Dragon's Flame, Magical?

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by The Might

Now to the dragon idea, the basic theory in pretty much all newer dragon works is that the fire is only created in their mouths through the mixture of two separate chemical substances. And this makes quite a lot sense. Anything that can be pierced by a sword isn't probably capable of taking that much heat. Thus, a dragon himself wouldn't really need to take that heat himself.

Well, from Tolkiens description of dragons it's clear that their bodies were strong heat sources even while not breating fire. Smaug indeed seemed to glow steadily, like burning charcoal, bringing heat as well as light to his hall. Also, when Glaurung enters the river outside Nargothrond, the water boils, and vast steams and blinding vapours cover the area. If a dragons cools down, it seems to be unable to breath fire and is less potent, more resembling a great, slimy lizard.

In that movie with dragons in it "Reign of Fire", the fire was caused by a mix of chemicals as you described. I don't think Tolkien imagined his dragons to be anything like those creatures.

[Farael]

Originally Posted by skip spence

In that movie with dragons in it "Reign of Fire", the fire was caused by a mix of chemicals. I don't think Tolkien imagined his dragons to be anything like those creatures.

There was a documentary on the Discovery Channel where they made a (fake obviously) documentary about dragons, trying to make it look as realistic and plausible as possible. One of the things they said is that the dragons would scratch and eat certain rocks which then would be processed by bacteria in their stomach to produce Hydrogen gas. This would allow them to be lighter for flying and also to breathe fire.

Some combination of that idea and (other) chemical reactions could have explained the dragons fire breathing.

However, I think there is a misconception here. When Galadriel or the Elves say that there is no such thing as magic, they do so from within Middle Earth itself. However, the land of Middle Earth is magical on itself, there are gods walking around and actively interfering with the life of lesser beings, there are dragons and elves and dwarves and mithril and hobbits.... there are also swords that light up when a special kind of enemy is near, there are stones that allow you to spy on your neighbour and there are pieces of jewlery that will let you, if used properly, dominate all beings in existance. Oh, and little crystals that make elves go insane... and as a side-effect, shine with the essence of light itself

Surely there is something magical about that?

Even though Tolkien made a great effort to make sure that nothing on his tales could be answered by simply "it was magic" or "a wizard did it" it does not mean that everything can be explained by Real Life logic. To me, Middle-Earth has self-consistency but it does not mean that it has consistency with the Real World.

I think this is good enough for a new thread, but my point here is the folowing:

Dragon-fire it wasn't magic for Middle Earth. They were probably monsters inhabited by fell spirits of fire and made/corrupted through the craft and cunnign (not magic) of a god-like figure. However, for all real life intents and purposes, it was magic. Like we call magic the tricks of an entertainer at a party when we cannot explain it, but we call it a trick when it is told to us. However, we cannot explain "magic" in Middle Earth because the rules we take for granted here do not quite apply to Middle Earth.

[Aganzir]

Originally Posted by Legate

Just to clarify: the Lamps were probably destroyed by the combinated effort of Melkor's fallen-Maia hosts, and with the Trees, he needed the help of Ungoliant.

I just wanted to point out that even though ainur have, in some cases, been able to destroy the works of the other ainur (although the comparison was not completely valid, as at least to my knowledge any of the valar didn't shed their power to the Lamps), I don't think it makes much difference whether the dragons were of maia origin or not, as Sauron was more powerful than them anyway.

I have a feeling I'm being rather unclear today.

Originally Posted by Greenie

Come on, it's fiction, not science

I know, and while writing my previous post I actually stopped to think why I try to find solutions to things that may be contradictory just because also Tolkien was just a human.
But isn't that what we fans must do? Although Tolkien is dead, we are still creating and completing Middle-earth, no matter if all we do is to try to find logical solutions to things that don't make sense otherwise.

Originally Posted by Might

Although I don't understand what you mean by "lesser spirits", in CoH they are "great spirits" implying Ainur.

I was referring to the post Legate linked, to somewhat disagree with his theory about dragons being spirits that were trapped to bodies prepared for them.

Originally Posted by Farael

Surely there is something magical about that?

Well, if you go to some isolated native tribe in the Amazonian rainforest, they will surely find your mobile phone and car magical. But when you've lived there long enough, they are suddenly thinking that those are common every-day objects.