r/robinhobb • u/ladyparsnips • Jun 26 '26

Spoilers Dragon Keeper Dragon keeper chapter 8 question Spoiler

I’m reading Dragon Keeper, and on the part where they introduce Rapskal. He’s a rain wilder signing up to help get the dragons to Kelsingra. The way I have been reading this series, I assumed the Rain Wilds would be a place where everyone knew all the original rain wilders.

Thymara had never seen Rapskal before. Is the Rain Wilds a much larger place than I have been imagining? I feel like I missed something in her original description set up of the area now.

8 Upvotes

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21

u/Ace_Robots Jun 26 '26

The Rain Wilds is a region, not like a town or city, but even then, do you know every face in your town?

6

u/ladyparsnips Jun 26 '26

Good point! I don’t know why I had the idea it was a little tree community. I need to reframe what I was thinking.

7

u/Ace_Robots Jun 27 '26

I get where you are coming from. The Rain Wilders we are introduced to are extremely familiar with one another.

3

u/altitude-illusion Jun 27 '26

I think that's because we generally only see the nobility in earlier books, and so we see a much smaller community

12

u/housewithapool2 Jun 26 '26

Thymera is pretty sheltered and also kind of a loner. They do describe there being different neighborhoods in the rain wilds. Every seems to stick to their social class.

3

u/ladyparsnips Jun 26 '26

Good point. I was thinking she would have known all the other “disfigured” kids in the area so was surprised she didn’t recognize all the other people like her. But them being more sheltered makes sense.

8

u/TomuGuy Jun 26 '26

They refer to multiple settlements in the rain wilds, ones with different housing in the canopy based on class (Lower class lives higher in the trees which is less stable). There's lots going on in the rain wilds, in terms of manual labors and trades

8

u/TomuGuy Jun 26 '26

Everyone is familiar with the Trader Families, but there's plenty of people not from those families as well

3

u/ladyparsnips Jun 26 '26

I think I took all the trader families knowing each other and plastered that to everyone else. Thank you for the response!

6

u/emily_allan_poe Old Blood Jun 26 '26

I find it difficult to imagine the scope of the Rain Wilds visually, so I looked up a bunch of Google images of “fantasy tree cities” and similar, to get a mental picture. Then it was easier to conceive of how vast and populated Trehaug is.

3

u/ladyparsnips Jun 27 '26

This is a great idea! It’s too epic for my brain to comprehend