Ancalagon the Black vs Fin Fang Foom

[Sharpandpointies]

Jackalope has some pretty good Tolkien credentials. I'd be curious as to their interpretation. Edit: Wish Estrecca and Gorthaur were still around this website, they had fantastic knowledge between them.

I'm not big on The Hobbit, but...Smaug's size is somewhat indistinct. But big.

1. He is noted as being 'a vast, red-gold dragon'. Vast holds a fair amount of meaning with regards to size.

2. The tunnel that Bilbo creeps down to get into Smaug's lair has an egress that is 'as much the same size and shape as the door above', which is noted as being approximately 5' high and EDIT: three people walking side by side, see post below. Smaug explicitly cannot fit his head into that size of a tunnel. Even 'the jaws' can't squeeze in, though Smaug can actually send fire and smoke in using, again explicitly, his nostrils. Ergo, Smaug's head is consierably larger than 5'x EDIT three people walking side by side. That he can snort fire and smoke down the hallway means that the distance between his nostrils, however, is less than 5'xEDIT three people walking side by side. Which doesn't tell us a lot other than, again, big.

3. Smaug is big and powerful enough to literally shatter cliff walls with strikes of his tail and create massive landslides that cover over large areas.

4. He's big enough that he gets nervous about landing on the man-made island that is Lake-town. He doesn't like that it's surrounded by water. So what does that mean? Lake-town is an entire town, so the foundation is quite large. Not to say that Smaug is the size of the island - he wouldn't be - but he's big enough that the idea of landing on it still makes him nervous about the proximity to the lake, especially with the open middle to it. So he's not some small, 40' dragon or anything like that, which one guesses could wander around Lake-Town like Godzilla in Tokyo; he's large enough that sitting in the town, he'd be iffy about then rampaging around on account of concerns over falling the water. Edit: and, presumably, worries about it holding up UNDER him.

5. When he falls upon Lake-town, the description supports that he is at least on a scale where he doesn't, for example, just take up a small part of the town.

Full on the town he fell. His last throes splintered it [the town] to sparks and gedes. The lake rushed in.

So Smaug's final fall on the (burning town) and death throes not only rip the town apart, but damages the man-made foundation to a point where the lake 'rushes' in. This is substantiated by the later comment about the people of Lake-town lamenting their 'lost' town. The foundation isn't completely sunk - people can still look upon 'the ruins' later - but certainly they don't decide to rebuild there. Instead, the decision is to build on the North Shore (rather than, for example, using the pre-existing foundations that might have been left in the ruins). Clearly there has been enough damage (and mental trauma) that nobody figures on building the island again.

Also, later on it is inferred that a large chunk of the foundation is flat-out sank by Smaug (which supports the above).

for ever after they had a dread of the water where the dragon lay. He would never again return to his golden bed, but was stretch cold as stone, twisted upon the floor of the shallows. There for ages his huge bones could be seen in calm weather amidst the ruined piles of the old town.

It also seems to imply that his bones are big enough to stick up from the water in 'the shallows', so that's something.

Smaug was pretty big. He's no Ancalagon - not even close - but pretty big.

Edit: Okay, I can't actually figure out how big the cartoon one is - I thought it might be larger, but that could be because Jackson's Lake-Town is bigger. Threw me off how big movie Smaug is.

Anyone have good scene from the cartoon to figure size?

[Sharpandpointies]

Here's Lake-Town as Tolkien envisioned it.

00405.jpg

So clearly this isn't as huge as the town in the movie (this is part of the problem; Jackson made the movie town a whack bigger). But it's still large enough that Smaug falling on it and messing the whole thing up (again, death throes, not just 'splat smoosh', he's not as big as the whole thing I figure) is a good indication of 'big'.

[Sharpandpointies]

Mea culpa - I got something incorrect. The entrance through which Smaug couldn't stuff his head was five feet tall with enough room for three people to walk side by side, not three feet wide.

So considerably larger. Smaug, if he couldn't even fit all of his jaws into that, would have been rather huge.

[Shai-Hulud]

Mea culpa - I got something incorrect. The entrance through which Smaug couldn't stuff his head was five feet tall with enough room for three people to walk side by side, not three feet wide.

Was just finishing up a scathing post to ruin your LotR creds, but you caught it.

[Sharpandpointies]

Was just finishing up a scathing post to ruin your LotR creds, but you caught it.

I read the passage too quickly, what can I say? ^_^

[StupidMoniker]

Anyone have good scene from the cartoon to figure size?

When Bilbo meets Smaug, there are some chests and stuff lying around that you can scale a bit off both Bilbo and Smaug. Unfortunately, you don't get a good look at him all stretched out or anything, but he is clearly really, really big. Like Bilbo is roughly the size of one of his toes.
https://youtu.be/17kvIcRtMhM
https://youtu.be/Or8G_jDcLNo

[Sharpandpointies]

Yeah, that's pretty large. Thanks!

Might sit down and try to work out a comparison to get a size later.

[Jackalope89]

Jackalope has some pretty good Tolkien credentials. I'd be curious as to their interpretation. Edit: Wish Estrecca and Gorthaur were still around this website, they had fantastic knowledge between them.

I'm not big on The Hobbit, but...Smaug's size is somewhat indistinct. But big.

1. He is noted as being 'a vast, red-gold dragon'. Vast holds a fair amount of meaning with regards to size.

2. The tunnel that Bilbo creeps down to get into Smaug's lair has an egress that is 'as much the same size and shape as the door above', which is noted as being approximately 5' high and EDIT: three people walking side by side, see post below. Smaug explicitly cannot fit his head into that size of a tunnel. Even 'the jaws' can't squeeze in, though Smaug can actually send fire and smoke in using, again explicitly, his nostrils. Ergo, Smaug's head is consierably larger than 5'x EDIT three people walking side by side. That he can snort fire and smoke down the hallway means that the distance between his nostrils, however, is less than 5'xEDIT three people walking side by side. Which doesn't tell us a lot other than, again, big.

3. Smaug is big and powerful enough to literally shatter cliff walls with strikes of his tail and create massive landslides that cover over large areas.

4. He's big enough that he gets nervous about landing on the man-made island that is Lake-town. He doesn't like that it's surrounded by water. So what does that mean? Lake-town is an entire town, so the foundation is quite large. Not to say that Smaug is the size of the island - he wouldn't be - but he's big enough that the idea of landing on it still makes him nervous about the proximity to the lake, especially with the open middle to it. So he's not some small, 40' dragon or anything like that, which one guesses could wander around Lake-Town like Godzilla in Tokyo; he's large enough that sitting in the town, he'd be iffy about then rampaging around on account of concerns over falling the water. Edit: and, presumably, worries about it holding up UNDER him.

5. When he falls upon Lake-town, the description supports that he is at least on a scale where he doesn't, for example, just take up a small part of the town.



So Smaug's final fall on the (burning town) and death throes not only rip the town apart, but damages the man-made foundation to a point where the lake 'rushes' in. This is substantiated by the later comment about the people of Lake-town lamenting their 'lost' town. The foundation isn't completely sunk - people can still look upon 'the ruins' later - but certainly they don't decide to rebuild there. Instead, the decision is to build on the North Shore (rather than, for example, using the pre-existing foundations that might have been left in the ruins). Clearly there has been enough damage (and mental trauma) that nobody figures on building the island again.

Also, later on it is inferred that a large chunk of the foundation is flat-out sank by Smaug (which supports the above).



It also seems to imply that his bones are big enough to stick up from the water in 'the shallows', so that's something.

Smaug was pretty big. He's no Ancalagon - not even close - but pretty big.

Edit: Okay, I can't actually figure out how big the cartoon one is - I thought it might be larger, but that could be because Jackson's Lake-Town is bigger. Threw me off how big movie Smaug is.

Anyone have good scene from the cartoon to figure size?

Appreciate it, but I am FAR from being an expert. I know a few things here and there, but that's about it. Outside of LOTR and The Hobbit books.

But my interpretation is that until the advent of Super Shenron of Dragon Ball Super, Ancalagon was among the largest, if not the largest, dragon.

Though I am vaguely aware of other rather large dragons.

[Sharpandpointies]

Appreciate it, but I am FAR from being an expert. I know a few things here and there, but that's about it. Outside of LOTR and The Hobbit books.

But my interpretation is that until the advent of Super Shenron of Dragon Ball Super, Ancalagon was among the largest, if not the largest, dragon.

Though I am vaguely aware of other rather large dragons.

Was actually more thinking about Smaug (Cody's question), and you've had some pretty darned good Tolkien info in the past. ^_^

Quasar Dragon kind of has all of them beat for size unless Super Shenron is bigger than planets (which...upon consideration, they probably are. I expect we could probably dig up something bigger, but I've never seen it), but that's an RPG Dragon from a joke issue of the Dragon Magazine, dating back to my own early days.

Those familiar with old school D&D stuff will find this amusing.

Quazar Dragon (Draco Godawfulus Armageddonus)

FREQUENCY: Only once
NO. APPEARING: 1 (unique)
ARMOR CLASS: -4000 (equal to sixteen miles of iridium plating)
MOVE: Effectively infinite
HIT DICE: All there are
% IN LAIR: Nil, lives in interstellar space
TREASURE TYPE: Planets may be found in stomach
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK: One world's worth per bite
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Belch causes 10,000d6 damage to all beings within one million kilometers
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Has no enemies
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Magic? What's that?
INTELLIGENCE: Animal
ALIGNMENT: Perpetually hungry
SIZE: L (120,600 km from nose to tail)
PSIONIC ABILITY: Psionics? How do you spell that?

The dreaded Quazar Dragon is actually an alien lifeform that consumes whole worlds to sustain its energy requirements. It is especially attracted to worlds where enormous quantities of magic may be found, and it can detect the presence of such planets from a third of the distance across the Galactic Disk. Such worlds are usually in the terminal stages of what the gods call "The Monty Haul Syndrome" in which a handful of characters has managed to seize control of their entire world's supply of magic items and are busy making even more.

The first clue that a "Monty Haul" world is about to be eaten comes when the characters walk outside their gold-plated +8 castle walls, wearing their +22 platemail of prismatic invulnerability, and see the sun disappear. This is a sure indicator that the Quazar Dragon has opened its 28,260 km wide mouth and is about to swallow the planet whole. The only possible way to save oneself in such a situation is to immediately throw all the magical items one can get hold of into a sphere of annihilation. The Quazar Dragon will take about 12-48 hours to close its mouth, so the characters do have a little lead time. ALL magic, every scrap of it, every teensy weensy itty bitty bit of it, must be destroyed. If this is done, there is a 5% chance the Quazar Dragon will change its mind and not gulp the planet down.

The deities themselves cannot undo or have any say in the actions of the Quazar Dragon, and to be perfectly honest, none of them want to do so. The Quazar Dragon has gotten rid of many planets on which characters dared call themselves the equals of the gods, and the gods are quite pleased with the overall result, even if it does mean having to go back to the drawing board and create another new planet.

The Quazar Dragon has no natural enemies, being immune even to bumping into neutron stars. It uses the vast amount of energy it takes in to launch itself across interstellar space at trans-light velocities, ever searching for another inflated world to have for a light snack.

[Cody]

Was actually more thinking about Smaug (Cody's question), and you've had some pretty darned good Tolkien info in the past. ^_^

Quasar Dragon kind of has all of them beat for size unless Super Shenron is bigger than planets (which...upon consideration, they probably are. I expect we could probably dig up something bigger, but I've never seen it), but that's an RPG Dragon from a joke issue of the Dragon Magazine, dating back to my own early days.

Those familiar with old school D&D stuff will find this amusing.

Dude can basically eat galaxies in one bite

[Dark Soul # 7]

Was actually more thinking about Smaug (Cody's question), and you've had some pretty darned good Tolkien info in the past. ^_^

Quasar Dragon kind of has all of them beat for size unless Super Shenron is bigger than planets (which...upon consideration, they probably are. I expect we could probably dig up something bigger, but I've never seen it), but that's an RPG Dragon from a joke issue of the Dragon Magazine, dating back to my own early days.

Those familiar with old school D&D stuff will find this amusing.

Super Shenron is bigger than galaxies, and to actually interact with it and make a wish the summoner is brought into it to meet its core, which is basically a mini-Super Shenron.

[big_adventure]

Was actually more thinking about Smaug (Cody's question), and you've had some pretty darned good Tolkien info in the past. ^_^

Quasar Dragon kind of has all of them beat for size unless Super Shenron is bigger than planets (which...upon consideration, they probably are. I expect we could probably dig up something bigger, but I've never seen it), but that's an RPG Dragon from a joke issue of the Dragon Magazine, dating back to my own early days.

Those familiar with old school D&D stuff will find this amusing.

I remember that issue!

In any case, year, Super Shenron is probably still a fair sight bigger. He was, size-wise, to the Super Dragon Balls what regular Shenron is to the regular fist-sized balls. And the Super Dragon Balls are the size of planets.

[Alias]

Quasar Dragon kind of has all of them beat for size unless Super Shenron is bigger than planets (which...upon consideration, they probably are. I expect we could probably dig up something bigger, but I've never seen it), but that's an RPG Dragon from a joke issue of the Dragon Magazine, dating back to my own early days.

Alan Moore's Morningbright says "hi": (He may or not have ad-libbed the entire conversation, but saying "hi" from different universes was definitely in his wheelhouse, appropriately enough.)

[Sharpandpointies]

Big dragons abound these days, it seems!

[Alias]

Otherwise, for giant D&D dragons that were actually in canon once (for however much that's worth):

http://www.mojobob.com/roleplay/mons.../dragstel.html

Edit: skip to the table at the bottom for size by age category. At "great wyrm", they range from 21,002 to 3,000,000 feet in length.