Guest post written by The Doors of Midnight author R.R. Virdi
R.R. Virdi is a two-time Dragon Award finalist, Nebula Award finalist, and USA Today Bestselling author. He is the author of the urban fantasy series The Grave Report and The Books of Winter, as well as the epic fantasy novel The First Binding. His love of classic cars drove him to work in the automotive industry for many years before he realized he’d do a better job of maintaining his passion if he stayed away from customers.
He was born and raised in Northern Virginia and is a first generation Indian-American with all the baggage that comes with. He’s offended a long list of incalculable ancestors by choosing to drop out of college and not pursue one of three pre-destined careers: a lawyer, doctor, engineer. Instead, he decided to chase his dream of being an author. His family is still coping with this decision a decade later. He expects them to come around in another fifteen to twenty years.
About The Doors of Midnight: Myths begin, and a storyteller’s tale deepens, in the essential sequel to R.R. Virdi’s breakout Silk Road-inspired epic fantasy debut, The First Binding.
Mythology. We’ve all heard the term, and we’re likely familiar with a variety of myths, predominantly Western ones through media and retellings, along with a healthy dash of Disney, and probably Wishbone (for you 90’s kids). But what exactly is it?
The agreed upon take for mythology is that: it is a collection of stories pertaining to a particular religious and or cultural tradition. These would your Greek myths, for example consisting of all the little stories you might have heard of Hercules, and not just the animated accounts of his tales, but the many retellings across film and television and literature of his labors. They would include Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey. From South Asia, we have Ramayama, and then Mahabharata.
We’re familiar with mythology in the ancient tradition and how those stories live on—how they’re retold. But what about how they’ve influenced a lot of the “new” stories we tell today. Do their bones, and perhaps spirit, still live on in the continued trade of storytelling across all the new mediums we’ve managed to create?
In short, yes.
You might have heard of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, more commonly known as, The Hero’s Journey. It’s often thought as a blueprint or outline in how to write a mythic story. In truth, it’s not that all. If you’re being kind, it’s a template. If you’re harsh, it’s an oversimplification, codification, and reduction of a lot of story/mythic beats to form an outline of a variety of epics/myths, but not accounting for many others to arrive to the structure.
However, it’s not to say that there are not comparative/similar beats and tropes throughout mythology. There is an entire study dedicated to this called, you guessed it, Comparative Mythology.
The beats in the Hero’s Journey are a bit oversimplified, but it did get something right: there is a lot of similarity in a lot of great myths (and the epics) from across the world.
One of those beats? The dragon, and the slaying of said dragon. The dragon, going back to some of the oldest myths across cultures, has often been the Big Bad! The thing to defeat. The grand obstacle…or, if you’re looking at it from a writerly structural mind…the climax!
If we take two famous dragon slaying myths for example, the climax of Thor’s life, killing Jörmungandr (the Midgard Serpent, or the Norse sea serpent of most-monstrous size. And it’s important to note the earliest dragons were often aquatic sea serpents, not the common fire-breathing variants we’re more familiar with today), and the climax of Indra (the South Asian storm god and ruler of the heavens) killing Vritra (the Asura who took the form of a three-headed dragon (most commonly)), we see some parallels. Those are that both serpents are associated with water (as mentioned above), calling it their home or holding all the waters of the world hostage in the case of Vritra. Both gods are storm gods who also wield similar weapons with similar properties. We have the famous Mjolnir from Thor, imbued with all the powers of lightning and thunder. In the case of Indra, we have his proto club or hammer, like Thor, named Vajra. Three guesses what powers it is imbued with, and the first two don’t count.
That’s correct, lightning and thunder.
But the stories don’t stop there. In fact, there is a laundry list of storm gods fighting dragons. Perun vs. Veles. Marduk vs. Tiamat. Hadad | Ba’al vs. Lotan. And this theme continues down to the more mortal characters such as Siegfried of Germanic heroic legend who goes on to slay the dragon Fafnir.
So, how does this contribute to modern storytelling? Well, let’s look at what the dragon was back in the old day. Our early ancestors worshipped storm gods because of what they brought for us: the rains. Storm gods were essentially to both early nomadic people and especially agricultural, and dragons were a threat to this. They inhabited the bodies of waters we needed to live—to sustain our crops. And in some legends, they stole that very water. This theme of theft and withholding important resources continued along with our own societal growth. The dragon stole and hoarded what we needed or valued.
After the rains and water it was cattle once we reached a larger cattle rearing capability. Eventually it would become gold and princesses as our wealth and kingdoms grew. And so the dragon became The Obstacle to overcome in stories. The climax. At least, a very common and fun one to use.
In fact, for defeating Vritra, Indra earned the epithets, Slayer of the First Born of Dragons, as well as, Remover of the Obstacle.
The dragon was the great threat that put all your knowable life at risk and hostage under its power as well as taking something from you. But let’s move away from fantasy for a moment and consider another time and place. A galaxy far, far away.
Say you have a mighty empire. Let’s just call it The Empire for simplicity’s sake. In this empire, you have an uppity group of rebels doing what they do best, a rebellion. And golly gee willikers, it’s freaking frustrating. So, you create an almighty weapon to hold the galaxy in the grip of fear. This weapon in one single breath of dragon’s fire—I mean laser energy beam fire—snuff out worlds. Maybe you kidnap something or someone of great value to this community of rebels. Could be a soldier, a general, or, let’s just pretend a princess.
A princess works wonderfully. You store this princess on board you mighty space dragon that no one can beat. And it certainly doesn’t have any chinks in the ole armor. That would preposterous. After all, that would be the myth of impenetrability.
What’s that you ask? Well, that’s a myth where heroes such as Achilles, or Karna from the South Asian epic Mahabharata were granted protection in the form of impenetrable armor and were still killed anyways. Or the same Siegfried mentioned above who bathes in the blood of Fafnir after killing him to gain the impenetrability of dragon scales (only terms and conditions applied). Sadly, a linden leaf sticks to the small of his back, preventing a spot from getting the magical blood, and so, a mortal vulnerability remains. You can guess what happens, yes indeedy, he is killed through that spot.
Before any pedantry arises, you’ll notice I didn’t bring up Achilles’ ole foot. That’s because in the Iliad, he never dies. His death is foretold. The shot to the foot comes from a later Roman add-on poem in where he’s dipped in the Styx and then shot in the foot. In original Greek artwork, our hero’s death showcases a shot through the torso most commonly, and Homer makes great mention of the detail and quality of Achilles’ protective armor that was created by the god of the forge, Hephaestus, at Thetis’ (Achilles’ mother) request. It was said the armor was the impenetrable piece of protection.
We can flip this to how Tolkien most famously applied the myth of impenetrability to his villain in, The Hobbit, the dragon, Smaug. This uppity worm also had the same myth about him, only, someone had tested this with a black arrow. One that happened to find its mark and leave a chink in the ole dragon scales. Maybe the mighty dragon isn’t as impervious to harm as we thought.
So, back to our space dragon. The big villain. The climax. The obstacle to defeat. If you’re working with the idea of the big bad dragon that has no weakness, it’s kind of a great technique to add that little disclaimer: okay, no weaknesses except maybe one little thing. It’s a silly thing. Not exactly a broken dragon scale. It’s just a silly little exhaust port you can shoot a photon torpedo down. It doesn’t do anything though. Not really. No real harm. Not like piercing Smaug in the same spot and killing him.
. . .it only causes the cataclysmic exploding of the Death Star and destroying our green laser beam breathing space dragon and everyone on board. But other than that. . .it’s a perfect design. The most unbeatable obstacle dragon for this story structure.
Totally.
So you can set an entire story to the idea of what the dragon represents, and in fact, keep the dragon. And the dragon is the obstacle. It’s the thing your protagonist/s must defeat because it is holding something at risk: the fate of the world, your crops (so back to your world), the empire/rebellion/galaxy, and thus creates the overarching story with a goal.
Because x happens due to y, z (protagonist) must undergo (insert quest) to defeat/stop/convince y to save the world.
Sauron is the dragon, the obstacle in Lord of the Rings. He remains, however diminished, through the One Ring, and that in turn is his one weakness. He is Middle Earth’s possible oppressor once again, and the obstacle to overcome. Should we not defeat this dragon, all of Middle Earth will resemble a shady Walmart parking lot out in the sticks.
Or, Thanos. He holds all of creation at risk, and ironically (or maybe not so much), the very way to defeat him is by using the tools he so desperately thought to use to erase creation. The use of the Infinity Stones wiped him out instead. Rest in Peace, Tony Stark.
And that is certainly something that hasn’t been done before.
Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain. Hit the rewind button. . . a lot. An all-powerful being, saved for the climax—the big obstacle to defeat, and nothing can stop them. They hail from a dark dimension and seem impervious to everything.
. . .except one thing. In this case, time loops. There’s that one little weakness again.
Perhaps you’re an immortal empire ruling The Final Empire. You’re immortal through magic. You are the great obstacle (at least at first), and you have no weaknesses. Not one. Okay, maybe one. Maybe the very magic you’re using. But it’s okay, because like the Death Star plans, it’s a totally safe secret and no one can or will figure it out.
You’re safe, Mr. Dragon Emperor. Wink-wink.
So, how does mythology inspired modern pop culture/fiction? Well, if you have one good villain who is the obstacle, you might want to thank a dragon (if you can find one) for that. Because historically as far as our old stories go, they were often one of the big baddies we featured as an obstacle to overcome. The obstacle. One of the structural climaxes we still rely on today.
And who doesn’t love a good quest to bring down a dragon, whether they’re made of flesh and scales, or whatever a giant fully armed and operational space station is made from.
Every story has a dragon, somewhere. Even yours. It’s just an obstacle. So go forth and slay your dragons!
Please be careful about dragon slaying within the workplace, though.
