Draugluin

The first werewolf

Draugluin was the origin of the werewolves, the great wolves of Angband that were more than beasts. Werewolves were wolf-bodies inhabited by evil spirits, and Draugluin was the first of that kind and the sire of all who followed. He was ancient by the time of the Wars of Beleriand, reckoned the greatest wolf of his day, and he lived under the seat of Sauron, whom Morgoth had made the master of wolves. Sauron himself could take the form of a wolf, and Draugluin was his chief creature and the lord of his pack.

Tol-in-Gaurhoth

After the Dagor Bragollach, Sauron seized the tower of Finrod on Tol Sirion, the island in the river that commanded the pass between Beleriand and the north. He filled it with his wolves, and the isle came to be called Tol-in-Gaurhoth, the Isle of Werewolves. Draugluin dwelt there with the pack. It was in the dungeons of that place, in F.A. 465, that Finrod, Beren and their ten companions were imprisoned, and there a wolf came each night to devour one of the prisoners until only Beren was left and Finrod died breaking his bonds to save him. The tale does not say Draugluin was that wolf, only that the wolves of the island did this work.

The fight beneath the tower

Lúthien came to the isle with the hound Huan, and she stood on the bridge and sang so that the whole tower heard her. Sauron guessed who she was and sent wolves to take her, one after another, and Huan killed each one in silence at the foot of the bridge. At last Sauron sent Draugluin, and the eldest of the wolves and the greatest of the hounds fought long beneath the walls. Draugluin was mortally hurt; he broke away and dragged himself back into the tower, and there at Sauron's feet, before he died, he told his master that Huan was there. This was the warning that made Sauron take wolf-shape himself, for he knew the doom laid on Huan and thought that he, the greatest of all wolves, might fulfil it. He was wrong, and Huan brought him down in his turn.

The hide

When the isle was thrown down, Huan brought out of the ruin the pelt of Draugluin and the bat-fell of Thuringwethil, and later carried them to Beren and Lúthien on the borders of Doriath. Lúthien worked an enchantment on both. Beren put on the wolf-skin and became, to every eye, Draugluin himself, shaggy and terrible, with the spirit of the werewolf seeming to glare from the eye-holes, though Lúthien thought him a horror to look upon. In that guise he walked with her across the burned plain of Anfauglith and up to the very gate of Angband. It was the report of Draugluin's death, spread through Angband, that made Carcharoth suspicious of the shape that came toward him, and only Lúthien's enchantment carried them past.

Legacy

Draugluin's greatest legacy was Carcharoth. When Morgoth heard the prophecy that Huan could only die by the mightiest wolf that would ever walk the world, he took a whelp of Draugluin's brood and reared it to be that wolf. So the sire's line, and not the sire, accomplished what Draugluin failed to do at the bridge of Tol Sirion. The werewolves of Angband as a kind were destroyed with the fortress at the end of the First Age, but the dread of the wolf-shape lingered, and Sauron in later ages was still remembered by the Elves as the lord of werewolves.

Mortally wounded by Huan at Tol-in-Gaurhoth, F.A. 465; died at Sauron's feet inside the tower. His pelt was later worn by Beren.