#scatha

more scrapped pieces as i haven’t been very happy with drawing recently

Textile painting on linen about the slaying of the cold-drake Scatha by Fram, the fourth Lord of the Éothéod, inspired by the depiction of Sigurð slaying Fáfnir from the Hylestad Stave Church.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Scatha the Worm Additional Tags: Dragons, Third Age of Arda (Tolkien) Summary:

imagine Melkor thinking they're failed experiments and just let them go and Manwe's eagles found them still hurting from all the experiments and brought them to him. And Manwe just took them in because aside from being the embodiment of bird person he saw them as his and his brother's work together and as a way for him to understand Melkor's vision of the world

The Teeth of Scatha the Worm, by Matthew Stewart.

“Jewels such as these you will never match in your treasuries, for they are hard to come by.”

At least, it’s new for me. Anyway, this video where I got the information, claims to have information taken directly out of the books and other writings from the author, not stuff from the internet of wikipedia or anything like that; just the direct-from-origin source.

It’s in spanish, but it has availible subtitles.

But what I wanted to share from this was the following:

1. Firsts dragons appeared with Glaurung in the First Age. He was the first to appear, and the rest of the species appeared along with him

.  2. Dwarves fought Glaurung, and they turned famous as the ones who fought better against dragons, as they wounded Glaurung and made the dragons retreat. That was on the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. It was thanks to their armors able to resist the dragon fire.

3. Dragons appeared in wars of the First Age until the famous War of Wrath, when first appeared winged dragons. Ancalagon the Black leaded the fight on the dragon side on the War of Wrath, and died in this very war. But first, the appearance of this new kind of dragons was devastating.

4. They needed an army of the Eagles and a magic flying ship to win the war agaisnt Ancalagon and his army of dragons in a fierce battle in the sky. Ancalagon the Black was the biggest dragon ever and the most powerful, but HE WASN’T AS HUGE AS THE MEDIA SAYS. You know, there is NO ACTUAL DATA OF HIS SIZE ON THE WRITINGS FROM THE AUTHOR, (that’s why you see so many variations if you look for it) but there is no mention either that he was so huge that he could cover the sun or any shit like that. 

There is no clue about how big he was, expect for the description of him destroying three colossal towers when he fell from the sky when killed. So, a little physics lesson here. When an object falls, the force it carries with it from acceleration increases, making it more destructive, so, if you remember what happened with the Twin Towers of New York, you’ll see that it wasn’t necessary something bigger to destroy two skycrapers. I know, those towers were extremely huge, but Ancalagon didn’t have to be bigger to bring them down when he fall from the sky. Imagine the Twin Towers inccident, now imagine the same, but with bigger towers, a bigger (like, four or five times bigger), harder plane, which was also impulsed by a hit compared to a meteor and then the acceleration added from falling from the sky. There you have it. 

Also, most likely Smaug wasn’t the smallest of them all, since THERE IS NO MENTION OF DRAGONS BECOMING SMALLER ON THE THRID AGE. 

Make the Ancalagon of this picture like 1,8 (almost twice) times bigger, and keep the others the same, and THEN I’ll buy it.

6. After the War of Wrath, the dragons hid on the greatests mountain ranges, for all the Second Age. Until 1300 of the Third Age, when they fought along Sauron and Scatha leading them at some point (not the beggining of that war). Scatha died and they hid again. Is mentioned that there was a group of them living on the Eren Mithrin, where, in 2570 of the Third Age, they were attacked by dwarves, but in 20 years they drove them away. 

7. 2770 of the Third Age; Smaug came to Erebor. 

Remember that I told dwarves were the most expert in fighting dragons, so they wound Glaurung and killed part of his army of dragons? Well, Smaug killed or make retreat the dwarves of Erebor BY HIMSELF. That picture of him being the smallest of the most known dragons doesn’t stand so much now, doesn’t it? XD So, he might not have been the biggest, but he was great enough for that.

He stayed in there for almost 200 years until he was killed by a lucky bowman and Smaug acting so superior when he had a weak spot. 

No appearances of dragons after that outside their natural habitat.

8. According to the letter number 144 of Tolkien, after Smaug’s death, there are still dragons living. In fact apparently one killed Dain and his son. 

9. It is said on the last volume of the History of Middle Earth that dragons were expert linguists, so they would certainly speak a few languages. Also they have very good memory, so they know well every piece of their treasures.

10. Powers further than breath fire. You may remember what Glaurung did to Nienor Niniel (he made her lose her memory), it appears this is something all dragons can do. On the Hobbit (I read this part myself) it says that everytime Smaug’s sight faced Bilbo when he was being searched while invisible, Bilbo had to fight the impulse of running out of fear, throwing away the Ring showing himself and “tell Smaug all the truth”. So he was being manipulated a little. 

It seems this was some kind of “ocular power” by the way.