Dragons Part Three

Magic Dragons!!!

As briefly mentioned in Part Two, Magic/k Dragons fall into two main types:

Magic-eating Dragons

Requiring Magic/k in order to survive, feeding from the field of naturally occurring Magic/k, this type of Dragon lives where the magic is strongest. Locations like stone circles, a confluence of ley lines and Toys 'R' Us outlets for example.

Magic-producing Dragons

At the other end of the spectrum, Dragons give out Magic/k. Functioning like Nuclear reactors/bombs-waiting-to-happen, each Dragon gives out an amount of Magic/k for a given amount of fuel (read sacrifices). As one of the major generators of magic/k in the world, this type of Magic Dragon is therefore vital to the survival of other Magic/k creatures, Unicorns, Elves and My Missus as a few examples.


Now of the two situations the second is more fun and as such will be the main event in this blog.
I could talk about the parasitical Dragons but in the distant-ish future I will be doing a different blog about other Parasitical Magic/k entities and want to hold off for now.

Let's look at this in a focused way. Assume that Dragons are real, sacrifices are necessary and we, dear reader, are some cool scientist/adventurer types (think Indiana Jones in a lab coat) who are finally doing some research on Dragons that goes beyond "Shoot it in the face or the squishy bits!!".

Assuming that the Dragon is a generator of Magic/k each sacrifice will act as fuel and enable the Dragon to produce a quantity of Magic/k which will permeate the landscape of their territory providing sustenance and potential power for all manner of creatures and Wizards.

In that case, the world will be a delicately balanced system so that any given Dragon's output of Magic/k is not overtaxed by the local users.

So, to answer the question of how much Magic each Dragon puts out we need to know: How many users there are per territory? How much magic do they consume? How much Magic/k potential is a Virgin worth?

If you have snacks in front of you now is a good time to start munching.

How many users?
In the previous post, a Dragon's territory was estimated at 2000 sq miles. Depending on the size of the Dragon this area of Fantasionia will usually support a minimum of three high level Wizards/Mages and a maximum of one quarter of a Dark Lord.

Dark Lords require more Magic/k to function than other things, what with all that mass evil and floating around as a black cloud etc. and would certainly require multiple Dragon territories.

How much Magic/k do the users...use?
To answer this question we need a scale of energy.

It makes sense to start at the base unit of Magic/k, the Abra(TM). For smaller feats, say sleight of hand (the money disappearing from your wallet or your watch seeming to survive a blow from a 9lb hammer), a single Abra(TM) is the average currency.

However for Bob the Magical Magician to produce a live rabbit from an empty hat requires several thousand Abra(TM), or one Kadabra(TM), as well as a certain minimum size of hat.

For high level Magic/k or sorcery (the translocation of living beings, summoning unearthly fire, low level demon conjuring and transformation of Billy into a toad), several million Abra(TM) would be required, or several thousand Kadabra(TM): a Giga Kadabra(TM).

The activities of a Dark Lord would require a vastly larger quantity of Magic: The Kazam(TM).

For the rare occasions they turn up, high level Demons and Demi-Gods require tens of Kazam(TM)'s to transition onto the mortal plane.

So, now we have a scale to measure the output of a Dragon and determine user requirements. We now need to know the output per horse/virgin wench devoured.

Okay, fine, but why does a Dragon need to eat virgins/maidens? Why not Billy the boy-toad?

The established method for Dragon-keeping-awaying is the sacrifice of a virgin girl/young woman/wench who is pure of heart, randomly chosen or maliciously selected and (if at all possible) important to a Hero. At least two of these conditions must be met in order to placate the local evil Dragon and prevent burny death.

Male virgins fail to attract Heroes of any gender, on a romantic or platonic basis, and thus cannot fulfil the last condition. Also, Dragons are just sexist and prefer long-haired maidens in white dresses, crying and screaming if at all possible. Something to do with the shoulder-to-waist ratio we are told.

Innocence is generally regarded as being beyond price, so we can assume the Innocence of one rural virgin to be around 2000-3000 Blushes(TM), which translate to about 859-1256 Kadabra(TM). Purity of Heart is slightly more useful (while Innocence ensures a clueless victim, the virgin scoring highly for Purity of Heart knows that the Dragon wants to eat her, but trusts that such evil cannot triumph, thus ensuring maximum atrocity) and weighs in at 500 Intentions(TM), which corresponds to roughly 3584 Kadabra(TM).

Importance to a Hero is the key factor however and can be worth 90,000-150,000 Poignants(TM), translating to 50-90 Giga Kadabra(TM), enough to power one Dark Lord for six months.

Err... right. So how many virgins?

Conversion losses within the Dragon are minimal (IT'S MAGIC!!!) so we can safely assume the full potential of the sacrifice to be released.

So assuming a unimportant virgin, not particularly pure of heart, a single sacrifice has the potential to enable an average Dragon to put out 40 Giga Kadabra(TM).

Realistically then, assuming that magical towers, lay-lines and stone circles work as capacitors, powerlines and regional distribution hubs, probably half of this quantity can be stored.

Given the high intensity with which Magic/k is used in Fantasonia this would last about a month. So we can safely assume that twelve sacrifices are required each year in order to prevent a Dragon from failing to output the needed magic/k and burning the bollocks off of the local countryside, reducing it to a smoking ruin.

So, over the course of a year the average dragon will put out a minimum of 6 Kazam(TM) or 480 Giga Kadabra(TM). This fuels the Magic/k consumption in their territory enabling the various Dark Lords (whose territory probably covers four or five Dragon territories), Mages, Unicorns, Wizards, Elves and my missus to levitate/summon demons/buy shoes.

Obviously the average Dark Lord will have a very large capacitor (Doom Fortress(TM)) with which to store the bulk of the Magic/k output of the local Dragon-reactors over the course of several years. Thus Magic/k harvesting can be considered a giant game of Risk with added fire and capes. The bigger the destruction planned the more Magic/k required and larger the drain on the output of local Dragons.

But Dragons aren't generally welcomed as valued members of the local community, except by Dark Lords obviously. What happens if too many Dragons are quested to death? 

Due to the obviously vital role which Dragons play in Fantasonia their slaughter is a closely monitored thing and can be likened to the emergency shut down of a faulty Nuclear reactor. In order for the system to work and continue to function there needs to be a constant supply of young Dragons reaching maturity at approximately the same rate as the elder and seriously cranky Dragons are being put down. These replacement Dragons also need to be scattered in such a way that no single territory suffers a dip in output for more than two weeks. This being the longest that the natural and man/elf/god-made capacitors could supply the Magic/k demands of the given territory. 

The short answer to the above question is that everything grinds to a halt and people have to actually work to effect anything in the world rather than getting the passing hedge-wizard to meddle with the fundamental nature of reality in order to boil the kettle twenty seconds quicker. 

Alright, smart arse, how do Dragons not get quested to death too quickly then?

In order to understand this we need to know how long the average Dragon lives for.

Given an active phase of about 7-10 days per 30 day lunar (ish) month with the remaining 20 odd days spent in hibernation on their hoard of gold (which also has some Magic/k filtering properties) and using intellect as a rough marker for the length of existence, we can determine that, despite various personality flaws, Dragons are in fact clever bastards. Much more so than the average Wizard. And as such they will live longer than a Wizard.

Now given that it is a known fact that Wizards can/do live an average of 10-15 times longer than the normal slopmonging peasant we can safely assume that the average Dragon, left unmolested, will survive for some 6000 years.

However, given the proliferation of Dragon Slayers (1 in 15 Heroes tend to be Dragon Slayers and Heroes make up 10% of the average idiot population) we must assume that most of the slain Dragons are in fact juvenile, contribute little to the overall output and are indeed the menace that they are assumed to be. 

That, or after twenty years a Dragon will become bored of being used as a vital part of the machinery of life and decides to go out in a literal blaze of glory with as many bits of people stuffed into its face as possible.

This quite possibly being the case a Dragon hatchling would require a very rapid gestation and maturation period. Probably about a week. 

The life-cycle would be aided by the stored Magic/k in the local vicinity which would help to accelerate the process.

I think you're making this up as you go?

Bugger off.

So if the Dark Lords effectively rely on Dragons to fuel their evil powers, why don't the Dark Lords farm Dragons intensively for a greater Magic/k yield?

Firstly, by their very nature Dark Lords would be unable to cultivate large enough crops of sufficiently Pure, Innocent and Virginal young women to sustain a large Dragon population. Human social mechanics would necessitate a Quisling-like attitude in order to survive in the Dark Lord's citadel, thus negating most of the required attributes of a sacrifice.

Secondly, Dragons are big, nasty, egotistic and narcissistic (even the good Dragons tend toward these traits in most cases). They have large territories for a good reason. Two Dragons meeting do one of two things, mate, or fight (though it can be quite difficult to tell the difference). Either way the landscape for a good few miles on every side tends to get flattened, charred and gouged to buggery. No self-respecting Dark Lord would allow their territory or their armies to be thus rampaged over by anything but themselves and so they have to rely on manipulating the Magic/k capacitors, forming links to their lairs and carefully hoarding what is produced.

Well, I'm convinced. These posts are very useful, full of solid scholarship and razor sharp logic. Certainly this will inform my next Fantasy retail purchase.

****

So, there we have it. Magic/k Dragons and their place in the average Fantasy realm and a useful scale to measure Magic/k use and production.

Ten Dietrich Points and a pithy answer to whoever comes up with the best Dragon Farming idea. Post below.

Dragons! Part Two

"Is the dragon realistic or magic/k?"

To be clear, by realistic I mean Dragons which might have followed some sort of recognisable evolutionary path and might have evolved on Earth alongside the dinosaurs (as an example).

However, realistic Dragons are a headache from start to finish, especially if an author wishes to include historical/mythical hints to one. So I have quite a lot of sympathy for anyone who tries to create such a beast and a lot of admiration for anyone who can do so successfully.

The problems are numerous and what follows is a list of the biggest obstacles to the convincing existence of a "realistic" Dragon.

Flying.

For a Dragon to fly it needs to have a sufficient and huge wingspan in order to generate lift. In order to stay in the air the wings needs to be able to create enough lift to counteract gravity's pull on the mass of the body. Birds get around this by being relatively small and very light, with honeycombed bones that reduce their weight and large, light feathers which increase the surface area of their wings. So at one end you have something the size of a Shitzu, sorry Shih-tzu, that is like a flying, fire-belching brick with the wingspan of a couple of albatrosses, while at the other extreme is something whose light, brittle bones that would shatter when it tried to land because it has the wingspan of a mid sized plane.

The muscle mass needed to generate that much lift would also have to be densely packed to manoeuver the wings, and still have to be light enough to not get in the way of the mathematics of flight. Which brings us back to the fact that a realistic Dragon must have limited size. Increasing size and therefore flaming/maiden snatching capability increase fragility and therefore the risk that the thing would snap its own wings just trying to take off.

Fire breathing.

Right, fine, scrap the wings! They can still breathe fire!

Dragons have to be big and capable of causing serious damage or (unless you are Terry Pratchett) they aren't worth the effort of putting into a story. So you could go down the giant lizard route, but then you're just writing about Komodo Dragons, which while cool and a little terrifying for existing at all, are not actually Dragons.

A realistic fire breathing Dragon would require a fairly interesting biological process capable of changing ordinary food, people, animals, cabbages etc, into FIRE. A certain movie posed two chemical glands which produce a combustible chemical when combined. Alternately simple fermentation by bacteria in the gut could produce methane or other combustible gas, to be stored in a Hindenberg-organ (too far?) for release and ignition at an appropriate time.

A single dragon a species does not make.

Funny how so many fantasy Dragons exist as singular anachronisms. Where did they come from? What happened to their Mum and Dad? Don't they want babies?

Wait, wasn't there a film about this?

Yes, yes there was (ten Dietrich Points to anyone who guesses what the film is) and it illustrates the problem with Dragon breeding rates. If Dragons do not breed quickly then they are going to be very wary of people (who do breed quickly, certainly compared to the lifespan of the average fantasy Dragon) who will be competing for territory and resources. If they do breed quickly then, assuming they are the average flying-killing-bad news type and not one of Pratchett's Swamp Dragons, then the world they inhabit is very quickly going to become a burnt-up cinder.

We tend not to think about it today but for your average medieval-type village sized society, the loss of a field of crops is a disaster. Such people cannot simply go to the shops and get a new supply of food. A Dragon who is marking their territory (?) or just being a general pain in the arse by burning things could very quickly reduce an entire nation to starvation by denying them the ability to reap a harvest.

In fact the entire world could be rendered infertile (read black 'n' crispy) by a relatively tiny number of cranky scaled airborne flame-throwers. Taking Earth as an example, give each Dragon an average territory of 2000 sq miles (wolf packs have been known to have a territory this large and they can't even fly) and taking into account the fact that only one-eight of Earth's surface is capable of supporting crops, 12,356 Dragons having a bad hair day would be enough to turn the world into a giant BBQ. Compare this to the 7,100,000,000 humans who have just about managed to avoid that scale of destruction (for now anyway).

Unless the Dragons agreed upon some sort of Dragon-crop-rotation which would allow people to replant and reproduce between each cull....

Allowing humans to recover between raids would probably give rise to a new occupational category: Dragon Slayer!! Or in the modern world, Agricultural Protection Associate. Given the brutal necessity of defending their land against Dragons, they might not be complete feckwits and therefore able to do the job.... Since evolution happens much more slowly than technological advancement, humans would therefore cause Dragon Extinction within a couple of generations at most.

Dragon McD's.

All living things require nutrition, especially a fire-breathing Dragon. Given the calorific value of a food is actually based on setting it on fire (no really, but don't try this at home):

How many people does a Dragon need to eat?! 

The average male human in the West is advised (apparently) to eat between 2000 and 2500 calories each day, unless he is a professional athlete, in which case it is about 6000.

How many calories would a two ton fire-breathing lizard need? A person contains around 77,000 calories (disregarding bones), and while a basic amount of human noms would sustain the Dragon's body, flaming would require additional, substantial calories. A typical elephant requires 40,000 calories per day. And elephants don't breathe no fire, yo.

That requirement could be reduced by having meals tied to stakes by helpful villagers. No need to chase those tasty virgins! Alternately the Dragon could be a seasonal pest, spending large periods of time dormant. Speaking of hibernation.

Gold gold gold gold gold.

Assuming the realistic Dragon carries a pilot light, one explanation I have for the whole gold hoard thing is that gold is a very good thermal conductor and would help to translate some of the Dragon's intense (I assume) body heat into the rock/earth of their lair thus warming the ambient subsurface temperature a few degrees (after a long time I'd guess), allowing the Dragon to survive the sub-zero temperatures that might occur during an ice age or that might be prevalent in their isolated mountain lair.

Alternately the GOLD acts as the colourful petals of a flower, or in the case of the Carrion flower, the scent of rotting meat, to attract gold-hungry human snackage.

That or Dragons evolved from magpies and never left the "Oooh! Shiny!" reaction behind.

This is too complicated, can I just say my Dragon is magickal?

All of the above can however be brushed aside with impunity by implying, hinting at or flat out telling me/us/the reader, that Dragons in any given world are magic/k and are fueled and sustained by it. Or that they are like nuclear reactors for magic/k, giving out a certain quantity of magic/k per horse/virgin wench devoured. But I'll go into that in more detail in Part Three.

If we start comparing Dragons to Nuclear reactors then all of a sudden we start to think that Nuclear is a power source that can also be used to destroy, and any Dark Lord who wants to crush the world to their rule would probably be wanting a Dragon to back up their legions.

That is a possible reading of The Hobbit, and let's be honest, who doesn't like Smaug?

To be continued in Part Three.

Question: Why does a regular dose of virgin placate a Dragon and prevent it from marauding, while everything/one else is simply food?

Answers below, the best ones will get a further 10 Dietrich points and a pithy response...

Dragons! Part One

Well, being that St George's day has happened this week, I thought I'd visit the relevant member of the fantasy community.

The word Dragon originates from the Latin word drakōn, meaning serpent. Historically in the West Dragons were evil, harbingers of doom and/or really bad neighbours. The legend of St George centres on slaying a Dragon and even the virtuous King Arthur and his mob of heavily armed sociopaths would have got in on the lizard squashing if they could have found one.

They are portrayed as being big, scaly, mean and usually both firebreathing and airborne. There have been a smouldering cartload of films featuring or starring, heroic, comedic and good old fashioned evil Dragons with little thought about how they fit into the world, what their purpose is or where they come from.

Over the years their general appearance has changed from amazingly horrendous animation through to eye wateringly good and fittingly expensive CGI incarnations with some cartoons and everything else in between popping up a bit more in recent years.

They have been voiced (where they are intelligible) by famous actors and usually have some seriously witty dialogue, or some seriously cringe-worthy monologues.

There are an equally huge number of authors who have created fantasy worlds which contain, use and
abuse Dragons as a core element of their plot and they have taken a wide variety of stances on how to characterize their creations and what sort of fallout they have on the world, where such things have been considered. Most writers tend to settle with the idea that Dragons are evil and must be stamped out with little thought about the effects such an action might have on the region.

There are many, many, many varieties of Dragon. They have a lot of different characteristics which meld in their fiery bowels to produce the archetypal creatures that are known and feared wherever peasants huddle under thatched roofs.

So, before I get to the bones of this post I have prepared a loose list of common characteristics found in Dragons:


1) Intelligent. Above and before all others. 70-80% of Dragons in fantasy are usually highly articulate, intelligent and able/willing to converse with smaller forms of non-scaly life.

2) Evil. Pretty much what it says on the tin. They are evil for no other reason than they can be. There is no angst ridden past, no injustice against which they are rebelling. They kill, they burn, they eat - and they enjoy it. They also crap, but that never gets into the books or the films.

3) Apathetic. When they put in an appearance, they are quite often utterly self absorbed and only constitute a problem for the Hero if they can't be persuaded to move/give the advice/key item.

4) Hoarders. Hoarding large quantities of glittery things seems to be a fairly common activity for Dragons of most if not all types. I have read a number of different books with Dragons of every style and a large quantity of them can be relied on to build, maintain and guard or at least lazily dissuade theft from, a pile of riches.

5) Good. Again, what it says on the tin, obviously the polar opposite to the Evil. One or two authors have made a point of creating Dragons who are pure of intent, strong of will and interested in the welfare and progress of the Hero. It's interesting to note that they will still crop a sheep or a cow from a field with no thoughts about the farmer they are bankrupting.

6) Bestial. Several authors have created Dragons who have no communication skills with people. They are just another form of animal with common/everyday drives that the average beast in a field would identify with. These poor sods are often the victims of questing knights etc and tend to make me sad when they die for doing nothing more than being who/what they are.

Rarely, a Dragon is found in fantasy whose complexity and characterisation defy any single category. These tend to be my favorite forms of Dragons but like excellent plot and characters occurring in the same book they have been something of an endangered species which is only just now beginning to become more numerous.

The biggest problem is that until recently the average author has not thought Dragons through to the bitter, burnt and crispy end.

To be specific, most of the writers in question haven't decided if the Dragon they are putting into their world a) has the right to be there, rather than being parachuted in for the sake of it, or b) the ability to survive there. Is it an apex predator or is it anomaly with no means of survival?

A lot of these writers, sadly, seem to be happy with the idea that simply including a Dragon makes a story/plot better with bugger-all justification for why the thing exists or why it hasn't been killed/deified before now. Quite often their involvement in the plot is ropey at best and usually has little or no real bearing on the outcome. I can't tell you the amount of fantasy I have read, and subsequently thrown across the room, in which the Dragon imparts some ultimate wisdom that the Hero actually didn't need, or worse still...well, read on:

The wizard Gudguff smiled approvingly as his latest, witless and borderline brain-dead Prophesied-Hero picked up the bow he had never fired before and managed to hit the one loose scale on the underside of the evil Dragon that was engaged in a minor border skirmish in the village of Pisspot because the Dark Lord had been making military decisions that day by picking suggestions out of a hat.

If you re-read or watch the Hobbit books/films again with a slightly different eye, or possibly have a look at the appendixes at the rear of LoTR as well, what you will see is not a wizard gulling stupid individuals into a pointless adventure or gold hungry Dwarves going after...well, gold. Instead what you will see is a fantasy arms race. With <SPOILER!!> Sauron trying to get one of the last and certainly one of the largest Dragons left in Middle Earth on his side for the last war, while Gandalf et al try to stop him from acquiring the fantasy equivalent of a nuke.

Imagine the Siege of Gondor with Smaug knocking around and burning the arse out of the White City. The arrival of the Riders of Rohan is suddenly not such an issue. Smaug can just fly along and incinerate a large portion of the 6000 and odd host, assuming there's that many left since he has probably been blow-torching them for days before on their journey to the city.

But this is just entertaining "what if"-ing.

My problem with poorly realised Dragons can be boiled down to one question that never seems to occur to 80% of authors or if it does, is never really thought through to its full conclusion.

The question then:
Is the Dragon "realistic" or "magic/k"?


To be continued tomorrow...

Villains!

I like villains.

To explain:

Villains are dynamic and charismatic oddballs who stand alone and do whatever it is that they deem necessary. Now, let's not forget that villains are usually quite evil, maniacal and despotic at their best. They will routinely order the deaths of newborns, butcher entire towns and have cats shot for no other reason than they can.

However, it is almost impossible to not like a well written and well conceived Villain. I'm not just referring to fantasy either. SF, romance, drama... any genre you care to name will have some sort of Villain and where they are well written they are enjoyable.

For me this mostly stems from their contrast to their opposite numbers, namely Heroes.
Especially in Fantasy, notwithstanding the few notable exceptions, Heroes are bland and uninspiring figures. A lot of them conform to the standard fantasy plot (which is a contradiction in terms that enrages me no end):

Wizard Gudguff told the awed simpletons of the ancient and totally unknown prophecy. 
"And a young one shall arise, pure in heart and thick of head, this paragon of unwieldy virtue shall gather to them the disaffected, disgruntled and the disowned and somehow bump off the dark lord. Thus ushering in years of peace, plenty and minimal taxation." The gathered peasantry oohed and aahed appropriately at the long words with several of the more knowledgeable nodding their thick heads.

Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of authors who handle this plot extremely well and actually manage to create a dynamic character who can hold my interest and get the job done. There are more, however, who can't.

This type of Hero is insipid at best and downright stupid at worst. They are often found living simple and wholesome lives in out-of-the-way villages. They might be apprentices or rogues in training or even learning something useful that would allow them to survive for five minutes.

None of that matters however. At some point a wandering do-gooder will drop by and accidentally "discover" the foretold Hero working as a slopmonger. From this point on, the Hero's life is not their own. They are bound by prophecy and more or less told what to do by their wise teacher. Even in cases where the Hero rebels or tries to avoid prophecy they are already doomed to reactionary deeds because by that point they are involved with whatever shoddy rebellion or cause has been peddled to them by their bearded/busty wandering prophecy merchant.

In such cases the Villain is portrayed as a merciless swine who oppresses the good people of Arsewittery with harsh taxes, starvation and the odd kiddy-cull for no particular reason.

Where Villains are done well however they are shown as the genuinely dynamic individuals that they are.  No Villain can rise to power without, at the least, drive. In order to remain on top the Villain will have amassed a huge army or gathered the blackest cut-throats to their cause. Neither of these is an easy thing to do however. The army needs feeding and paying and the cut-throats usually tend to follow the strongest/scariest bastard going.

If Magic/k is involved then it is almost guaranteed that the Villain is a master. Whether it is from years of practice, a dark will, innate and horrific ability or a pact with bigger and darker powers, the Villain has awesome abilities at their beck and call.

Good Villains (if you will excuse the phrase), see something in the world that they wish to change and go and change it. They shape the world around them and remake it in their own image and let's be honest, most of us would do the same if we thought we could get away with it.

We can admire a Hero for their morality but we can love a Villain for their ingenuity and drive. A hero might be able to raise a unhappy rabble to weld them into some sort of army but a Villain is able to change a standing order and remake it in their own image.

For me, the best Villain is one that we don't see coming. A trusted friend or advisor to the Hero. Or better still, the Hero him/herself, in which case we have followed them, rooted for them and sympathised with their setbacks only to find out they were more villain than hero. Excellent stuff.

What follows is my top 5 favorite Fantasy Villain list. Some of them are out and out evil and some occupy a more grey area.

5. Smaug
Say what you like, a charming and articulate dragon is always a frightening prospect. Tolkein's dragons feature heavily in the Silmarillion and are often served by cowed Orcs, ordering death and destruction from a bed of gold. Classy.

4. Grendel
A monster who just wanted a bit of peace and quiet. Neil Gaiman has done a few different incarnations of the original Saxon neighbor from hell both in an original and modern setting. I highly recommend hunting them out if you haven't already.

3. Elric of Melnibone
Michael Moorcock's anaemic manically depressed elf-like prince is not technically a villain by most standards. However, in his first full appearance, it is hard not to empathise with the poor humans who are tortured for information until they are little more than lumps of meat at his command. I dare you to come up with more Villainous behaviour!

2. Tywin Lannister
No list of Villains would be complete without him. Characterised perfectly by the incredible Charles Dance in the HBO adaptation of George R R Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, Tywin is a ruthless, ambitious patriarch. He dominates the political and social aspect of the entire series whilst having the sort of backstory (hands not so much bloody as bathed to the shoulders) that other Villains would kill for.

1. Bayaz, First of the Magi
Bayaz sums it all up for me. Introduced as a wizard out to save the world in Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" trilogy, Bayaz slowly reveals himself as the author of ancient disaster and war and the driving force behind a bank that is more frightening than most Bond Villain organisations put together. As well as being totally beyond the reach of the law and above the rule of kings, Bayaz thinks nothing of risking or ending the lives of the people he encounters if it matches his purpose.


So, there we have it. my thoughts on Villains who have really thrilled/enraged me with their antics over the years. Who would make it into your top 5 and why?

Broken Lance Part I

So! The first installment of the Dietrich's Way saga is now available for purchase on the Kindle via Amazon.
This is the beginning of it all. Meet Dietrich and begin to follow him on his journey.

Keep an eye on the blog for updates and sneaky peaks at the upcoming installments as well as my general thoughts on the fantasy genre.
You can get the first part here: The Broken Lance, Part I

The cover art for the novel was created by Marcos Avlonitis. Check out the website for his production company to see what else he has been up to. http://www.ricomark.co.uk/

Leave a review it on Amazon or comment here on the blog once you've finished reading.

Now, stop looking at this and start reading!