mention terribly cliche.
I'd also buff regular spellcasters, probably by making them capable of pulling energy out of the environment. I don't know physics, so there could be even better ways for a non-Dragon Rider spellcaster to keep their energy stores high. I'd probably make Roran such a spellcaster.
But none of that is essential except for in my opinion Galbatorix' impending death and everyone knowing he's about to die. The "Galbatorix is good because he keeps humanity on top" is another option, but there's not much struggle there, since in regular canon the only thing stopping him from destroying all of his enemies (aside from because plot) is I believe hubris.
u/None [+3] (6 days later)
This was extremely interesting and helpful. I'm worldbuilding at the moment, and I have to confess I'm encountering some difficulties:
-Shaping believable conflict when you can force people to tell the truth, or even do things, is extremely difficult. Torturing the truth out of people would be exceedingly simple, because you would always know when they tell you the truth and how much they know, so secrets would be more valuable than loyalty, and would be reasonably used as an exchange value.
-Nobody sensible would use the truth-language as everyday language, I think (tell me if you find a way to make this work in any believable society).
-You could bound people easily against their will, and a moderately moral ruler would use this ability to compel citizens to respect the law, or at least to behave in a way that they truly believe to be moral. Most people would not even understand how they are bound. If you make them recite it forcibly as a prayer, or an oath, in a generation you'd achieve a good approximation of a somewhat utopian society, or incredibly distopian, whatever. It's not believable that nobody would use such a technique. I'll have to make it run somehow.
-If raiders are mostly moral and righteous people (at the moment of the hatching, since the dragonling chooses the rider) there is no reasonable way that they would be anything but a power of good, and both conflict and the whole "Galbatorix thinks they are corrupt" story are thrown out of the window. Maybe I've managed to figure this one out, though.
-Dragons that know a lot about physics, that have spent years meditating about things and more power than everyone around, sided by knowledgeable warriors with decades of experience get defeated by the new guy who's gone crazy and his twelve EVIL!lackeys? Improbable. Maybe something can be managed though, we'll see.
-In the Eragon universe it's not just easy to cheat, there is a spreadsheet with cheat-codes ready for anyone to grab.
The "Galbatorix is good because he keeps humanity on top" is another option, but there's not much struggle there, since in regular canon the only thing stopping him from destroying all of his enemies (aside from because plot) is I believe hubris.
I'll try to avoid plot-powered behaviour when possible.
u/Izeinwinter [+1] (10 days later)
The hard counter to magic that makes interrogation flawless isn't to try harder to keep secrets, it is to not have any. It's entirely possible to run social systems with complete transparency, up to and including waging wars.
u/None [+1] (10 days later)
Thank you.
What about the rest though? But no matter, I think I've managed to make things work somehow. Pretty much.
u/None [+4] (an hour later)
This is perfect, not only because of the ideas already presented, but also because of this; in a world where basically every other race seems to do everything better than plain bland humans (dwarves make better weapons and armour and are stocky and strong and have tons of bad ass stuff and elves are immortal and better) and you were a rational human hero who had to consider the future of your race against other races who, in a rational fic, would have to have proper rational reasons against not just outcompeting humanity until we were stuck on the worst pitches of land (basically confined to villages like the one Eragon comes from)... would it really be wise to get rid of the guy keeping your species on top, and not replace him? Rational Eragon should end with the hero finding someway to stop humans from getting curb stomped in the future, or should start with the races a bit more... balanced.
u/Tommy2255 [+24] (2 hours later)
This is perfect, not only because of the ideas already presented, but also because of this; in a world where basically every other race seems to do everything better than plain bland humans (dwarves make better weapons and armour and are stocky and strong and have tons of bad ass stuff and elves are immortal and better) and you were a rational human hero who had to consider the future of your race against other races who, in a rational fic, would have to have proper rational reasons against not just outcompeting humanity until we were stuck on the worst pitches of land (basically confined to villages like the one Eragon comes from)... would it really be wise to get rid of the guy keeping your species on top, and not replace him?
Rational Eragon should end with the hero finding someway to stop humans from getting curb stomped in the future, or should start with the races a bit more... balanced.
Reformatted for readability.
Personally, I don't and wouldn't really care about humanity as such all that much. Most of the people I actually like are humans, and I don't want anything bad to happen to them, but I have no particular fondness for their great-great-grandchildren in preference to someone else's great-great-grandchildren. In the long term, I see nothing wrong with replacing humanity with something better. A world full of people objectively superior in every way to modern humans is a better outcome than an otherwise identical world containing humans but proportionally fewer superior beings. The preservation of humanity for it's own sake rather than for any particular valuable quality it possesses just seems kind of racist (speciest?).
u/None [+2] (13 hours later)
I suppose, but preserving a specie (in the sense of a genetic construct) is still a terminal value somewhere, right?
u/Tommy2255 [+8] (14 hours later)
For the sake of diversity alone, I suppose there could be some utility in keeping a test tube somewhere. But even environmentalists don't generally go so far as to sabotage other species to save a species that is legitimately out-competed in its own ecosystem. It really, really is just natural selection (to the extent that anything having to do with sentients is really "natural").
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (2 days later)
But even environmentalists don't generally go so far as to sabotage other species to save a species that is legitimately out-competed in its own ecosystem.
Oh you'd be surprised. Or at least by how some environmentalists would define "legitimate competition in an ecosystem".
Edit: Couldn't find that article I remember from years ago that had environmentalists call for the shooting on sight of grizzly-polar bear hybrids in order to preserve the local ecosystem and protect the original grizzly bears. But this article about shooting a species of better adapted owls in order to protect an endangered one essentially also shows what I'm on about.
u/None [+1] (6 days later)
God tier stupid, I think it's called.
u/AugSphere [+3] Dark Lord of Corruption (14 hours later)
Depends. I want to try doing a small gedanken. Suppose people find a way to prevent certain combinations of genes from occurring, as a way of preventing autism (as a hypothetical example here). Would you want to stop people from using it? In this example people with autism share some distinctive combinations of genes. Is preserving those combinations a terminal value? What about schizophrenia? What about low IQ? Where do you draw the line and say "I don't care that this combination of genes leads to suboptimal outcomes for carriers, I value it for its own sake and want it to continue being present in the gene pool"?
Personally, I don't really value how parts of DNA are arranged. I don't even care whether the minds are instantiated on a biological computer or not. I'd want to preserve the parts of human culture I care about, certainly, but I don't really give a damn about preserving the species in any real biological sense.
u/None [+3] (14 hours later)
I see where you're coming from, but you're also a transhumanist so your opinion doesn't matter.
Joking aside, You will notice that all the combination of genes you mentioned share the property of having a negative value. But what about positive or neutral-value genes? And in any case a race or specie is not really a clearly defined entity.
The real value, I guess, is increasing diversity.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (15 hours later)
The real value, I guess, is increasing diversity.
I care way more about cultural diversity than biological one. For me, biological diversity only matters insofar as it is needed for minimising certain risks and opening new avenues for cultural diversity, so it's not a terminal value. But let's leave that (and also the morality of forcing future minds to run on comparatively worse hardware) aside for a moment.
I don't think that preserving the poorly performing hardware/wetware configurations is good way to increase diversity in the first place. I'd rather look to create new and exciting offshoots that perform better than their ancestors. So if we're talking about positive-value genes, then I'd say I wouldn't mind to see them preserved, but I'd much rather see them replaced by new and even better-performing combinations. I mean, suppose you eliminate all the "negative-value" combinations (it's a poorly defined thing, but you get my meaning). Sooner or later a new mutation comes along, that's just so good, that some of the old "positive-value" combinations perform poorly compared to it and become "negative-value". Do you remove them from gene-pool now? If so, then you're basically already genetically engineering your way forward. It's pretty much an inevitable consequence of "negative-value" and "positive-value" being comparative based on performance in real world. There is no other objective marker that says which combinations are worthy of being preserved and which ones are not.
I don't rightly know why I've typed all of that out, but it's there now, so I might as well post it. I guess I just wanted to keep playing with the thought experiment.
u/None [+2] (20 hours later)
I don't rightly know why I've typed all of that out, but it's there now, so I might as well post it. I guess I just wanted to keep playing with the thought experiment.
It's fun anyway, so I'm in. One objection that could be made to your reasoning is that you must be at least somewhat in disagreement with the majority of the human race, since they pretty much unanimously concur that the loss of a specie is a bad thing. Biodiversity is a value to increase, to refine my statement further. If this value is good enough for animals, there's no reason why it shouldn't also apply to more complex beings as humans/elves/dwarves/dragons. In a way, I think it may depend from the fact that the "randomisation of the cognitive pattern" implied in natural reproduction (excluding nurturing for a minute) is a very good way to ensure cultural diversity. Or point-of-view diversity, whatever. You could possibly reproduce such randomisation in a lab, but you would be engineering whole minds then, and if by that point you haven't your ethics already figured out...
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (20 hours later)
Well, there is simply a difference in values then. For me, biodiversity is useful instrumentally, for the sake of lowering the damage a single pandemic could inflict, for example, but I don't really see it as the goal in itself. I also agree that it's useful instrumentally in increasing cultural variation as well. I just don't see the appeal of biodiversity for its own sake. Hell, even cultural diversity is mostly instrumental for me.
It's been a while since I read Eragon, so I don't actually remember that much of what the cultures/societies of elves and dwarves look live. But if, hypothetically, humans were likely to be outcompeted into extinction/irrelevance, and the resulting elvish and dwarfish society would then simply stagnate until some existential catastrophe takes them out, then I'd surely be all for helping humans even at the expense of elves and dwarves. If, on the other hand, elves and dwarves are psychologically similar to humans, but perform better because they're smarter, or more conscientious, or more magically gifted, then I wouldn't particularly care about humans loosing out.
A separate issue here is that I don't really see a likely way for a whole human race (in the books) to go extinct/irrelevant in a painless way (I guess some kind of Amish scenario maybe?). If we're talking about the last of the race starving in privation or being hunted down and killed, then I'd want to put a stop to that for reasons entirely unrelated to any kind of diversity.
u/None [+1] (22 hours later)
how could cultural diversity be instrumental?
u/AugSphere [+5] Dark Lord of Corruption (23 hours later)
Pretty much the same way biological one is. As one epidemic can cripple a very homogeneous population, one complex of memes can cripple a homogeneous culture. The benefits are inherent in any diversification: not putting all eggs in one basket, so to speak.
If your values involve avoiding stagnation, decline and extinction of intelligent species, then diversification will be instrumentally valuable to some degree simply because it minimises some of the risks.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (2 days later)
If your values involve avoiding stagnation, decline and extinction of intelligent species, then diversification will be instrumentally valuable to some degree simply because it minimises some of the risks.
But if you don't value the preservation of any one intelligent species then why would that matter? Or did you consider elves/dwarves/humans to all be one species for the sake of your argument?
One way or the other it seems that we should keep the human species in Eragon alive and competitive just on the off-chance that someone manages to cast a "kill-all-elves" spell or some such.
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 days later)
But if you don't value the preservation of any one intelligent species then why would that matter? Or did you consider elves/dwarves/humans to all be one species for the sake of your argument?
I don't really care about any particular species surviving. What I do care about is that at least one of them survives and continues to advance. Doesn't particularly matter which one, as long as they have sufficiently palatable culture. Having several different ones is useful so that at least one is more likely to survive.
One way or the other it seems that we should keep the human species in Eragon alive and competitive just on the off-chance that someone manages to cast a "kill-all-elves" spell or some such.
Depends on how costly that will be and how likely someone non-human is to invent a "kill-all-elves" spell. Hypothetically, if keeping humans competitive eats up so much resources that it cripples the development of dwarves, and the risk of sudden species-wide extinction is sufficiently small, then it might not be worth it. There is really no one general high-level rule that tells you whether it's worthwhile to pay diversification costs or not. You just have to calculate the risks and costs on case-by-case basis and make decisions that way.
In this particular case, I'd probably settle on keeping a smallish population of humans alive and healthy if they're being outcompeted, just in case. Not that I've really given it enough thought to actually make such decisions, since I don't remember the situation in Eragon all that well.
u/hoja_nasredin [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (17 hours later)
as a member of a species we feel the need to make sure it survives, often by destroying any other possible adversaries. Species without a similar drive are less likely to not go extint.
u/Frommerman [+9] (6 hours later)
Humans stayed on top because they got the first immortal god-emperor with no scruples. Elves have immortal nobility, but they were very much sane and unwilling to kill indsicriminately (due to their memories of the dragon war). Dwarves aren't immortal, are slightly agoraphobic, don't have nearly as much magic, and see no reason to leave their mountains. While stronger than humans, they are also slower due to their stature, so they do lose out in battle for the most part. Both elves and dwarves also reproduce more slowly than humans, meaning that they must pick their battles.
No, the real question is why the urgals didn't conquer everything. They wouldn't be able to penetrate the elven forests, but they are faster and stronger than humans and reproduce at a similar clip. They don't seem any less intelligent, but they do lack organization, so that could be it.
u/thrawnca [+4] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Canon says that the agreement with the dragons caused humans and elves to flourish, while others stagnated, spoiler. The Urgals are naturally prone to violence, which inhibited their ability to advance technologically or economically.
u/chaosmosis [+2] and with strange aeons, even death may die (7 hours later)
Do Urgals have math and a writing system?
u/Frommerman [+3] (8 hours later)
They definitely have a writing system (Oromis mentions it once), but as far as I know they don't have math.
u/None [+1] (20 hours later)
Humans have more magicians, maybe? And organized trade routes allow populations to survive resource shortages, where the Urgals tended to just pile behind costly migrations following resources?
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
That's my exact point; is it really wise to kill the immortal god-emperor keeping your race on top, and then not replace him? In the books Eragon kills Galbatorix and then just bounces, and I can't see that ending well for humans if he doesn't come back soon, especially considering your other points about the Urgals.
u/waylandertheslayer [+8] (6 hours later)
Elves have barely any children. Humanity could repopulate after a massive war that wipes out most of the men of fighting age in under a century - look at WW1 and WW2, for example - while elves would lose due to long-term attrition.
Dwarves seem to suffer from a lack of mobility. If I were fighting against them I'd just lay siege and keep them trapped in their mountain fortresses. They don't have cavalry or dragon riders, so they can't launch fast assaults, and they aren't that fast on foot either. As per canon, a whole Dwarven clan was almost wiped out due to a single dragon attack.
Humans have more to worry about from Urgals, who can keep even in numbers and are physically stronger. They're weak due to infighting during the main story, but (to use examples from real-world history) the Mongols were a bunch of small tribes that fought each other until they were united, and then proceeded to conquer lands from Russia to the Middle East to China once a strong leader rose up and stopped the interclan wars.
Note that I don't necessarily think that human supremacy would be a good thing - any species' elimination would be very bad, but I don't think humans are the most likely victims.
u/GaBeRockKing [+6] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (3 hours later)
Humans aren't that badly off. Elves are tied to dragons, and therefore had a massive, glaring vulnerability (considering that dragons, while powerful, would be incredibly vulnerable to more modern weaponry) and as such their birth rates were incredibly low. Dwarves were doing pretty well for themselves, but would still be out-bred and out-fought in a war. Urgals and humans are similarly pretty equal; Urgals are stronger, but humans seem to have better mages.