#dragons initial theme

9850 Dragon Battle

9897 Dragons Challenge

Once again, the Mega Bloks Dragons box designers don’t know how to use apostrophes.

So it’s pretty obvious what this set is: a chess set, with Warfang and Valtheran warriors in place of the pieces.  Which is supposed to be white and which is supposed to be black, I have no idea.  The instruction booklet asserts that “the light color pieces play first,” but is that the Warfang or the Valtheran?  Neither really seems lighter- or darker-colored than the other to me.

It came with a coppery-scaled dragon with a red crystal.  I couldn’t find a photograph of it.

It also came out in 2002, which puts it three years ahead of LEGO’s first chess set (the Knight’s Kingdom chess set), if I’m not mistaken.

9882 Fire Mountain

I’m guessing that this set came out a little while after the sets I have previously covered, but I can’t be certain, as I was not aware of Mega Bloks Dragons at the time, and there are (obviously) precious few historical records.  Anyway, though this is a 2002 set and part of the initial Dragons theme, it differs from previous 2002 sets in two significant ways.  First, it features a dragon model not previously seen.  While, in previous sets, dragons were distinguished from each other only by the colors of their scales and the shapes of their cranial ornamentation, the dragon in 9882 Fire Mountain is distinguished from the others by an additional head!  Below the shoulders, however, he(?) is no different from previously released dragons.  His(?) name is Eironchard, and he is gold of scale and red of horn.

Second, the humans in this set are neither copper-armored Warfang nor silver-armored Valtheran.  Their armor is gold (or bronze), and they belong to the Draigar faction!  You see, Padraig from 9871 Dragon Slayer succeeded in his attempt at unifying the Warfang and Valtheran into a single people!  Now the Draigar make war against Eironchard, who I assume must be an especially significant dragon.

As you can see, some of the Draigar are wearing Warfang-style horns, while others are wearing Valtheran-style crests.  Some Draigar carry Warfang-style clubs, while others carry Valtheran-style axes.  Their weapons are black in color.

Hey, I came back to this blog!  Here we have the official guide to the human characters of the Warfang-Valtheran arc, conveniently included on the last page of each 2002 set’s instruction manual.

9890 Warriors Fortress

This is one of the largest sets released under the initial Dragons theme.  It includes a castle, six warriors from each faction, and two dragons with appropriately colored Krystals.  The blue dragon is named Rockscorcher.  The red dragon’s name is given as “Craigfire” in the instruction manual, but I’m going to assume it was probably meant to be “Cragfire”, given that two of the other dragons have names having to do with both rocks and flames and that surely the designers weren’t foolish enough to name a dragon “Craig”.

It isn’t entirely clear to whom the castle belongs, but I’m going to assume it’s the Valtheran, as we already had one Warfang structure, and the Valtheran seem more likely to build large structures, and the Warfang seem more likely to besiege those structures.  It’s worth noting that the castle is also badly damaged; it could have been in ruins for a long time, but I’d rather believe that the Warfang have just destroyed parts of it in their siege.  That fits better with the narrative I’m constructing.

The Warriors Fortress (yes, it’s “Warriors Fortress” as in a fortress that has to do with warriors in some abstract way, not “Warriors’ Fortress” as in a fortress owned by warriors) is the largest Warfang-Valtheran architectural structure to appear in any set.  So I think now is as good a time as any to analyze the salient features of Warfang-Valtheran architecture.

9886 Sorcerer’s Lair

The Sorcerer’s Lair is the first building to make an appearance on this blog.  It is occupied by the Warfang wizard Vorlod.  It is also the only Warfang building to make an appearance in a set, and the Valtheran apparently consider it worth attacking.  Based on this information, I’m going to assume that wizards occupy an exalted position in Warfang society.  The Warfang have great respect for magic and are, perhaps, rather superstitious.  The Valtheran, by contrast, put more faith into their superior technology, and less into their wizards, whom they are willing to send to the front lines (as seen in 9881 Battle Gate).

I’ll examine Warfang and Valtheran architecture more extensively in a later post.  For now, I’ll just list the most significant aspects of the Lair’s construction.  First off is the beautiful metalwork on the doorway, a dragon’s head made from what appears to be pure gold.  Second is the wall behind the fortress, which is covered in raised runes of obviously magical nature.  The rune-wall seems rather different in style than the rest of the Lair—perhaps it is an ancient sacred site (of dragon construction?), and the Lair was constructed around it so that Warfang wizards could tap into its power?

9881 Battle Gate

In this set, we see four Warfang warriors, one of whom is mounted on the enslaved orange dragon Talonblaze, face off against three Valtheran warriors and a Valtheran wizard named Yulmar (the warriors all have names, too, but it’s difficult to tell them apart).