Tag: ANCALAGON

elvenkingtranduil:

Ancalagon of Angband by book-illustrator

During the War of Wrath, the Valar waged their final war on Morgoth. Their victory was at hand, with most of the Dark Lord’sBalrogs and other troops destroyed. But then, Morgoth unleashed the winged dragons, with Ancalagon at their van. Ancalagon drove back the forces of the Valar, but was stopped by Eärendil. Ancalagon was no match for the mariner, who sailed through the skies in the shipVingilot, with the Silmaril upon his brow. Ancalagon was cast down and fell atopThangorodrim, breaking its mighty towers.

Source: book-illustrator.deviantart.com

On the birth of Ancalagon

redsixwing:

You will be unlike anything the world has seen. You will know my name.

You will be a new thing, born to fly, born to fire. You will be a shadow such as the skies have never seen. The pale starlight will shatter on your back, and in your eyes and the hollow of your throat, fire will kindle and live, wild and constrained as the fire beneath the earth. You may unloose it where you wish, my child, for the heat will send you spinning higher into the sky, and you will find the embers and the sound of flame beautiful.

You will be a soaring nightmare, and that will give you certain limitations: your bones blown-glass, your scales flakes of obsidian. You will fly on the breath of volcanoes and ride upon the back of the morning thermal, but you will be unable to rise on your own.
Your legs, alas, must be short; you will struggle, upon the ground, but my child, you will be a terror of the skies.

Some day I will leave this place, and I will forge you of stone and air and fire, all the tools of those who imprisoned me. They will never bind you.

I will never bind you.

You will be unlike anything the world has seen.

You will know my name.

—-

misbehavingmaiar (I think?) posted a thing the other day that was awesome, and then someone left a prompt for me that resulted in this.

I take no credit for the idea of Ancalagon as basically a tremendous azhdarchid, but I’ve had a lot of fun with it.

Ancalagon the Black – RivkaZ 2014

Part kite, part vulture, part gliding snake, part colugo, part dirigible, all nightmare. 

Waah, I wish I had more creature design practice! x_x With many more hours of skeleton and musculature studies I might have been able to make this guy look more convincing… but in the meantime hey, it’s a dragon! 

So keeping in mind that aerodynamics and biology are not exactly my areas of expertise, here are my headcanons for Ancalagon:

  • He’s the largest of Melkor’s dragons, whose body is large enough that when it falls on the peaks of Thangorodrim, it breaks them, and he also flies. My guess is that this is not a critter built for anything else other than flying.
  • He is mostly membrane; lots of wing and sail fins. His bones are porous like a bird’s. His ribs flatten out when he flies (like those gliding snakes).
  • HYDROGEN SACKS. In addition to huge-ass wings, Ancalagon is buoyed up by several large sacks of flammable, lighter-than-air gas. He also jets and ignites it from glands in his mouth, making  lovely blue fireballs. 
  • Despite all the wingspan, he is a glider. He does not have much musculature to flap with. Or crawl with, for that matter. He is a one-way-flight dragon; he launches himself off the highest peak of the Iron Mountains, uses volcanic thermals and fire to get lift, and then just steers. If he lands or falls somewhere he can’t jump off, he’s about as useless as a fruit bat on the ground. 
  • Ancalagon has iridescent black hide, but he is so lightly built that you can see his blood vessels and organs through his skin. This gives him a reddish glow when he’s in daylight. 
  • Big googly lemur eyes, filled with spooky, soul-stealing malice; the better to see you with.
  • Like the fell beasts used by the Nazgul, he’s got some sonic weaponry that’s inadvisable to be in close range of. 
  • There are many flaws in his design. He’s not Melkor’s most adaptable babu; he probably wouldn’t survive on his own for very long. Basically, he’s a big creepy fire-bomber and intimidation tool. When he’s killed by unexpected-flying-Valar-ship-canonfire or whatever, he falls right on top of Angband like 100 tons of wet tissue paper, and it is no fun for anybody. 
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