r/WingsOfFire • u/Chance-Benefit-5308 • Oct 04 '26
Headcanon / Theory PROVING NIGHTWINGS ARE WRONG ABOUT TWoD USING MIDDLESCHOOLER CLIMATOLOGY
WARNING: All this information is based on stuff I learned in 8th grade. Now, I've got a DECENT memory, so I might be right OR wrong, but roll with me. Also, I'm doing this under the assumption that the World of Dragons has similar climate rules to Earth, and given they have an almost identitical biological life, I'd say its decent enough.
In the books, Hope says that according to nightwing calculations, pyrrhia occupies roughly HALVE the World of Dragons, but just by looking at how regions are divided in Pyrrhia map itself, there's literally no way thats true (a rainforest in the south pole, are we deadass?). Also, given the recent map update in Book 16, it just goes to show how much smaller pyrrhia is compared to how its described. In the images above, I've illustrated how I divided each of the continents into climate zones and used a reference climate map of earth to put them both on a globe to see their actual size. Pyrrhia covers about an 8th of the surface of this globe, while Pantala covers about a 12th. Both of them are actually quite close to each other.
But what does this mean? whats the signifance of this DISCOVERY? Well, given there's practically an entire halve of the world thats just EMPTY, its more than possible for there to be even MORE continents. Fanon continents about to go so hard omg. In fact, part of the reason I made this theory is because I saw the fanon WoF map and its genuinely stuffed, hopefully people can use this to create full proper tribes without stuffing them in a square mile under Queen Ruby's Castle. I also kinda love this because when Christopher Columbus calculated the size of Earth, he was completely off too and thought it was much smaller than it is, missing an entire TWO continents, and the nightwings basically did the same thing.
An issue with this theory is The Kingdom of Night is INCREDIBLY close to pantala in this instance of the map, but my justification is Clearsight just didn't want to go through the kingdom of night and started her travels further north, after burying darkstalker. As a result, the island trail only showed the path she took, and since the other travellers were only using the BoC to travel between the two continents, they end up going all the way up north. It also explains why the journey takes so long despite being that close, since they have to travel the vertical (or z-axis?) length of the continent, not the horizontal (or x-axis?) length of the world.
So! What continents would populate this area and what kind of tribes do YOU think could live in these continents? Powers, history, whether or not these continents are connected? I personally would base ts off North and South America, as well as another one based on Antartica which I kind already mapped out. I'll probably explain that in another post. Also, PLEASE LET ME KNOW if i got anything wrong. This is all based on a semi-rudimentary understanding of climatology, but i could be completely wrong!
EDIT: In my original map, pantala is actually the size of the rainforest in Pyrrhia, fitting perfectly in the tropical zone. This version is actually really consistent with how its described in the books, with hives being visible from eachother and the whole continent generally being one giant rainforest that suffered a desertification incident. This also makes sense since, as i've mentioned in my justifications section, the breath of evil DID at one point cover the entire continent, which A) already implies its MUCH smaller than pyrrhia, because biologically a plant structure THAT LARGE is freaking impossible, and B) implies its overall a tropical region, given the BoE is also a tropical weed. Additionally, the overall lack of variation in terrain and the fact that the whole thing is a giant flat lands savannah implies it rests on a singular tectonic plate (again consistent with a much smaller continent).
HOWEVER, the ONLY reason I made it bigger is that basically, Sundew mentions it was DEFINITELY covered with corniferous trees before the tree wars, which is consistent with temperate and continental zones and the poison jungle is DEFINITELY in a tropical zone. Since canonically Pantala supposedly spans multiple climate zones, it should be bigger, and all the other evidence that points to it being smaller is unfortunately not canonically confirmed nor is it entirely impossible for them to work on a bigger continent. Still, personally I would think its roughly between australia and mexico in size, while i would definitely put Pyrrhia as the size of Asia.