The Natural History of "Era's End": Tyrant Dragon

[I decided one of the things I could post here would be some bits and pieces of worldbuilding for my novel series ("Era's End" is the current title), especially the information I have compiled of its plants and animals. And perhaps the best creature to start off the series is the Tyrant Dragon, featured in the climactic fight in my short story "Battle at Engorlash," which has been published at dkamagazine.com. With luck, I may be able to post more of these articles later on. In the meantime, here is the first entry.]

Tyrant Dragon

The largest known species of dragon that is capable of flight. Like roughly half of all dragons, it is able to breathe fire by using hydrogen gas from its flight lungs.* Easily recognizable by a green body with stripes of black or dark brown, and the presence of four wings rather than two, which are colored red with splashes of green on the fringes. Females have a darker red on the wings, almost like wine or dried blood.

This dragon is rare, but almost universally respected, hated or feared, depending on whom you ask. Tyrants tend to be much more violent than other dragon species, territorial in the extreme. The mating season occurs in the springtime once every three years. During this period, three or four males congregate in an open space like a prairie or grassland and collect a small heap of prey animals to display for a local female. The male with the most notable quarry (and an impressive display of his spread-out wings) wins, and the losers will have to find other females over which to compete. After eating the male’s victims, the female will stay with him for protection and the extra food he can provide. After a month, the female lays three to five blue eggs in a warm and secluded spot, each one about the size of a human head. The eggs are then abandoned by the parents until they hatch in the late summer, and the young creatures will begin hunting mere hours after hatching.

Aside from its great size and extra set of wings, the species is also renowned for what is known as Tyrant’s Madness, a period of heightened aggression when the creature’s wings have been severely injured. Through some unknown mechanism or instinct, the Tyrant knows if and when any of its wings have been so extensively injured that they will never heal enough to let the reptile fly again. Once this boundary has been crossed, the animal lands (if it was already airborne) and reaches around with its lengthy neck to bite its own wings off, one at a time. It then becomes a multi-ton berserker, breathing flame and attacking anything within reach until it is almost exhausted. The animal then spends the remainder of its life roaming on the ground, subsisting on whatever it is fast enough to catch.

Few militaries have been sufficiently stupid, crazy or desperate to use a Tyrant Dragon in their campaigns (assuming they can capture and tame a juvenile), but the ones who succeed force the enemy’s tactics to change. When flying dragons are part of a battle, usually the opposing force will try to bring the animals down or destroy their wings any way they can: fire bombs, heavy arrows or crossbow bolts with curved blades on the head, nets launched from catapults, etc. But thanks to the threat of Tyrant’s Madness, any military force going against this dragon will most likely try instead to kill the animal or exhaust it, rather than risk injury to the wings and having the creature become a far deadlier force on the ground, where more of their own soldiers would be targets for the Tyrant’s rage.

* – Flight lungs are actually a set of bladders carrying bacteria which produce hydrogen and other lighter-than-air gases to help make the dragon’s body lighter and easier to carry in flight. However, in the fire-breathing species, the gas mixture can be quickly exhausted for producing flame, and the now-heavier animal will find it more difficult, even impossible to fly over any great distance, until the gas has been replenished.

Inception

Ladies and Gentlemen, I welcome you to the Dracofang Blog, the official weblog for author John K. Patterson (that's me). I certainly hope that you enjoy your stay. I'm kind of new to blogging, but I look forward to this little endeavor all the same. You'll see notes and advice I happen to find useful for writing, updates on my writing progress (especially of a series of fantasy novels I am currently working on), reviews of books or games or movies, and just random thoughts or rants I feel like hammering out for the world to see.

Talk to you all later, and thanks for your visit!

Kindest regards,

John