Questions about dragons

[Connectamabob]

So there a two basic dragon body types, ones with 4 legs + wings, and ones with 2 legs + wings. I've seen a lot of fantasy fans get very fussy about these. Sometimes it's just an aesthetic preference, but I'll see people insisting that the two legged kind not be called "dragons", that they're not supposed to be as powerful or intelligent as the four legged kind, etc.

I'm not that up on dragon lore. To me, dragons just be dragons, and as far as I can tell, whether they have any given permutation of traits varies entirely by the whims of whatever author's writing them. If Godzilla had wings, he'd be dragon, as far as I understand the definition. Yet a vocal contingent of dragon fans can be insistent about these "rules". To my uncultured eye this gives an eye-crossingly bizarre (and hilarious as such) impression of real-world racism against a fictitious creature.

So I'm wondering: what's the actual source, the pedigree if you will, behind this? Is there an actual literary tradition of four legged dragons being "proper" dragons and two legged dragons being mud dragons "drakes"/"wyverns"? Does this come from works contrasting both types side-by-side in the same world, or is it an aggregate of works where only one or the other are represented and the accessory traits statistically happen to coincide in that particular way? Is there some basis in actual historical mythology for the distinction, or is this one of those mostly post-Tolkien things like whether female dwarfs have beards?

[Vauln]

The people who make a big fuss about this topic don't seem to understand that dragons are mythical creatures. You could interpret them any way you like, in my opinion. Dragons in the east have no wings at all and look nothing like western dragons. The next time a dragon-bigot tries to tell you your dragon is just a drake or wyvern is the perfect chance for you to introduce them to your twelve man contingent to two legged dragon-riding wraiths with vorpal swords. At least that is what I would do if it was my game.

[Hobbit]

I think I'd be tempted to ask them to prove that the term "dragon" applies only to the 4 legged variety. It is possible that certain games use the definition but until relatively recently English was a very inprecise language with many words having multiple meanings and interpretations - I'm sure we could come up with many synonyms for dragon: worm/wyrm/drake/basilisk - and in original sources these creatures are often only very vaguely further designed. If you have access to it I'm sure the Oxford English Dictionary would ahve a few things to say on the subject and if your correspondents know better then they could always forward their evidence to the aforementioned body for scrutiny.

Or, of course, you could tell the person to insert the expletive of their choice from their clearly extensive vocabulary into the following sentence "............ off!" 

[**GS**]

Hi there, This diskussion seems a little bit needless as Vauln pointed out.

It reminds me of a guy telling me in earnest:
"I find the magic system of "the dark eye" more realistic then that of D&D." 

Keep in mind: It's fantasy and it's about simulation...

Greetings
GS

[Vermis]

There's historical precedent for wyverns (well... historical precedent in folklore...) and there might be some for drakes, but all in all I think most of the ring-fencing of dragons, drakes and wyverns is a pretty arbitrary construct of modern fantasy, and gaming fantasy in particular - D&D and it's offshoots, IMO. (I'd guess a lot of the borderline aspies in the hobby don't like their meat and vegetables touching on the plate... >_>)
I've already despaired about people stridently claiming "that's not a dragon, it's a wyvern!" Like I say, the traditional description of a wyvern is a reptilian monster with two legs and two wings (and, might I add, a barbed stinger); but I don't think that absolutely precludes the concept of a two-leg-two-wing dragon! Shouldn't be used to indirectly denigrate Vermithrax and the Reign of Fire breed, especially not if you think a wyvern is just another type of dragon.

On the topic of drakes and wyrms/worms in modern fantasy, I'll point at the godfather, Don Tolkien. It seems that to him, they were pretty much synonyms for dragons. Smaug and Scatha, winged and apparently unwinged respectively, were both described as worms. Fire-drake and cold-drake merely described two subsets of dragons, based on whether they could or couldn't breathe fire. Winged Smaug and Ancalagon, and unwinged Glaurung, were all fire-drakes. And I don't know if you could really pigeonhole Glaurung as an 'inferior' dragon based on his flightlessness, either.

And yes, I've also thought that Godzilla is pretty much a modern, sci-fi (western) dragon. Giant reptilian monster from a bygone age; reawakened to raid human settlements and wreak untold destruction; breathes intense, deadly flames; impervious to conventional weapons and attacks...

Here's one of my favourite dragon images, stumbled across I don't know when. They're not only two-legged and two-winged, but feathered, with bird legs and bird wings! Even the writer of that site falls back on what's become locked as 'the dragon look' ("The dragons are more like birds here"), but for me it's a great example of the mutability and choice of the physical concept and possible design of dragons

(Hmm. Feathers. Wings. Bird legs. Long tail. Toothy mouth. Sounds like a depiction of another type of creature, that pop-culture nerds have a hard time with...)

Lastly, I thought this was also pretty good for shaking up some of the strict definitions. (Must get round to reuploading the example pics. Again.)

a dragon-bigot

Good grief.

[Cubs]

I suspect the 'definition' of the 4-leg variety is a modern invention, since images in antiquity of the dragon seem to show them very often as 2-leg serpents, or just serpents, with or without wings. Traditionally, in Western culture, the dragon represents the Devil in monstrous form.

Hence, St George and the Dragon is the triumph of Christian purity over evil.

[Quirkworthy]

I think that Tolkein was an early example of this slippery slope in giving exact definitions to previously vague terms (orc in his case). It seems to me that D&D was majorly responsible for trying to define and categorise a myriad mythical creatures to fill out a series of monster manuals and ever more exotic adventures. The base concept of most rules is that creature X is always like this and creature Y is aways like that. There is little room for individual variation for anything except a player. When you add the figure companies who want to make a model someone will buy, you get the line of least resistence which is this is a dragon, this is a giant, this is a troll, etc. It's part of the abstraction you need to have to make rules simple enough to play.

When I was at GW their background defined dragons as 4 legged and wyverns as 2.

Overall, I'd agree that it's a modern interpretation and that historically dragons (and many other mythical creatures) were described in a widely varying manner depending on time, place and culture.

[Cubs]

PS. Spot God creeping in to do 'bunny ears' on St George in two of the pics below.

[Donpimpom]

I closed this question many years ago (when we were playing Ars Magica) with an easy form, 4 legs=dragon 2 legs=wyrm/wivre
You can always looks this site,
http://bestiary.ca
Summarizes most of the oldest sources, Pliny, Herodoto, isidoro de sevilla, which are always so charming to read, read Pliny knowledge about dragons and elephants
http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast262.htm
http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast267.htm
and has a nice compilation of images for each creature
http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery262.htm#

By the way, you will see many illustration of dragons has two legs, so don't trust in my theory

[Cubs]

Summarizes most of the oldest sources, Pliny, Herodoto, isidoro de sevilla, which are always so charming to read, read Pliny knowledge about dragons and elephants
http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast262.htm

At the bottom of the entry about Dragons it says - "There is considerable variation in the illustration of dragons, but they usually have two or four feet, long tails, and at least one pair of wings."

[Dolmot]

"And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born."

I also think it's fairly recent a trend trying to standardise mythical creatures. Traditionally there was always room for imagination and interpretation. Only with D&D arose the need to differentiate and to give exact stats to colour-coded dragon subspecies.

For another example, the difference between elves, fairies, gnomes, trolls and whatnot used to be quite hazy and to vary greatly between countries. The first Finnish translator of LotR/Hobbit faced a major challenge assigning the names of traditional forest-folk to Tolkien's concepts. Heck, it wasn't even clear whether there's a difference between orcs and goblins. Nowadays we may be very adamant on that too when it comes to sculpts and statlines. And elves must be tall and carry a bow...

Here be dragons.

[FramFramson]

Two legs good, four legs bad.