Fire-drakes

The fire-serpents of the North

The Urulóki, the fire-drakes, are the oldest and most famous kind of dragon. Their name is Quenya for fire-serpents, and the Elves gave it to Glaurung when he first crawled out of Angband in F.A. 260. He was wingless, as all the dragons of the Siege were, moving on his belly with the speed of a great serpent, and his weapon was the fire he breathed. That fire is the defining trait of the kindred. It could burn the grass of a whole plain, as it burned Ard-galen into Anfauglith at the Dagor Bragollach; it could set a city alight, as Glaurung fired the halls of Nargothrond and Smaug fired Dale and Esgaroth; and it could unmake a Ring of Power, for four of the Seven Rings of the Dwarves ended in dragon-fire.

The fire-drakes of the First Age were followers of Glaurung, called his brood, who fled with him from the Nirnaeth Arnoediad; none of them is named. In the War of Wrath the winged dragons surpassed them, but the winged kind also breathed fire, and Smaug, the greatest dragon of the Third Age, was both winged and fiery. The kindreds overlap: Tolkien's distinction is really between the fire-drakes and the cold-drakes, with wings a separate matter.

Fire and its limits

Dragon-fire is the hottest thing in Middle-earth short of the fire of Orodruin itself. The Dwarves of Belegost alone could endure it, wearing masks of steel that turned the flames, and even they could not kill Glaurung. But the fire had limits. Gandalf said that no dragon-fire, not even that of Ancalagon, could have harmed the One Ring, and that by the end of the Third Age the fire of the surviving dragons had cooled until none could melt even a lesser Ring of Power. The greatness of a fire-drake, then, is a thing of the elder world that declines with the dragons themselves.

A fire-drake's breath is not its only weapon. Its blood is venomous, its eyes bind the will, and its cunning is at least as deadly as its flame. Glaurung did more harm with words than with fire, and Smaug nearly undid Bilbo with talk before he ever tried to burn him.

The two great fire-drakes

Glaurung, the Father of Dragons, is the model of the kindred: golden, wingless, patient, and Morgoth's chosen instrument against the house of Húrin. His story runs from his premature emergence, through the Bragollach and the Nirnaeth, to the ruin of Nargothrond and his death at Cabed-en-Aras by Túrin's hand.

Smaug the Golden, who came down on Erebor in T.A. 2770 and died in the waters of the Long Lake in T.A. 2941, was the last of the great fire-drakes. He was red-gold and winged, and his belly was armoured with the gems of Thrór's hoard save for one bare patch, which the old thrush revealed to Bard. Between these two lie the unnamed fire-drakes of the Withered Heath, where the dragons of the North bred in the Third Age.

Fate

After Smaug no fire-drake of any size is heard of. Gandalf's remark at the Council of Elrond implies that some dragons still lived in the far North, but that their fire was no longer hot enough to matter.

Great scaled serpents that breathe flame. The First Age fire-drakes were wingless and crawled; Smaug had wings. Their scales are iron-hard on the back and sides but softer on the underside, which Smaug protected with a crust of jewels. Their eyes gleam and bind those who meet them; their blood burns and poisons.

None beyond the solitary greed and cunning common to all dragons.

Bred by Morgoth in Angband during the Siege; Glaurung, who emerged in F.A. 260, was the first.

Smaug, slain in T.A. 2941, was the last great fire-drake. Lesser dragons with weak fire remained in the North.