In fact, Gawain could well understand the current predicament of Talronde—not referring to the post-disaster wasteland predicament, but the predicament of the Dragonkin as a race.
A race nurtured by Omega for 1.87 million years, surviving in a cradle for the same duration, despite maintaining the most basic observation of the outside world and having a tradition of sending "agents" like Melita to other continents, these limited, high-level contacts had little effect on a society needing normal development. They had already moved away from the normal social order, with neither progress nor regression, pressure nor motivation—like animals raised in a greenhouse, they still had sharp teeth and claws but had regressed to the point of not knowing how to use them.
After the cradle collapses, the infants must learn to crawl—and this has little to do with the inherent strength of the dragons themselves.
