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Game of Thrones!

Excuse us while we go all fanboy on our blog and spew unadulterated love for the masterpiece TV show that finally—finally—returns to the airwaves this week.

If you haven’t guessed, everyone around the Movoto office has devoured “Game of Thrones.” A lot of us have watched the first two seasons multiple times. Some of us have even dived into the novels the series is based on. Our love is that great.

Just last week we got to talking about how we could bring the series, in some form, to our blog. What did we come up with?

Dragons.

So, if you love dragons as much as we do check out these 10 cities where dragons are likely to roost. (Here’s looking at you Mother of Dragons. We’d cross the Narrow Sea with you anytime.)

1. Minneapolis
2. Las Vegas
3. Colorado Springs
4. Tucson
5. Washington, DC
6. Houston
7. Mesa
8. Portland
9. Louisville
10. Sacramento

Where Dragons Want to Live, Other than Westeros

We didn’t pull our cities out of a hat and slap them into a top 10 list. No matter how crazy it sounds, we put some thought into actually looking at the 50 most populous cities in the country and the various aspects our pseudo-dinosaur friends would want. We considered:

• The number of adventurers in a city
• The number of so-called knights in a city
• Underground lairs near a city
• Amount of gold in a city
• Churches in a city
• Delicious meat products in a city

Once we had the numbers for each of these six categories, we ranked each city from 1 to 50 (1 being the best score). The top 10 cities had the lowest average ranking.

We’ll start by breaking down the number of adventurers in each city, otherwise known as those uppity peons trying to keep a dragon down.

Adventurers: Where D&D Finally Pays Off

If you’re a giant man-eating lizard-bat, one thing you hate is a bunch of people wandering around trying to rain on your parade—probably with arrows.

To get around this, we looked at the percentage of people in each city who’d be in the prime adventurer age group. In other words, we pulled up Census data and looked at the percentage of each city’s population that’s between 20 and 34 years old. Minneapolis had the fewest percentage of people in this age group, making it more favorable for dragons.

Speaking of adventurers, each gang that’s bent on dragon-cide needs a leader to whip them into shape. That’s where knights come in.

Knights: Walking Cans of Spam

If you’re going by European stories, dragons are notoriously hounded by knights trying to make a name for themselves. That’s pretty selfish if you ask us. Thankfully, knights walk around in heat conductive tin cans—so that makes dealing with them easy.

 

We came up with the number of knights in each city through deduction. We looked at the 2010 Census data and found the 1,000 most popular last names in the country, and the number of times that name would show up per 100,000 people.

 

If the numbers gurus are to be believed, the last name Knight ranks as the 201st most common surname in the country. Based on this, the Census data showed that 49 people per 100,000have this surname.

We took this fun factoid and ran with it.

To figure out how many Knights were in each city, we divided the population by 49. But because knights are annoying—seriously, Jamie Lannister pushed a little boy out a window—and uncooperative when it comes to dragon dominance, the cities that rank the highest in this category were those with the fewest braggarts.

Hello, Arlington, Texas. With the lowest population on our list, this Lone Star State city took the top spot for this category. Maybe Arlington makes up for its lack of knights with cowboys?

Underground Lairs

There’re a lot of places dragons can live, but the best place is an underground lair. There’s no need to be afraid of the dark if you can hiccup and light up the room.

The problem with underground lairs is that they aren’t that common in large cities, so we got creative here and figured out how close each city was to major caves. Specifically, we calculated the average distance in miles. For Washington, DC, we looked at caves in Virginia and Maryland.

Boston took our top spot in this category.

Take this with a grain of salt. We relied on caves found within each state. This means that cities near state borders might be close to other caves.

(However, for those not in the know, dragons are incredibly jingoistic? This means that once they move to a state—THEY MOVE INTO A STATE. They aren’t interested in crossing state lines. Some have even been known to get the outline of their favorite state tattooed on their scaly arms. No joke.)

Loot: Dragons Believe in the Gold Standard

 

Dragons love bling! They make Kanye West look like a hobo. Because of this they have underground lairs to stash their treasure trove of awesomeness. If you doubt us, think back to the last time you read “The Hobbit.” Smaug is literally called Smaug the Golden. He loves goldthat much.

 

Because we knew dragons love bling, we went to Yelp and looked up the number of jewelry stores in each city. As with some of our other categories, we used this to learn how many jewelry stores there are in the area per capita. This gave us the means to figure out where dragons can get their Mr. T on.

Unsurprisingly, San Francisco took the top spot in this category. We were hoping it’d be Los Angeles so we could make a lot of jokes, but you don’t always get what you want.

Churches: Inspiring Dragon Crusades

It’s hard to hurt a dragon—just ask all those knights who are roasting in their own juices. So why would someone go battle a deadly beast? Not everyone does it to make a name for themselves.

We looked into people who’ve supposedly killed dragons and we came across some you might recognize, such as St. George and Margaret the Virgin. We thought about what connected the two, and decided the one thing a dragon doesn’t want is a group of devout people willing to throw themselves at it in droves.

So divine authority had to go. With no one to set our knights and adventurers on task, our dragons would be more than happy to snatch control.

For this category we surveyed the number of churches in each city. The city with the fewest churches per capita was ranked the highest. This honor went to New York City.

What’s for Dinner? Ugh! Didn’t We Have Knight Last Night?

Dragons gotta eat. And we’re not just talking about knights looking for their dragon-slaying merit badge. We went through each city and found out the number of meat stores per capita. This gave us a clue as to what everyone who didn’t flee their home at the sight of a giant lizard would feed the dragon—opposed to princesses and milkmaids. Long Beach ranked the highest in this category.

Prepare for the Inevitable

Now that you know where all those mythical dragons are likely to strike, you should consider a few things. First, buy more fire insurance. Second, make plans to spend long stretches of time stuck indoors and out of sight. Come to think of it, it might be the perfect time to catch up on your new favorite TV show.