The Salmon Run & Robin Hobb's Sea Serpents

Seeing fantasy come alive in nature

Robin Hobb’s Elderlings

It’s been a while since I’ve dived head first into a slightly older, lesser-known series, and what better reason to do so again than simply being inspired by the natural world around me.

I’ve touched on Hobb’s epic 16-book Realm of the Elderlings series once before, when I highlighted a particular leadership philosophy that stuck with me. That piece focused on a small part of the Northern storyline, which I personally enjoyed much more thoroughly overall. Today I’ll be moving to a small part of the Southern storyline, which at first glance seems to have very little in common with its twin – besides apparently co-existing on the same fantasy world map.

Where the Northern story mostly resembles a traditional fantasy story (complete with empathetic male protagonist, animal companions, deeply evil antagonists, multiple magic systems, political intrigue, action, romance and heartbreak), the Southern story greatly turns up the dials of intrigue, mystery and gray morality.

Three of these (at first distinct) mysteries include:

1. The fate of the mythical Elderlings, whose abandoned cities lie upriver

2. The nature of ‘wizardwood’, the Liveships constructed from which become sentient beings

3. The near-extinct Tangle of sea serpents searching for their memory keeper

Over the course of The Liveship Traders trilogy, readers gradually gain new insights into each of these questions and may even spot connections between them. But before I get into those answers, a word from Mother Nature. 

Maulkin's Tangle, by Lux-Cortex

Salmon Runs

Despite having lived in Toronto all my life, I only really became cognizant of the annual salmon run along the nearby Humber River towards the end of the season last year. But now it’s back, and it’s been interesting to follow as it happens!

A salmon run sees thousands of fish returning from the ocean to their spawning waters, swimming upstream and jumping up to 3.65 meters (12 ft) over obstacles such as waterfalls and weirs. Even aside from these incredible feats, the salmon must swim against the current for many kilometers on end, in fresh water which actively deteriorates them and provides much less food than they can find in the saltwater oceans.

The fresh water catalyzes  physiological changes in the fish, essentially redirecting all available resources to ensure the salmon can reach its spawning waters and successfully reproduce there before quickly succumbing to exhaustion.

As with each stage of their journey, the salmon’s ultimate death is itself incredibly important to maintaining ecosystems: the nutrients in their bodies sustain not just hundreds of other species but the very habitability of the terrain itself.

But most impressive of all is the fact that (most of) these salmon return to the exact place they were born four years earlier, despite spending the intervening years hundreds of miles away in the literal ocean. Many humans would still struggle with that, and we have GPS! Our best current understanding is that the salmon are somehow able to navigate the magnetic field and/or have incredible olfactory senses that allow them to return ‘home’.

Still seems like pure magic to me!

Sockeye Salmon during run, photograph by Ken Morrish

Serpent Lifecycles

Towards the end of The Liveship Traders trilogy, readers learn that the answers to many mysteries arise from the life cycles of the sea serpents they had been following throughout. These intelligent creatures have been facing a horrifying existence, watching the sentience slowly fade in their kin as they fruitlessly search for one who remembers their true purpose after so many centuries.

The answer ultimately comes in two pieces. First Maulkin’s Tangle encounters and converses with the Liveship Vivacia, who strangely feels like kin to the serpents despite being, y’know, a boat. Later, She Who Remembers is freed from her long captivity and begins to lead the Tangle on their fated journey up the Rain Wilds River, around which all of the Southern story is based.

It turns out that, much like salmon, the serpents are meant to traverse the river’s deadly (incredibly acidic in this case) current in order to reach the ancient Elderling cities where they can begin their metamorphosis to eventually become dragons. 

Their cocoons, capable of withstanding centuries waiting for the right conditions, are revealed to be the source of the ‘wizardwood’ which animates Liveships and gives rise to what other magic remains in the South. (Hobb doesn’t miss on the allegory front: her Traders are literally hacking apart their world’s magic for the sake of capitalism.)

Of course, this is also the reason Vivacia felt like kin to Maulkin and vice versa: she is made from the memories and form of a cocooned serpent, but will never know the skies as Maulkin will post-transformation. (Though apparently dragons also don’t maintain their serpent personalities? It’s here I’ll admit that I skipped the Rain Wild Chronicles series that continues the story from Liveship Traders.)

Serpent, art by Spectre-Draws

The Importance of Cycles

Beyond the simple striking similarity of Hobb’s story to a real world phenomenon – somewhat unintentionally, as apparently she based her serpent/dragon cycle on dragonflies (timestamp 11:05) rather than salmon – I think it’s a good reminder about the importance of many cycles in the world around us.

Personally I’ve come to see many (social and psychological) cycles in a negative light: the dangers of feedback loops, echo chambers and Emilia Clarke-as-Daenerys saying ‘Break the Wheel’ come immediately to mind.

But the cycles I’ve discussed today go a long way to showing how essential it is for many natural cycles to be allowed to continue without human interruption. Simply preventing salmon from travelling upriver could have a massive ecological impact, just as the interruption of the sea serpents’ lifecycle gave indirect rise to so much chaos, corruption and evil in Hobb’s story.

Our planet is important! And it’s cool to see salmon jump so high.

Thanks for reading and until next time <3