Dragon Review - Fafnir
Diverse greetings appropriate to your philosophy!
Next up in this series is Fáfnir, a legendary dragon of Germanic origin!
Hearkening back to the Volunga Saga, Fáfnir starts out as a dwarf, which is almost as cool as a dragon. Strong and fearless, he guards the blinged-out house of his father King Hreidmar. Things were Very Nordic until the gods came along, where they got both Very Nordic and Extremely Metal. After encountering an otter while travelling, the Aesir killed and skinned it, like you do. Only, it turned out that the otter was Fáfnir's enchanted brother, who along with the rest of his family was righteously ticked off.
The gods were held captive until they could pay a ransom for the dead brother, with only Loki being set free to go fulfill the deed. This was a huge mistake. Loki does so by finding some cursed gold and a cursed ring to buy the freedom of the Aesir with. Because that's how Loki rolls.
Fáfnir promptly goes nuts with greed due to the curse, kills his father, turns into a dragon, escapes into the wilderness, and breathes poison all about the land to keep people away from his gold. Now, put dragons and treasure together and you're gonna get Heroes, which is an unfortunate truth. Fáfnir was no exception. While wandering down to a stream one day, he gets ambushed by Sigurd hiding in a pit with a little bit of help from Odin. Fáfnir is mortally wounded, but ends up being decent enough to warn Sigurd that the treasure is cursed and, by the way, he's probably being manipulated by one of Fáfnir's still-living brothers.
All in all, a pretty good tale! Drama, revenge, curses, madness, and jerkwad gods responsible for the whole thing. Fáfnir was only a dragon by transformative curse. But he IS one of the classic western-style dragons, with poison breath and a treasure hoard and getting offed by a guy with a sword. He's also the influence for some pretty important dragons we'll see later. All things considered, Fáfnir meets the basics of dragondom and climbs up to a "B" on sheer cultural-historical influence.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading.
