[jorganos]

Great review.

You wrote ybout the EWF disciples:
"They are portrayed as a “cult” in the most uneasy sense of the word, mortifying the flesh, forcing conversion on others, and rejecting everything for the apocalyptic day when the Great Dragon will come and save them all. Ironically, they are right about the apocalypse, but dead wrong about salvation."

Partially true - and sort of a courteous "spoiler alert".









Quite a few of those dragons performing the apocalypse (the Dragonkill) are draconic disciples who have attained dragonhood by the time the EWF leadership is slain. The obscure Fourth Age documents in King of Sartar suggest that some draconic leaders managed to take their people with them in becoming some of the lesser true dragons which resulted from EWF experimentation.

The foes of the empire strike from an unexpected angle, although possibly with a preparation that even predates the discovery of draconic speech. Part of the tragic of the dragonkill is the absence of the draconic leaders to shelter the humans that shared the land with the dragonewts.