Not Dragons...

Perhaps you have heard/seen this before. It is just under three minutes long, but honestly, he covers his point in the first 15 seconds.

He seems quite passionate.



Cypher Black

 

well... new britannia is not earth... so, dragons on new britannia might not be dragons on earth or in any other worlds for that matter... lol

 

after some googling... I learned that SotA is not the only title that breaks this dragon/wyvern thing... like in Games of Thrones and even Hobbit... safe to say, it's just misplaced hate... LOL

 

He has a point....Although the line is kind of blurry these days. Smaug (in the Hobbit films) had a wyvern type appearance (unlike the illustrations from some versions of the book), and, generally speaking, wyverns are a "type" of dragon. (usually considered a more primitive version)

 

oh... the old version of the dragon in Iron Fist comics doesn't even have limbs nor wings... just a snake like body and a head... just one of those misplaced hate towards SotA... LOL

 

Saint George slew a dragon.

 

Its a kind of silly argument, since in medieval bestiaries, dragons could come with all sorts of shapes; four legs, two legs, no legs. Wyverns are just french versions of dragons; they come from the French guivre. As far as I understand, the two legs vs. four legs thing was a product of English heraldry distinguishing between wyverns and dragons for the purpose of charges. But even in the heraldry of non-English countries -- including in French -- a two-legged dragon is still called a dragon.

 

Also, in other words, a wyvern is just a type of dragon.

And AD&D is not authoritative. Basilisks aren't necessarily different than cockatrices, and kobolds don't need scales

 

That's the guy that blew up our Discord yesterday. I never expected him to sound like a quiet Francis!
I feel you, but that diatribe loses its bite with so many Fbombs. You just become immune.

 

Blew up our discord is funny by itself.

But I will add seriousness to this discussion: remember the book "Three trails in the sand" by Peter Dragon?

 

Nah. It's a drake.

Below lets do a short test,
When you open each spoiler quickly picture the beast (and if you wish) write down the charecteristics of each.

Spoiler

Wyrm

Spoiler

Winged serpent

Spoiler

Drake

Spoiler

Hydra

Spoiler

lindesworm

Spoiler

Dragon

Spoiler

Cockatrice

Spoiler

Sea serpent

Spoiler

Wyvern

Spoiler

Ddraig (Arthurian/Welsh dragon)

 

That's funny...but, I guess everyone has their own thing.

 

And what "dragon expert" decided this?

[edit] I suppose next we'll be told that Chinese dragons are not dragons because they don't have wings.

 

The Hobbit movie considered going with the traditional 4 legs 2 wings design, but they couldn't rig the model properly that way. No bony animal in nature has that configuration and they couldn't figure out where all the muscle needed to operate a giant pair of wings would be kept.

 

I believe this may be close to why Sota dragons don't have 4 legs.. this may be one of those things that bugged @Lord British about Ultima Online, I seem to recall he never liked the 4-legged version, and given the opportunity, has elected to go with 2. I think there's a video of him 3 years ago when the dragons were first being talked about, where he spoke up excitedly that they would be made 'properly' with two legs instead of four. Does anyone else recall?

Personally I think these dragons look great, though perhaps a bit small. I look forward to some truly giant dragons in the future.

If Tolkein can be considered an authoritarian figure on this aspect of modern mythological fiction, It appears that for Tolkien drake, wyrm, worm, serpent, and dragon were synonyms. Though I don't believe he uses the term 'Wyvern', and from a linguistic standpoint, I believe Wyvern was more closely related to 'viper' than 'dragon'.

Perhaps 'dragon' is more of a general term, and should cover many if not all the species in the family of draconic-like creatures.

 

The swearing was incredibly excessive, you may wish to add a disclaimer or spoiler, I made the mistake of opening this where I could be heard.

It didn't bother me in game of thrones or Skyrim and doesn't bother me here. A dragon is whatever the world I'm playing in defines it as.

The writer/teller of a story is welcome to have the physiology of their world any way they like. If monkeys can only eat oranges in their world, or anything red is poison - that's fine by me.

 

2-legged dragons: Elderscrolls: Skyrim, Game of Thrones, The Hobbit (Movie not book), Reign of Fire, Harry Potter, Dragonslayer.. SotA is not the first.

 

Snake Bats I tell ya!

Snake scales...check
Bat wings...check

If it had claws and a stingy tail like thingy, it would be a Corpion Cat Bat. Those are viscous, let me dig out my AD&D Nerd Rage Manual from 1982....

 

Jabberwocky?


~Time Lord~​