5 Dragons You Definitely Don't Want To Mess With - #MonsterMondays 33

Good morning and welcome to my blog for Monster Mondays 33 - today I am talking about the ultimate in monsters: dragons!

5 Dragons You Definitely Don't Want To Mess With

I have always loved dragons, be they the good guys or the bad guys - they are simply awesome creatures. Today I present five that made an impression on me. These big guns you definitely don't want to tangle with "for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" :). These are in no particular order because I would never dare take it upon myself to rank dragons.

Smaug

Smaug from The Desolation of Smaug 2013

Of course I could not have a list of evil dragons without mentioning the great Smaug from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. He drove the Dwarves out of Erebor (The Lonely Mountain), taking possession of their kingdom and all the treasure within it.

He earned both the names Smaug the Golden and Smaug the Magnificent in that, thanks to sleeping on his hoard of gold and jewels some of it became embedded in his underside, already covered in impenetrable scales. He is all but invulnerable, but like Achilles, not quite. In Smaug's case, when Bilbo watches him, the hobbit notices a small bare patch, which becomes Smaug's ultimate downfall when he is killed by Bard the Bowman.

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Tiamat

Tiamat from Dungeons and Dragons 1983

Now Tiamat is actually a draconic goddess from ancient Mesopotamian mythology usurped for the D&D role-playing game. In the game she is the mother of all evil dragons, however, the version I am going to talk about today is from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon of the 80s.

 Now this is the version of  Dungeons and Dragons I knew best, since I didn't really encounter role-playing games until I hit university. In the cartoon Tiamat is a fierce five headed dragon and each of her heads is as deadly as the next:

• white head - breathes ice
• green head - breaths toxic gas
• red head (main) - breathes fire
• blue head - breathes lightning
• black head - breathes acid

She is very, very dangerous. However, she is also useful to the heroes because she is the arch enemy of Venger, who is the big bad always trying to defeat them. Involving Tiamat is always risky to the intrepid group of youngsters, but occasionally they have to do so to beat Venger.

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The Golden Dragon

This dragon comes from Beowulf, the 2007 cgi film staring Ray Winstone as Beowulf and Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother.

In Beowulf the main protagonist is Grendel, a monster who kills those in the feasting hall of King Hrothgar whenever they use it because the noise drives him crazy. When Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel, he returns to his mother who swears revenge and kills all of Beowulf's men. However, when Beowulf and Wiglaf travel to kill her, Beowulf instead makes a deal with her; he sires a son with her to replace Grendel and lets her keep the gold drinking horn that was a prize possession of King Hrothgar in return for her making him a great king.

The son is the golden dragon.

Many years later the agreement is broken and Grendel's mother sends her son, the great dragon, to destroy Beowulf's kingdom.

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Vermithrax Pejorative

From Dragonslayer (1981)

Now here we have a traditional dragon who terrorises a whole land and demands virgin sacrifices. Vermithrax is from the 1981 Disney film Dragonslayer and this dragon is a fearsome creature indeed. Vermithrax is 400 years old and has the kingdom of Urland firmly under control. Twice a year a young female virgin is chosen by lottery to be sacrificed and eaten.

In the end only the sacrifice of a wizard can destroy Vermithrax - a life for a life.

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Fafnir

By Arthur Rackham - ; Rackham, Arthur (illus) (1924-August) [1911] Siegfried & The Twilight of the Gods (New Impression ed.), London: William Heinemann, p. p. 22 Retrieved on 22 June 2011., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15613431

Fafnir is a dragon from Norse Mythology who started off as a great dwarf, son of king Hreidmar. Overcome by greed, Fafnir stole cursed gold by killing his father, after which he travelled into the wilderness so he could guard his hoard against all comers. His greed turned him into a great dragon able to breathe poison into the land around himself so that others could not approach.

He was eventually killed by his brother Regin's foster son Sigurd, who almost lost his own head to his foster-father's insane greed.

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So there you have it, five of the nastiest dragons none of us want to meet.

Who is your favourite evil dragon?

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