The Jills are commonly reffered to as female, while the other ones are usually male.
A shame that there are no Jills featured in the game, though.

The dragon threat should diminish and eventually go away upon successful completion of the Main Quest.

the same way there are infinite Draugr, trolls, wolves, bears, guards, bandits, Stormcloaks...

I believe this is the case, yes. When a Dovahkiin dies, any dragon souls he/she has absorbed are set free once again, allowing them to be resurrected. This way, the threat of their return never really goes away.

for the same reason there are infinite bandits, falmer, draugr, bears etc. because it's a game.

The Dragonborn absorbs their souls and they don't revive. It's spelled out pretty clearly. Most of the Dragons that were killed were killed by ordinary Nord Thu'um users. Dragonborn are exceedingly rare.

Skyrim is a big place. Not all the dragons would have been buried in marked areas, or buried at all, and no one person would be capable of finding all of them. There are lots of burials just like there are more than five villages in the actual province.

Todd Howard specifically said the dragons will still be around after the main quest is done just they won't be as many as they were previously. With all the hype for skyrim going into dragons to completely remove them after completing the main quest seems like a terrible idea to me.

My understanding is that when the dragonborns die, the souls return to the dragons or something.

With your food anology, it would still be like the circle of life, except with dragon souls.


I think that gameplay wise, it would've been better to keep the # of dragons limited to how many dragon burials there are. They wouldn't be so [censored] annoying, and the less dragons there are then the more special each fight would be. The main selling point wouldn't be gone this way, as the main quest can still be exactly the same, except with less random dragon attacks.

Also it would limit how you spend your dragon souls, instead of being able to "buy" every shout and still have tons of souls left. This would increase replay value and strategy.

And just because this is a fantasy videogame doesn't mean that there can't be any logic whatsoever.

Hypothesis 1 : Alduin turns souls he eats into dragon souls.
Hypothesis 2 : Alduin is just full of tons upon tons of dragon souls... and when you pop him like some big dragon pinata, they get set free and go hog-wild with the limited number of actual bodies still vaguely intact.
Hypothesis 3 : Because Jiub drove the Cliff Racers away.
Hypothesis 4 : Because you touch yourself at night.

Because not all dragons are revived dragons.

The burial mounds are only for dragons who were killed. Lore states that not all dragons were killed and that the ones alive just vanished without a trace and no one knows where they went.

Also there are many NPC's who raise the question of where are all the dragons coming from.

I think you take it to literal to think all dragons have to be raised from the mounds.

I'm sticking with there only being limited functional dragon corpses.... and an excess of dragon souls to revive them....
It seems most consistent with what I've seen in-game.

We can assume that Alduin is not the only dragon who is capable of bringing dragons back to life, but even then there shouldn't lore-wise be infinite dragons.

As there will not be, because that'd mean the dragons will be in TES universe forever, which is highly unlikely unless they make dragons much more rare and spread them eventually over all of tamriel. Meaning, we could see a dragon or two, maybe three, in TES 6. Lore-wise. (unless they were are killed in Skyrim before they managed to flee the place)

I reckon... game-mechanics aside..... if the Dovahkiin actually saw the words SLEN-TIID-VO written down (and had three spare souls), then he / she could learn the Thu'um for rezzing dragons too (or maybe it would work only on their own race... who knows?)

Again, lore said that not all dragons died and those who didn't die vanished and no one knows where they went. Who is to say they didn't breed and mass produce?

Also there WILL always be dragons in TES because Alduin is going to destroy the world. It is his destiny to destroy the world, only his timing was off. However with you being the last of the Dragonborn, next time Alduin comes to eat the world no one will be able to stop him.

That's not how I interpreted the ending.. But then again I only played the main quest through once. He tried to do it before, failed and now came back because he wasn't properly stopped; only delayed. But this time he was stopped, but the dovakhiin, for good.

As for the mama pappa dragon argument, do we even know if they can reproduce that way? I mean you are trying to argument for a gameplay mechanic using lore, which is a weak attempt at best, especially since there's no source to point to.

One word, Kalpa. It is the measure of time from begging to end, or the amount of time before untime. It is rather confusing but this is a cycle that can not be stopped. Alduin has ate the world before, and it is his destiny to do so again. Like I said, his timing was off, which is why you are sent to stop Alduin. You don't kill him, you only delay his goal.

As for dragons breeding I am unsure, but it doesn't disregard the fact that the majority of the dragons, according to lore, vanished. So it makes sense that as they vanished they can so return. Not all dragons were killed after all.

Not all dragons were killed outright.

Yep. It doesn't go any deeper than that.

No it doesn't explain the infinite number of dragons, but we also have to remember that we do not know how many there are. There could be a billion dragons that are trying to return, and such numbers would seem infinite but doesn't mean they are, it just means they are great in numbers. We have nothing to tell us how many there are so we will never know.

Also as for Alduin, it is said by Akatosh himself that Alduin will eat the world, the same person who sent you to delay him. There are countless discussions on the lore forums if you wish to discuses this, but I warn you now that the general consensus among lore buffs is that Alduin will indeed destroy the world since lore states that he will. I don't make up the lore, I am only passing on what I have seen discussed among lore buffs on the forums who have better sources to back up their information then I do.

Honest answer.... because Bethesda, when making Skyrim... were thinking three things:

#1. OMG DRAGONS!
#2. OMG SWORDS!
#3. OMG SHOUTING!

Pretty much. While I believe there is lore to explain things, I don't think Bethesda put that much thought into it. After all dragons were the selling point of the game, I think far more people would of been disappointing to just see 3 dragons, vs the seemingly endless supply we get now. Not to mention it would seem rather anticlimactic if only a handful of dragons were actually attacking. That's just the way it is because Bethesda wanted dragons to be a big part of the game.

My ex-wife e-mailed me something my daughter wrote at school. I am so amused I actually have to share it:
"If I were a dragon I would have a lot of diamonds in a chest. I would live in a cave. It would be dark. I would have a guard to protect my diamonds. I could fly. I would see knights and kill them. Then I'd see a king and kill him too! I would eat the king and the knights and svck their blood. I will be the strongest animal in the world. I'll then have a great snooze in my cave."

... Bethesda were probably thinking along similar lines, but less sophisticated. Actually... now I think about it, my ex-wife and family live near Bethesda HQ.... I wonder....
(Note: I don't often admit I've spawned a kid, but this time it was too awesome not to mention).

I have other hypotheses:

* some of the cliff racers everyone killed in Morrowind reincarnated as dragons.
* while you're sleeping some dragon soul(s) escapes when you make the blankets flap. (plural depends upon how much cabbage was in the stew)
* Akatosh is creating more to keep the ecosystem in balance and to keep you on your toes.

But... there are more predators than herbivores in Skyrim. Have you noticed that? Where are the herds of reindeer? No wonder the wolves eat people. No wonder the Forsworn eat people.

There are some dead dragons frozen into the slopes of High Hrothgar. Playing with the Elder Scroll may have brought a Jill or two into Nirn (female dragon)
The dragons who were in hiding may be drawn to our characters because they are not as skilled as Par in defeating thier wants and desires.
The Wapamusa of Argonia have not made an appearance yet, they use a shocking shout instead of fire or ice.
I have a character who is going for every shout and I could not do it if they quit spawning completely after the main quest