"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Nearly every culture has myths about something called a 'dragon', despite the fact none of them can agree on exactly
what dragons are. How big are they? What do they look like? How many heads do they have? Do they breathe
fire? Or
ice? Do they fly (and if so, with or without wings)? How many legs do they have? Are they dumb as planks, or superintelligent? Are they low scaly pests, or ultra-rare Uber-serpents
ancient and powerful as the Earth itself?
And most importantly,
do they think we taste good with ketchup?!?
The answers to these questions generally fall within two traditions, "Western" and "Eastern". Even then, in addition to cultural differences, dragons fall into a very wide range of types even in one local mythology.
Eastern dragons come from different traditions and as such aren't technically the same dragon as their Western counterparts; Westerners who encountered stories and images of Chinese
lóng and Japanese
tatsu (better known as
ryuu) sprung on the similarities to the European dragon and
couldn't think of anything better to call them.
Even within these traditions, however, there is much variability. This has increased in modern times, as Western and Eastern authors have blurred the traditions by mixing and matching attributes from both (benign Western dragons are quite popular these days, for instance). Some authors invent completely new attributes to
set their dragons apart from the crowd
or just make them cooler.
A quick rundown of the Western and Eastern schools of dragon is as follows:
| Western Dragons | Eastern Dragons |
| Are scaly and reptilian (outwardly, anyway), and usually serpentine. | Are Mix-and-Match Critters, though the exact components vary (generally, they can best be described as "lion-snakes") |
| Have around the same size range as houses. | Can be as small as a locust or large enough to fill the space between heaven and earth. |
| Are usually antagonistic towards humans. | Are benign, but capable of destructive force when provoked. |
| Breathe fire — a staple that's been around since Beowulf. Subspecies may appear with different types of elemental breath. | Breathe sheng chi, the essence of life. Some works equate this to rain, with the appearance of a dragon accompanied by rain. |
| Kidnap damsels (preferably princesses) and/or hoard treasure. Often greedy and/or insatiable, especially in the latter regard. | Instead of hoarding magical treasures, they make them. The other thing they hoard is wisdom, which they rarely share with mortals. |
| Have a variable number of heads and legs, though one head and six limbs (four legs, and a pair of wings) and a tail is the most common configuration. More divergent types (no legs, multiple heads, etc) seem more likely to be brainless bestial monsters than the "basic" form. | Most often have one head and four legs. The longer a dragon, the more pairs of legs he has. |
| Either fly with bat-like wings, or they lack wings and don't fly. | Can fly via magic even if they lack wings, which they usually do. When they do have wings, they are often birdlike. |
| Have varying levels of intelligence. Prior to Tolkien, they rarely spoke. After Tolkien, they are often portrayed as at least as clever as humans, and frequently (much) more. | Not only they are intelligent, they are usually The Obi-Wan. |
| Their scales (and armor made thereof) may be impervious to magic. In addition, they often have some form of innate magic if intelligent. Sometimes they may even disguise themselves as humanoid beings of much smaller size and interbreeding with said species, creating half-dragons. | In addition to assuming human form, they also often have the ability to transform into other animals. |
| Live for a very long time, if not actually immortal, but typically may be killed. | May be an out and out Physical God. |
| Are incredibly strong and hard to kill but usually have one or two fatal weak spots. This is traditionally under the chin, but post-Tolkien, it's more likely to be on the chest or belly, and the eye is popular too. | In relation to the above, pretty much invincible. Not that people actively seek them out to kill them anyway. |
| Sometimes have poisonous blood, breath, saliva, or some such. Often, this will kill you after you kill it. If their blood isn't poisonous, it grants special powers such as invincibility. | Since they live and breath essence of life itself, they are the exact opposite of being poisonous. |
Western dragons' physical variability has created a number of named sub-species. The most popular variation recently has been the
wyvern, a dragon with a somewhat birdlike configuration: the forelimbs are bat-like wings and the rear limbs are their two legs. In some settings,
all dragons are wyverns (some writers evidently prefer
realistic flying, fire-breathing Uber-serpents). In other settings, wyverns are not considered "true" dragons at all, but a related, usually less powerful and intelligent species. Wyverns, when they are treated separately from dragons, often lack a breath weapon, but they often have
a poisonous stinger in their tails and viper-like fangs.
Rivaling the wyvern is the
Hydra from
Greek Mythology, which is often depicted as a flightless dragon-like water or swamp beast with one or more heads;
for each head you cut off, two rapidly grow to replace it. If they have a
Breath Weapon, it's often a different one for each head. The original sprayed poison and had poison for blood.
Very old (Greek and Roman, and some medieval) dragons are presented as more serpentine than the more recent ones — if winged, the wings are usually their only limbs; and some were totally limbless, just *very enormous* serpents. This type of dragon may be referred to as a
wyrm (pronounced just like "worm"). Some do have legs as well as wings, and walk similar to a bat, hunched over and using the wings as arms. Vermithrax Pejorative from
Dragonslayer and the dragons from
Reign of Fire are examples of wyrm dragons.
Other
reptilian or avian mixed mythological creatures, particularly the
Basilisk,
Cockatrice and
Quetzalcoatl, may be considered types of dragons or similar creatures in some works.
A more recent trend has been to try and make dragons that could actually exist in the real world. Naturally, these tend to either use
Science Fiction concepts or be very different from traditional dragons. Also common in later works is a tendency for dragons to
form a life-long bond with any human or humanoid who is
present when they hatch (probably inspired by the 'imprinting' which occurs with most birds in
Real Life, which is why birds raised in captivity with the intent to be released must be cared for by puppets). This gives writers a way to give dragons unique psychology without having to come up with unique motivations for them. It also explains why humanoid
Dragon Riders can boss them around. Yet another trend appearing here and there is for dragons to be depicted as looking similar to
dinosaurs, usually the bigger theropods (like
Tyrannosaurus rex), but occasionally sauropods (such as
Brachiosaurus) as well.
The two are often outright confused with each other. Another common trend in modern fantasy is the
miniature pet dragon, suitable for
perching on one's shoulder.
You'd think regular old dragons were boring or something!
Compare
Giant Flyer, and other
Dragon Tropes.
Not to be confused with
The Dragon, a position only sometimes held by a real dragon (while dragons themselves can just as easily be
Big Bads).
Examples:
