House of the Dragon

[Hammock Parties]

OH YEAH!

All the dragons roar as one.
The #HOTD trailer has arrived. pic.twitter.com/ug7ESvpg8U

— House of the Dragon (@HouseofDragon) July 20, 2022

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower

The "wtf where are the scorpions?" thing is an unfortunate side effect of "writers typically suck at scale & numbers" thing.

For Westerosis to plausibly forget a usable dragon countermeasure would need about another 100 years of history to elapse between Danaerys crossing the sea and the death of the last dragon in King's Landing.

In fairness, i think it's about 80 years. There's a pretty big gap in time between this period and Dany.

I think the biggest issue is still that even if you don't use 'em on dragons, wouldn't you use them on ships? Blast that sucker into the side of a ship's hull and that's ballgame. Or as an anti-siege weapon? I mean any offensive against a walled city is going to have siege towers, no? Stick a scorpion bolt through the legs of one of those things and watch it come tumbling down.

Dragons or no dragons, I feel like the scorpion wouldn't go completely extinct. I mean think about the massive deck guns on the USS Missouri and other Iowa class battleships. No, we have no real use for them anymore, but during Desert Storm we kinda did - we started using them due to their range and punching power to soften shore targets before amphibious landings (IIRC).

We don't ever completely lose the utility of any specialized weapon. At worst, we simply re-purpose it. Or adapt it.

EDIT: Appears to be about 150 years. The Dance of Dragons is about 150AC, (little before that, but the last dragon dies around 150 AC) the War of the Five Kings is about 300 AC.