#Firedrake plushies found on Barksbog website on Friday 24th May 2024

[draconesmundi]

Happy Dracones Monday! Firedrakes!

Happy Dracones Monday! This Monday we're looking at four dragon species at once, the firedrakes! Here they are, approximately to scale with eachother.

The glitterdrake is the smallest, the size of a large lizard or small cat. They live in laurel forests on Macaronesian Islands, in the Atlantic near Africa. Glitterdrakes aren't based on mythology; I put them on Macaronesia because I couldn't find Macaronesian dragon mythology but I am trying to put dragons EVERYWHERE on the map. Also, putting these dragons on an archipelago of islands means I can have a lot of island subspecies and colour morphs - glitterdrakes represent colourful fantasy dragons, so having them come in every colour (sapphire blue, ruby red, emerald green, royal purple, burning gold, shining silver etc.) was important to me.

The Welsh dragon is smaller than the other European firedrakes at 1.5 meters. They are no less fierce - there aren't any common firedrakes in Wales as a common firedrake cannot maintain a territory there for long. Originally I had the Welsh dragon as a subspecies of the common firedrake, but decided that this dragon had so much personality and folklore that it could get it's own chapter.

The common firedrake is found in Western Europe, 4m long. When designing these I noticed in a lot of heraldry dragons don't seem to have horns? Ears yes, but hornless? Also I noticed that dragons in heraldry tend to have the dorsal finlets from the back of the head to between their shoulders, but no further, which is something I have kept for all my firedrake species.

The viridian firedrake is the largest firedrake species, over 5m long. They are found in Eastern and Southern Europe, and in Russia. I based their appearance on old storybook illustrations to make them look very 'classic', which is why they have horns and cheek frills compared to the more heraldic and hornless common firedrake.

Rant about the term 'firedrake' under the cut! :)

In other creative works, these are called 'classic dragons', 'European dragons', 'true dragons' and 'Western dragons', but I am not a fan of these terms - 'true dragon' implies other dragons are untrue dragons, which is nonsense. 'Western dragon' or 'European dragon' is largely accurate (the 4 legged 2 winged dragon design is common in Europe and the West) but there are other Western and European dragons (wyrms and wyverns) and I find these terms confusing when other types of dragons are taken into account. Also, some Asian dragons also have 4 legs and 2 wings. 'Classic' dragons... serpentine and wyrmish dragons are more classic than 4 legged 2 winged firebreathers, etc.

I went with 'firedrake' as a term for these dragons because 'drake', 'drachen', 'ddraig', 'drac', 'drak' and 'dreki' are all words for dragons like this in European languages, and because firedrake is a word used in literature like some translations of Beowulf and, of course, Tolkien's Legendarium (firedrake comes from Old English fȳrdraca). I think it's a good word that easily conjures up fire breathing four legged, two winged dragons without making them more 'true' or 'classic' than other dragon types or tying them specifically to 'European' and 'Western' countries.

In Dracones Mundi I really try to get a huge diversity of dragons across to the readers. There are around 68 dragon species in this project, only 4 of which are firedrakes. I want to show readers there is more to dragon mythology than "here is a western dragon, they are evil and associated with fire, here is an eastern dragon, they are good and associated with water" - I want to dig deeper. I want people to know about azhdarha, about cuélebres, about coameh. So I'm shining the spotlight away from these firedrakes and trying to make them a small part of a much larger discussion. :)