Tell your friends, arm yourselves with knowledge.

Smaugust Day 27: Fire

Introducing a ‘new’ dragon, the ‘flaming serpent’. This was inspired by comments on my last boitatá artwork by James-Silvercat (see here) talking about the version of the boitatá legend wherein the serpent is literally on fire.

There are lots of serpents on fire in the Americas, there is the great Gaasyendietha from Seneca mythology up in Lake Ontario in the USA, the boitatá in Brazil, and the Cherruve from Chile (A Book of Creatures covered it here), so I thought having a ‘flaming serpent’ species with many subspecies would be the best way to handle this.

The flaming serpent is a species of ‘feathered’ serpent, similar to the coatl. The ‘feathers’ are actually long thin scales called ‘psuedopennae’, and while the coatl has a green/blue iridescence, the flaming serpent has an black-gold-red iridescence, similar to some hummingbirds: 

(Gif of a Rufous Hummingbird - Selasphorus rufus - by stiekemekat)

The dragon can appear a dull brown or black until the light catches it in a certain way, and as it wiggles flashes like golden fire run down it’s body. They undulate as they swim or fly, like a living flame.

The shape of the scales can produce a whistling sound when the dragon is in flight, similar to the Mapuche legends of the peuchen, a blood-sucking flying serpent (and possibly yet another flaming serpent subspecies). This dragon will still have the spooky reflective eyes, but probably won’t have the bio-luminescent tail.

I am using this Smaugust prompt: https://draconesmundi.tumblr.com/post/625107202033778688

Someone please explain to me how this works

????????????

hmmm

Give me back my tailypo

:D :D :D

I love that story :| :| :|

Even IF it’s very likely something written in, like, 1920, rather than the traditional Appalachian/Native-American folktale it pretends to be.

My Patreon paper figure set this (last) month is 

APPALACHIAN FOLK MONSTERS

so here y’go! Some of these are from folk tales, some are a mishmash of stories that I’d heard growing up so I combined ‘em and laid names on ‘em, some are a hybrid of folk tales and the creations of rural pulp writer Manly Wade Wellman, who wrote horror yarns from the twenties through the eighties, some are native myths from the region that still hold sway with the locals. This is the kind of stuff I’ve got in my backyard out here in Kentucky.

If you’re inclined, you can download these as a free printable PDF, and cut your own cards, either to keep flat or stand up.  Here’s where you get ‘it (bottom of the post):

https://www.patreon.com/posts/september-paper-14717628

Happy Hillbilly Halloween!

Swan Valley Monster

I love how outrageous this creature is, in every way. Why is it not better known? I stumbled upon it in a used bookstore in Philadelphia.

https://abookofcreatures.com/2016/04/22/swan-valley-monster/