#dracopedia

Posting a quick guide to  some lovely books here - many people who like dragons have read one of the Dragonology or Dracopedia books, some may have read How to Raise and Keep a Dragon, but not everyone knows that there are many books in both the Dragonology and Dracopedia series! Of these I recommend ‘Drake’s Comprehensive Compendium’, ‘Dracopedia Field Guide’ and ‘How to Raise and Keep a Dragon’ the most. All books in this post are based either loosely or closely on real world mythology, but with the spin of ‘what if this animal real?’

Name: Sea Orc, Leviathan, Sea Serpent, Sea Dragon

Type: Fictional

Culture of Origin: America

Description: Aquatic Dragons, often serpentine in shape

Myth: N/A

Facts:

Sea Orcs were created by William O’Connor for his Dracopedia artbook series.

While Orc in modern fiction usually refers to a race of monstrous humanoids, it does have historic use as a term for sea monsters, hence the name of the dragons in this series.

Orca originates from this use of Orc.

There are two families of Sea Orcs:

Cetusidae includes the Sea Lion and the Scottish Sea Orc. Members of this family are smaller, growing to about 50′, and more terrestrial.

Dracanguillidae includes the Faero Sea Orc and the Striped Sea Dragon. Members of this family are larger, reaching 300′, and are more aquatic.

Inked and colorized version of the Alphyn pencil drawing I posted earlier. Again, heavy inspiration from the book, "Dracopedia The Bestiary: An Artist's Guide to Creating Mythical Creatures".

Well I am very late to the Dracopedia bandwagon because the only Dracopedia book I have read is the most recent volume, so I don’t know the full scope of the franchaise and depth of world building.

But from Dracopedia: the Field Guide I can say I love, love love the illustrations! Although some of them were done by friends of O’Connor (as the poor chap passed away in 2018 so the book was finished by friends and editors), it’s O’Connor’s art style that makes me say “wow”, I love the scales, and I love the dragons with fur and scales.

My favourite clade is the Asian Dragon clade, because, well, just look at this design!

It is a group of dragons with membranous ‘wings’ all down the body, useful for increasing the dragon’s surface area for gliding. I have many similar designs in Dracones Mundi, it’s a very good look for dragons. My favourite of this group is a blue one called the Himalayan Dragon (the gold one above is the Temple Dragon).

However, not all the dragons in Asia are in the Asian dragon family, some are in the Arctic dragon family - not all of which live in the Arctic! My absolute favourite dragon in the book, the zmey, is from this group. Arctic dragons have a mix of traditional dragon scales, and some scales which look like fur, and the almost indulgent way O’Connor draws fur makes those illustrations a delight to look at.

Another good thing about Dracopedia is that it brings light to some lesser known dragons - the ‘Indian Hydra’ is a super snazzy naga design and the aforementioned zmey does not get enough attention in fantasy books. There is even a horrifying Japanese hydra for the legend of Yamata no Orochi. As I understand it, one of the other books in the series, the Dracopedia Bestiary, is a book that focuses on fantasy animals which are mostly overlooked as well! 

Also the layout of the field guide, especially the amphithere chapter, is something I aspire to. Full body illustrations, face illustrations and maps just like a useful ID book. This format is lost in later chapters, alas, but the book was a titanic effort to bring together, especially as O’Connor passed away before it finished, so I can understand why formatting and illustrations were not the same throughout the book.

What I don’t like are some nit-pick things about the scientific terminology. My goodness, the use of Latin names is a mess sometimes. In the Field Guide each chapter is a family, but for some reason the chapter is opened with a species name: Asian Dragon, Draco cathaidae

A family name is a word that ends in ‘idae’, whereas a species binomial is two words, the genus and species. ‘Cathaidae’ would be the Asian dragon family, Draco cathidaeus or Draco cathaidaus would be a specific type of dragon. The family name cannot be ‘Draco cathaidae’, just ‘Cathaidae’.

Within the family all dragons are the same genus, Cathaidaus, and the scientific grammar checks out for most dragon names within the chapter. In other chapters, however, the genus name is just the family name with no edits (generic names do not end in ‘idae’ so that at a glance one can tell if you’re talking about a family or a genus). For example, Hydridae medusus should be something more like Hydrus medusus.

I reckon that the species name per chapter was a relic from Dracopedia: A Guide to Drawing Dragons of the World, which was a book with fewer dragons than the field guide. It is likely that the latin names are from the main dragons in that book, but in later books with more dragons the individual dragon species of the genus Draco steadily became mingled with other dragons in more genera.

The other nit pick I have is the... amphitheres mating with chickens to produce cockatrices... In a book where feathered coatls exist, feathered dragons exist, why not just have cockatrices as another species of dragon? Why must an amphithere mate with a chicken? What evolutionary purpose does that serve? Is the anatomy inside a dragon cloaca even compatible with the anatomy within a chicken cloaca? How about the eggs? How similar are dragon eggs to bird eggs? Similar enough that a chicken can carry a dragon-bird-hybrid egg to full term? This makes more questions than it answers.

The third thing I am not keen on is probably only a part of the Field Guide, and not something relevant to Dracopedia as a whole, and that is the lack of in depth looks at stories and mythology - for example, there is an illustration of a Japanese hydra, and it mentions there is a Japanese hydra called Yamata no Orochi, but doesn’t say “this is a dragon Susanoo had to fight by getting it drunk on sake” or anything about that legend. However, there is literally a book called Dracopedia Legends entirely about telling these stories, so maybe I should read that instead XD. The lack of mythology lends the book to having a more ‘field guide’ appearance.

I randomly found one of the dragon art books by Neondragon at an antique mall. There were like six dragon art books, and three manga books, feel like someone offloaded their kids books or something :( I picked up three of the dragon books and a magic eye book!! for only $14....nice.

The other two dragon books were the dragopedia, dragons and fantasy creatures series, pretty cool, by William O' Connor

Again tho, magic eye book, kinda hard to get the eye trick, especially on certain patterns