I realize in advance that there is no definite answer to this question, however, it has been something that has always troubled me, at least from the standpoint of perception (dragons!) and the artistic depiction of Smaug balanced against the internal logic of what we know of his death (as well as his wyrm-kin).

I'll explain: when I think of a dragon, I visualize a creature many times the size of a man, perhaps, something akin to a dinosaur. Clearly, this is reinforced by artistic depictions and other RPGs where they are found, much like Smaug atop a huge mound of loot. However, it's seems clear to me that Tolkien never necessarily intended this to be the case, at least from my standpoint. I mean, after all the Black Arrow was still only an arrow.

In addition, Turin kills Glaurung with one thrust of his sword (yes, I know, it was Turin and yes, the sword was Gurthang, but still). Further we know that Glaurung was wounded before with a "knife" by Azaghal, Lord of Belegost during the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. So, what gives?

Obviously, being a fire-drake gives Smaug a leg-up, if you will on his cold kin but, is it safe to assume that dragons and dragon-kin are not as big as we've, perhaps, been led to believe? Also, if the Dwarves of Belegost were able to withstand the fire of dragons, why were the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain unable to do so (other than the plot conspiring against them)?

Thoughts?

I for one am really rather unsure of how big to imagine dragons of Tolkien but he does make Glaurung out to be quite large when he was young, and I believe it;s started in several places that they just keep getting bigger and bigger. It does not mean that it is brontosaurus size, but it must be a lot bigger than a horse, or a polar bear.

Personally I see these creatures as a lot bigger than a horse or bear, and for the oldest ones probably a lot bigger than an elephant, but I don't see them as thick and bulky, rather as long and serpentine, which means that if you get through teh outer tough parts you might well get a sensitive spot inside.

I seem to remember a passage about Glaurung leaping from one cliff to another on the opposite side of a river.... That put the image in my mind of a very long serpentine creature.

As to Smaug being slain by a single arrow; I do see him as a creature that would not easily be slain by an arrow, however I would say this... if the arrow found a soft spot and was fired by a very strong bow, it could have in theory penetrated deeper than the length of an arrow. Also i think that single black arrow was at least a little special.

As to the killing of Glaurung.... well if a sword was extra special (which in this case it certainly was) it COULD in theory penetrate as deep as it's hilt.... which my memory of the story indicates it very well might have been.... if Turin put an 80cm sword blade into Glaurung... and the dragon was 10 times my diameter, it would be like driving 8cm of blade into my chest which would go well into my lung, or even into my heart if you could get through the sternum. if he was 20 times my diameter it would be like a 4cm blade, but that could still reach vital organs. Also I vaguely remember that sword having a special malice... maybe it's fantastic elements made it kill the dragon (like it's malice poisoned Glaurung?) I'll admit that i was as surprised as you were the first time i read how that went down but.... I think with the long thin serpentine image of the dragon it seems more plausible. Well it does to me.

Honestly I think I'd need to read those passages again to be sure of my impressions :-)

While it was never stated in the books, I think Black Arrow was destined to be the weapon that brought down Smaug. Bard described how ancient the arrow was, and how he always recovered it. It seems that Black Arrow had a special "destiny" of sorts. Again, this is mere speculation on my part. I also suspect this was the basis for the "arrows of slaying" found in D&D.

Look online for Tolkien's painting Conversation with Smaug - I won't post it here in case of copyright issues.

Note the difference in size between the dragon & Bilbo, & compare it to the treasure hoard. Your original estimate matches the pic.

In a letter to a fan, however, the master stated that he felt that he erred a bit in making Bilbo so large, & that the viewer had to understand that the Ring placed Bilbo in a sort of plane separate from the dragon (Tolkien was still working out the whole Ring theme at the time). Thus, you can reduce Bilbo's size by about half, & you still have your original estimate of the dragon's dimensions close to the mark.

Yes, Glaurung thrust himself over the gorge & (more or less) crossed it from snout to tail. Turin thus stubbed upward - the Fafnir parallel is obvious

Regarding the dwarves surviving the dragon fire, I *think* it was to do with their armour and their masks covering their entire faces, but I'm not completely sure as I read the Silmarillion a year or so ago now. I'm sure one of the more learned scholars will know

Beleg is correct!

The Dwarves (relatively speaking) withstood Glaurung's fire better than the Elves & Men at Nirnaeth Arnoediad because of their masks and armor.

Ssoo, if you want to include a mask in a hoard you're canon & still giving one of your heroes a cool relic

Speaking of which, I've tweaked canon a bit & decided that a few other goodies may have survived into the Third Age. Here's one that I've adapted for my game:

The Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin is woven with runes of warding, and carries with it an enchantment to foil the hottest flame. This magic works only in battle, however, and it does not permit you to walk unscathed through a bonfire—though it protects you from-sparks near flames.

While wearing the Dragon-helm you receive a +2 to Inspire tests.

When you invoke an Attribute bonus on a Protection test, use your favored Body rating as a bonus.

Dragons know well this work of the Dwarves, and will regard you as a mortal enemy.

Thanks for making me feel less unsure Mim

Also, that sounds like a fun piece of treasure, consider it borrowed

@Cynan - I re-read the "Death of Glaurung," section of Children of Hurin and can see where you're coming from wrt the long, serpentine form. I guess it had never registered, although, I distinctly remembered the encounter outside Nargathrond thinking my impression was strongly toad-like. I still kind of get a toad/salamander-vibe from the description.

@tkdco2 - As regards Gurthang, from re-reading it was definitely a weapon of destiny; I think the phrase goes - "True proved the words spoken at its forging that nothing, great or small, should live that once it had bitten." Black Arrow could've certainly been similar (they are both even given the appellation, "black").

@Mim - Spot on with your point. The painting happens to be the cover of my new copy of The Hobbit and had been eye-balling it for a guesstimate of size. Do you happen to know the source of the quote or letter you mention? Comparing the dimensions provided seems to me to be about right (to your point, Smaug would be rather large, if you were to shrink Bilbo by half).

@Beleg - Re-read the section from The Silmarillion and your point is spot on, Dwarves withstand fire and had helms with face-plates (which make sense). Still, the question remains, did none of the Dwarves of Erebor have such helms? Especially since they must've always been aware that they made attractive targets to dragons (clearly, pointless for me to argue this point, the plot is the plot - similar to my ramblings in my other thread on The War of the Dwarves and Orcs - obviously, the Misty Mountains should've been garrisoned against the return of the goblins but, simply weren't)? Regarding such helms, I'm assuming that's where the Dwarf reward, Helm of Awe stems from.


Certainly, I realize these must be questions that drive authors crazy - what, knowing that Smaug is a larger than man-sized, flying, fire-breathing creature is not enough for you, eh? I mean, does it matter? Not much really.

My point in asking is not to pin down the true length of Smaug but to better visualize the world because, it has been my sense for a long time that everything in Middle-earth is on a much smaller scale than I at one time thought.

I think though it's fair to say that Smaug would not be the bulky behemoth that is being portrayed in Jackson's films.

the smaug in that painting looks to me to be about 36' long if Bilbo is 3' tall, half of which is tail. So you have a quadruped serpentine mass of an 18' creature.

If we compare this to a komodo dragon which averages 10' long (including tail), we could multiply it's mass out by 3.5-4x giving you a 35 to 40' creature with a weight of 600 pounds? If there are any biologists or zoologists that want to theorycraft about needing less dense muscle mass or hollow bones aka avian in order to achieve flight, i'm comfortable with that. So what would we be talking about? A 500 lb bird? If it's true we need to double the size to accomodate tolkien's graphic glitch, are we looking at a thousand lb monster? More? An adult male polar bear can weigh 1,500 lbs, an elephant far more. You could easily take down a 1,500 lb. polar bear with a well placed high grain broad-head straight to the heart, and that animal, even at the same weight (or more) as our dragon smaug would have far more overall muscle mass, sinew and fat with which to absorb the projectile, meaning our dragon is more susceptible to a single death stroke.

However if we are talking an elephant mass beast at 15,000 lbs, (which I just can't imagine a "realistic" dragon having that much mass and being able to fly) then forget about taking it down with a single arrow or a sword thrust. You need a 50 caliber gun pushing out 13,000 ft/lb of energy and maybe you kill it with one shot, compared to a bow which is pushing out a couple hundred max. Even an arrow of slaying or spell of enchantment on Turgon's sword...

Whoever made the comment about Middle earth being on a smaller scale i think is correct. Ultimately you are looking at things like 30-40' dragons (including tails), with sinewy bodies probably weighing 1000-2000 lbs max. and balrogs closer to 9-12' tall.

[hyperbole]
I'm not so sure we can rule that out.....how much does a 747 weigh? It flies just fine! Duh!! [/hyperbole]

Morgoth: "Introducing the all-new next-generation Dragon 2.1 with Advanced GE Turbine Engines, aluminium-alloy combat chassis, and state of the art incendiary napalm breath weaponry"

@Rocmistro - I was the one who made the point regarding scale.

I've long since suspected that I've needed to reduce my estimates by a significant factor, e.g. a mid 4-figures engaged at the Battle of Five Armies rather than 10,000+ (Tolkien identifies a thousand spearmen of the elves, which must've been accompanied by archers, etc. and the goblin host must've been superior in number).

Your size estimate is similar to mine, I was thinking 30' (from nose to tail), based on the comparison between Bilbo and Smaug. I struggle to visualize that length doubled which might be possible if the Professor felt he was wrong in his depiction.

Obviously, his size doesn't really matter that much when one also takes into consideration the fact that he was a walking/flying flame-thrower (especially if no one was prepared to defend against such a threat).

It's exactly the question of scale may also account for his deadliness. If, based on the size of Smaug, The Halls Under the Mountain are similarly much smaller, I can't think of a worse place to be caught when faced by such a creature than narrow stone halls which would only serve to channel dragon-fire for warriors trying to face him or, for those trapped inside by the dragon and his flames, the threat of asphyxiation.

Wasn't the original dragon from the First Age so big that when he was slain he smashed two mountains? And I believe he was slain by a sword too. It seems that the size of some foes from Tolkien's writings doesn't offer the degree of protection that you would expect. Maybe Dragon Hearts are just under the surface of the skin, instead of deeper? Maybe they can fly because they are hollow and inflatable like a blimp?

Obviously a joke, but I do think Smaug is supposed to be rather large, especially if you factor in the Laketown Book's picture of his bones. The description of the Black Arrow makes it sound very magical in nature, in such a way that it might not have peirced Smaug's heart, but simply slain him outright by breaking skin, which it could not have done without the missing gem?

You are referring here to Ancalagon, the mightiest dragon ever to live. He was the chief of the winged dragons (Morgoth's secret weapon in the War of Wrath). The fleet of winged dragons he led was so powerful that the host of the Valar was driven back for a time. In the end an aerial battle ensued (Thorondor's eagles led by Ëarendil in his - now flying - ship Vingilot). A long fight developed, but in the end Ëarendil shot him down with his bow. It was his fall that smashed the towers of Thangorodrim (made from Angband's mines' debris).

Roughly, these events parallel the fight with Smaug, though on a much bigger scale: The winged dragon which is extremely powerful and threatening his enemies with defeat and who is shot down by a bow/arrow. In the Hobbit Eagles play a role as well, though not in direct context with the dragon. It is however notable to spot that all these three elements of the War of Wrath are present in the Hobbit as well: A winged dragon, supernatural Eagles coming to the rescue and a hero shooting the dragon down. Of course the events of the Late Third Age are but a pale shadow of the power present in the First Age

The dragon killed by a sword you refer to is probably Glaurung, father of dragons. He was, however, not winged and more serpentine in nature. He was killed by Túrin with a stab into his soft underbelly when the "Great Worm" was crossing a gorge.

Cheers
Tolwen

Your math is a bit off. There is something called the square-cube law which scientists use to estimate the mass of things when you scale them up. Basically if you double the dimensions (length/width/height) you cube the mass. In other words if you start with a 1m x 1m x 1m object with a volume of 1 cubic meter and mass of 1 ton, and double the L/W/H to 2m x 2m x 2m you end up with a 8 cubic meter object with a mass of 8 tons.

So if you scale up a 10', 160 pound Komodo dragon to 35'-40 feet long, it would weight about 6400-9600 pounds. That's about 4 tons! Quite a bit more than 600 pounds.

Now, I'm not sure how 'much real world physics applies in the case of Tolkien's dragons, but the larger size and mass might have contributed to Smaug's demise. Not only would a heavier dragon take more damage from a fall, but as the cross sectional area of the bones (i.e. Strength) increase with the square of the dimensions rather than the cube, a larger creature would be more likely to suffer serious injury in a fall than a small one. Past a certain point, the bones and muscles can't even support the weight of the creature. That's why animals only get so big, and why ant's can take a 10 foot drop better than people can.

I'm not sure the damage dealt by swords and arrows should be used to judge size. From my perspective, Tolkein was a literary professor, not a physics professor. Because of that, he approaches things from a narrative standpoint, including final blows. Story wise, it makes total sense that a BLACK ARROW!!!! forged by the king-in-exile's forefathers who were killed by the dragon would be the weapon used to kill it. Same that the magical sword wielded by the great elven hero would kill a dragon. Because that's the way the story goes, even if the physics don't line up.

It makes sense Physics-wise too. You don't have to do a lot of damage to kill a big creature, you just have to do enough damage to something vital. Nicking a major artery or the heart could prove fatal.

IN the case of Smaug, the dragon not only got shot, but fell onto Esgaroth and then into Long Lake. So the arrow might not have been the direct cause of death.


IN game terms though, we hit a snag, since a single wound won't stop big monsters. Perhaps we could houserule that even the creatures that take two wounds to kill will at least fall down when they take a wound? Tgat would probably finish Smaug off in TOR.

@Evocatus, I only just read your post - sorry about the late response!

The reference is in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 35:

...The hobbit in the picture of the gold-hoard, Chapter XII, is of course (apart from being fat in the wrong places) enormously too large. But (as my children, at any rate, understand) he is really in a separate picture or 'plane' - being invisible to the dragon.

Actually, Bard's shot is covered in the rules. It's an epic feat, that requires a gandalf rune and a tengwar to work.

Can you prove a reference or quite?

LM Book pg. 20 at the bottom.

Thanks for the page reference.



I thought that you meant that the shot was presented in the rules as a specific example. Still, I suppose Bard's shot could be considered an epic feat. I mean, killing a dragon is kinda the definition of an epic task.