Editorial 08/18/14 - Dragons
Interesting fact: there is no applicable reason why I didn't post last week. Yeah, I got back into playing "Skyrim" this last week. Yes, it is still just as enthralling now as it was when it came out three years ago. Yes, I still die at every dragon boss on Adept difficulty.
For those of you who don't know, "Skyrim" is the fifth installment of the "Elder Scrolls" franchise. It takes place on an alternate high-fantasy world in a war-torn country. Just when the civil war in Skyrim is at its peak, the dragons of legend, thought dead for the past couple of centuries, come back to life and start wreaking havoc. You, the unsuspecting legendary dragonslayer Dovahkiin, must fulfill your destiny and save Skyrim. Of course, the game is so monumentally massive, that what that means is really up to you.
But, as you can see from the title, we're not here to talk about the game. What makes it so special (aside from everything else I've mentioned) is that it's the first "Elder Scrolls" game to feature dragons in gameplay. It does a very good job of integrating them, I should say, but after playing this, it is safe to say that Dragons are everywhere. Not just in the game, but everywhere in media. Look through any list of fantasy stories, and I'd be willing to bet that at least two thirds of them mention dragons or dragon-esque creatures. I'm not here to complain, I love a good dragon battle as much as the next graphic artist, but I still have to wonder; Why are we so fascinated with dragons?
Normally, we'd take a look back for a second to see where they came from. However, there seem to be at least three different origins. In Classical and Medieval Europe, the dragon a symbol of pure destruction, a fire breathing monster with wings, but rarely flied. In the far east about the same time, dragons were messengers of the Gods, and, while they flew, they were often spirits of their country's most important trade rivers. The middle east, while not necessarily having dragons per se, had Naga, which also served the gods, but had more malevolent tendencies. For more obscure creatures, the Aztecs had giant flying feathered serpents as divine beings, the North American Tribes believed that the Eagle controlled the weather, and so on and so forth. Really, then, the legend of the dragon seems to have come from everywhere. How?
Well, looking at them superficially, they aren't all that different. They were all described as very serpentine creatures, often with horns and fangs, and had wings or other methods of flight. It is possible that each culture reworked the dragon as a form of amplified snake. It makes sense for their origins; the vain trickster snake in the book of Genesis shares a binding with the book of Revelation, which describes Satan himself as a seven-headed dragon. In china, the snake was a symbol of fertility, and was honored while people were praying for a good harvest, so it could easily have a divine counterpart to symbolize royalty. As these ancient cultures knew from the rare sightings of whales and dinosaur fossils, those monsters were out there- they just needed a name.
Perhaps the most amazing thing, though, is that- like the Latin language- the idea of the dragon has been able to maintain its relevance throughout two thousand years of history. Their ability to take on multiple meanings depending on the context makes them rather useful in fantasy storytelling. Their older themes of greed and vanity still work just as well today, as we see in J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Hobbit". Loyalty and friendship are also being frequently conveyed in stories like "Eragon" and "How to Train your Dragon". New discoveries in naturalism and paleontology are giving them a flourish unlike anything we've seen before. After two thousand years, while monsters such as vampires and werewolves seem to have lost their relevance, the dragon seems to be just getting started.
For those of you who don't know, "Skyrim" is the fifth installment of the "Elder Scrolls" franchise. It takes place on an alternate high-fantasy world in a war-torn country. Just when the civil war in Skyrim is at its peak, the dragons of legend, thought dead for the past couple of centuries, come back to life and start wreaking havoc. You, the unsuspecting legendary dragonslayer Dovahkiin, must fulfill your destiny and save Skyrim. Of course, the game is so monumentally massive, that what that means is really up to you.
But, as you can see from the title, we're not here to talk about the game. What makes it so special (aside from everything else I've mentioned) is that it's the first "Elder Scrolls" game to feature dragons in gameplay. It does a very good job of integrating them, I should say, but after playing this, it is safe to say that Dragons are everywhere. Not just in the game, but everywhere in media. Look through any list of fantasy stories, and I'd be willing to bet that at least two thirds of them mention dragons or dragon-esque creatures. I'm not here to complain, I love a good dragon battle as much as the next graphic artist, but I still have to wonder; Why are we so fascinated with dragons?
Normally, we'd take a look back for a second to see where they came from. However, there seem to be at least three different origins. In Classical and Medieval Europe, the dragon a symbol of pure destruction, a fire breathing monster with wings, but rarely flied. In the far east about the same time, dragons were messengers of the Gods, and, while they flew, they were often spirits of their country's most important trade rivers. The middle east, while not necessarily having dragons per se, had Naga, which also served the gods, but had more malevolent tendencies. For more obscure creatures, the Aztecs had giant flying feathered serpents as divine beings, the North American Tribes believed that the Eagle controlled the weather, and so on and so forth. Really, then, the legend of the dragon seems to have come from everywhere. How?
Well, looking at them superficially, they aren't all that different. They were all described as very serpentine creatures, often with horns and fangs, and had wings or other methods of flight. It is possible that each culture reworked the dragon as a form of amplified snake. It makes sense for their origins; the vain trickster snake in the book of Genesis shares a binding with the book of Revelation, which describes Satan himself as a seven-headed dragon. In china, the snake was a symbol of fertility, and was honored while people were praying for a good harvest, so it could easily have a divine counterpart to symbolize royalty. As these ancient cultures knew from the rare sightings of whales and dinosaur fossils, those monsters were out there- they just needed a name.
Perhaps the most amazing thing, though, is that- like the Latin language- the idea of the dragon has been able to maintain its relevance throughout two thousand years of history. Their ability to take on multiple meanings depending on the context makes them rather useful in fantasy storytelling. Their older themes of greed and vanity still work just as well today, as we see in J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Hobbit". Loyalty and friendship are also being frequently conveyed in stories like "Eragon" and "How to Train your Dragon". New discoveries in naturalism and paleontology are giving them a flourish unlike anything we've seen before. After two thousand years, while monsters such as vampires and werewolves seem to have lost their relevance, the dragon seems to be just getting started.
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