Thread open to discuss dragons. I am hoping someone will post some cool pictures as well.
Encyc. of Arda says QUOTE:
Mighty reptilian creatures who ranked among the most feared of the servants of the Dark Lord. Of the origins of dragons, no tale tells; the first of them to be seen was Glaurung, Father of Dragons, who first issued from Angband in the middle of the First Age. After Glaurung came many others to strike fear into Elves and Men for the next three ages; among them were Ancalagon the first winged dragon, Scatha who dwelt in the cold northern wastes, and Smaug, last of the great dragons.
Dragons have powers of intelligence and speech, and many are also able to cast the dragon-spell, a bewildering confusion that affects any who gaze into the eye of the creature.
The dragons were not destroyed at the end of the Third Age; some are said to have survived to our own time, but the great worms and drakes of the Elder Days are no more.
"Now the least mighty [dragons] - yet they were very great beside the Men of those days - are cold as in the nature of snakes and serpents, and of them a many having wings go with the uttermost noise and speed..."
Turambar and the Foalókë
in The History of Middle-earth vol. II The Book of Lost Tales II
Lesser dragons; those of dragon-kind who did not have the ability to make fire.
They were used by Morgoth in the wars of the First Age, though no specific mention of them in this period remains in Tolkien's published work. After the War of Wrath, in which most would have perished, some few seem to have escaped into the northern regions of Middle-earth, beyond the Grey Mountains.
As the millennia passed, their numbers grew, until they became a serious threat in the later centuries of the Third Age to the Dwarves that mined the Grey Mountains. In the year 2589 of the Third Age, Dáin I, King of Durin's Folk, and his second son Frór were slain at the gates of their halls by a Cold-drake. The attacks of these fearsome creatures persuaded the Dwarves to migrate eastwards from the Grey Mountains, and it was soon afterwards that their realms in the Iron Hills and at Erebor were established.
Of the history of the Cold-drakes after this period we are given no hint. Four hundred years later, at the time of Bilbo Baggins' journey to Erebor, they seem to have left the Grey Mountains (at least, Gandalf makes no mention of them when describing the dangers of that region). It is possible that the Orcs who colonised the Mountains after the departure of the Dwarves drove them back into the cold wastes to the north, but we can do no more than speculate on their ultimate fate.
"…but the mightier [dragons] are hot and very heavy and slow-going, and some belch flame, and fire flickereth beneath their scales…"
Turambar and the Foalókë
in The History of Middle-earth volume II, The Book of Lost Tales 2
The more powerful of the two fundamental divisions of dragon-kind, who, as the name suggests, were able to breathe fire. Glaurung, Ancalagon and Smaug were all fire-drakes. The only explicit reference is in The Silmarillion (Of the Return of the Noldor); "…Glaurung, the first of the Urulóki, the fire-drakes of the North, issued from Angband's gates by night."
Smaug, the last of the truly powerful dragons, was slain by Bard in the late Third Age. We can be sure that he was not the last of the fire-drakes, though, because Gandalf refers to fire-breathing dragons in the time before the War of the Ring, nearly eighty years after Smaug's death. Tolkien even goes so far as to hint that some of these creatures might have survived to our own times.
A type of dragon found in the northern parts of Middle-earth, and perhaps elsewhere. The most famous long-worm (and in fact the only one that Tolkien explicitly identifies) was Scatha of the Ered Mithrin, who preyed on the Dwarves and Men of the Grey Mountains, and was slain by Fram of the Éothéod.
Though Tolkien gives almost no clues about long-worms in the text of The Lord of the Rings, his illustrations of dragons give us some further hints. Tolkien's dragons tend to be sinuous, serpentine creatures, having the appearance almost of a winged snake rather than the more traditional dragon-form. This would explain the term 'long-worm' easily. It's interesting to note that Tolkien gave this form to another northern dragon, Smaug, which strongly suggests that he, too, was one of the long-worms.
"Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert."
Bilbo Baggins,
in The Hobbit 1: An Unexpected Party
Creatures of an unknown kind, possibly mythical and presumably related to dragons, that were said to dwell in the Last Desert.
Tolkien only ever mentions were-worms once, in the quote given above, so we know almost nothing about them. We cannot even be certain that they actually existed - the Hobbits had a rich folklore peopled with fantastic beings, and were-worms quite possibly fall into that category.
If they did exist, the name 'were-worm' suggests a shapeshifting creature like a werewolf - a being that could take the form of either a Man or of a Dragon. Any discussion of the form or habits of the were-worms, though, must remain in the realms of speculation.
OOOO, when I saw the title for this thread I was thrilled...I absolutly adore dragons Course I don't know much about Tolkiens dragons which is why this is such a great thread Fusica Did Tolkien talk alot about dragons in Middle Earth? I havent read a lot of his books but I know alot of you have...I did read The Hobbit and Smaug was probably my favorite character, if you can call him a character I would love to see some pictures too! Maybe I shall have to do a search here to see if I can find anything. You think you could find any drawings of Tolkiens dragons?
May the wind always be at your back and the sun always upon your face, and the winds of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.
I had no idea that there was so much in Tolkien about Dragons. Thank goodness for the Encyclopedia. I think the information I posted will help us delv into the world of Tolkiens dragons. I will look for pics.
04-04-2004 08:19 PM
Course I don't know much about Tolkiens dragons which is why this is such a great thread Fusica 
