RPG Evolution: Who Invented the Ice Dragon?

Fire-breathing dragons are a well-known trope, but ice-breathing dragons are a relatively new beast to fantasy. Or are they?

Picture by Ministry of the Russian Federation for the Development of the Far East (Ministry of the Development of the Far East)​

1979: Was It George?​

George R.R. Martin, author of the Song of Fire and Ice fantasy anthology that inspired the Game of Thrones television series, wrote a short story titled "The Ice Dragon" back in 1979. In the introduction to that story, Martin makes a surprising claim:

"Ice dragons have become commonplace features of a lot of fantasy books and games in the twenty-odd years since I wrote 'The Ice Dragon,' but I believe mine was the first. And most of the other 'ice dragons' appear to be no more than white dragons living in cold climes. Adara's friend, a dragon made of ice that breathes cold instead of flames, remains unique so far as I'm aware, my only truly original contribution to the fantasy bestiary."

Breaking that bold statement down, Martin is arguing that his ice dragon is unique because it combines two characteristics: it "breathes cold" and is "made of ice." We know Martin himself was well-acquainted with role-playing games, because he wrote one:

Back in the ‘80s GRRM (as he is known to his fans) was gamesmaster for a super-hero RPG called Superworld. The Albuquerque group he played with – which included science-fiction writers Melinda Snodgrass, Victor Milan, John J. Miller and Walter Jon Williams – created a campaign setting in which an extraterrestrial virus brought to earth in 1946 caused ‘wild card’ mutations among the populace. Those few infected by the virus who didn’t die outright or suffer grotesque mutations were changed at the DNA level and became ‘aces’ – or superheroes, in other words. This campaign would form the basis for the long running Wild Cards series of books which are still edited by GRRM and Snodgrass.

So it seems likely Martin's reference to white dragons is to Dungeons & Dragons. But who's to say white dragons aren't made of ice?

1974: Was it D&D?​

White dragons were introduced in the original boxed set with one line, "White Dragons will be found only in cold regions." Their statistics tell the rest of the story: they breath a cone of cold, have the lowest hit dice (5-7) and have the lowest chance of talking and the highest chance of being found sleeping. The rules don't explain the significance of a talking dragon but entries for the other dragon colors imply that talking is a prerequisite for casting spells.

This skeletal framework ensured change the legacy of white dragons in later editions. They were considered the least of the chromatic hierarchy, dumber and less powerful than their more ferocious cousins. There's no indication of what white dragons are made of, but there is one other clue: there are attacks they're vulnerable or resistant to, with a hit and damage modifier against them of -1 for water and earth, and a +1 for fire and lightning. Given that water damage does less harm to white dragons, it's entirely possible they could be made of ice. That booklet predates Martin's book by five years, published in 1974.

But co-creator Gary Gygax never claimed he invented the white dragon, and for good reason.

1933: Was it Ruth Plumly Thompson?​

The second official Historian of the Oz series of books after Frank L. Baum was Ruth Plumly Thompson, who included all sorts of fantasy creatures in the Oz series. She was particularly fond of dragons, including an ice dragon:

Ruth Plumly Thompson created such a creature in Ojo in Oz (1933). Colored blue and puffing out frost, it runs endlessly around Crystal City, keeping the inhabitants frozen solid.

The dragon is described as being blue, not made of ice, but later when Realbad the bandit kills it (off screen, as this was a children's book), he explains how:

"There was another kind of body thought," Realbad reminded him with a little laugh. "A blue dragon's body. There is your dragon, Ojo. I carried wood from the kitchen, built a fire in the road and he melted away like a snowflake."

So it seems the blue dragon was indeed made of ice. But Thompson wasn't the first person to create an ice dragon.

1899: Was it E. Nesbit?​

Nesbit wrote about an ice dragon:

And, sure enough, it was a dragon - a great, shining, winged, scaly, clawy, big-mouthed dragon - made of pure ice. It must have gone to sleep curled round the hole where the warm steam used to come up from the middle of the earth, and then when the earth got colder, and the column of steam froze and was turned into the North Pole, the dragon must have got frozen in his sleep - frozen too hard to move - and there he stayed. And though he was very terrible he was very beautiful, too.

This dragon is made of ice through and through, as it melts later (a common theme when it comes to dragons made of ice) but does not breathe ice. It does turn everything that touches it to ice however, and it's implied that the dragon's presence freezes things.

So it's clear that ice dragons aren't unique. And neither are white dragons, who have a long history in mythology.

828: Was it Nennius?​

The Historia Brttonum, a purported history of the indigenous British people, contains a story of King Vortigern and Ambrosius, who reveals a disturbance caused by two dragons:

The relevant story takes place at Dinas Emrys when Vortigern tries to build a castle there. Every night, unseen forces demolish the castle walls and foundations. Vortigern consults his advisers, who tell him to find a boy with no natural father, and to sacrifice him. Vortigern finds such a boy, but on hearing that he is to be put to death to solve the demolishing of the walls, the boy dismisses the knowledge of the advisors. The boy tells the king of the two dragons. Vortigern excavates the hill, freeing the dragons. They continue their fight and the red dragon finally defeats the white dragon. The boy tells Vortigern that the white dragon symbolises the Saxons and that the red dragon symbolises the people of Vortigern.

There is no indication that the white dragon is made of ice or breathes cold, but it may provide a clue as to the origins of Gygaxian chromatic dragons. If that's the case, white dragons got the losing end of the deal, as the white dragon in this story is the red dragon's equal.

So Who Created Ice Dragons?​

Martin was careful to explain that he considered the combined characteristics of a dragon made of ice that breathes cold to be unique. It's a fair interpretation. Dungeons & Dragons never explicitly said white dragons were made of ice, and later iterations were definitely flesh-and-blood creatures. Conversely, only a close reading of Thompson's work makes it clear that the blue dragon is made of ice and breathes cold, due in part to its death explained after the fact. And of course, white dragons have been around in myth as long as dragons have been in legend.

It's clear that Martin's ice dragon owes a debt to all the dragons that have gone before, including its measly ancestor, the underappreciated white dragon.

Your Turn: Are your white dragons made of ice?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Bagpuss! That's one was great. Haven't thought about it in years.

Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin at Smallfilms created some beautiful kids programmes - Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine. Charming is absolutely the right word.

 

[Danny Prescott]

Bagpuss! That's one was great. Haven't thought about it in years.

I was target age but remember being baffled by what I now recognise as 60's inspired early 70's British kids TV stylings.. All that stuff could be ripe for one shot conversions with the right (or rather left field) mechanics to charm and/or slightly weird out a whole new generation

 

[pantsorama]

Desert nights can be very cold, but they rarely result in freezing temperatures during the summer months. Even in midwinter, while it does get cold, it doesn't drop that far below freezing.

Likely, what you'd need to do is have either a deep underground lair (using the sand above as a reflector), and some way of venting heat from the cavern without letting any in. It's somewhat plausible, but would require some buildup I think in order to feel like it makes sense in context.

Eh. The main thing that distinguishes a desert is that it is arid, not necessarily hot. So some deserts - like the High Desert in California and especially Oregon - can get quite cold, with lows below freezing for much of the year. And that is on the plateau. The mostly dormant volcanic peaks that dot the plain in Oregon are bitterly cold, and a white dragon might lair there and hunt the grazing animals and other nomads on the plain.

(I love this terrain, it is beautiful and intimidating, and criminally underused in gaming! Can you tell I have a soft spot for it?)

Now mind you, cold is just one part of ice formation. And the arid part of the desert is a real strike against dragons made of ice, but maybe not eliminating white dragons?

Your Turn: Are your white dragons made of ice?

Didn't Rolemaster do the whole "dragons made of elements" trope in the Elemental Companion?


BTW: The Ice Dragon is a beautiful story. I listen to it with my kids every year as a Christmas tradition. Still hits us in the feels.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Sorry for the late reply. According to this site, Gygax more or less invented the idea of dragons with color-coded breath weapons.

Dragons, Chromatic and Metallic​

Originally there were the five chromatic and evil dragons, each with a color that suited their breath weapon, and a sixth good dragon patterned on the Oriental model of that imaginary creature. As it was both or different origination and alignment I decided to empower the gold dragon so as to more closely resemble the potent Oriental sort. So it got more of everything, including two breath weapons.
There came a time thereafter when more metallic dragons were desirable so as to expand the roster of good, Oriental-type ones. Thus all of them were modeled on the gold dragon template, had two breath weapons.
Logically, with metal value being used as the basis for potency, platunum (Bahamut) being the highest, then gold and silver, the sequence should have been platinum-gold-electrum-silver-copper-bronze. However, I thought bronze looked more potent than copper, and skipped then to brass—that metal conveying some not-so-benign connotations.

Gary Gygax (1938–2008), January 31, 2004, EN World Q&A VI

I had read about many dragons, and seen many depictions of them. The European illustrations of dragons usually showed a quadruped reptile with wings and a long tail and neck. As a matter of fact, what was probably the first dragon used on the table top was a converted dinosaur model. Taking a plastic model of a stegosaurus in a scale of around 25 mm to the foot, I made it into a fabulous monster. I cut the tail spikes off, and two became horns for the dragon's head while the tail proper was extended by wire and auto-body putty, and barbed too. The back plates of the dinosaur were left in place and, with the addition of cardboard wings, the general form of the fearsome red dragon was visible! With yellow, orange, red and indigo paint applied, a reasonable facsimile of the medieval illustrations of the dragon was ready for play for the next tabletop Chainmail fantasy miniatures game fought out in the name of the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Rules Association on the 6' x 12' sand table in my basement. All well and good, but the thrill was waning.
Some 'historical' references spoke of dragons as 'serpents' with poisonous breath. There were mentions of dragons of green colour. Thus, it was a simple matter to add the green dragon that exhaled a cloud of poisonous gas, chlorine gas having a green colour. Oriental mythology included many colours of their particular form of dragons, and the mahjongg game has three sets of different tiles named dragons—green, red and white. Having played that game since I was a boy, how could I ignore the white dragon? So what form of breath weapon went with that colour? Snow and cold, of course. So another breed of dragonkind was created. After some contemplation, I added the blue colour, as that could well represent lightning, and there was a spell in the rules covering just such an electrical bolt. Acid breath seemed another reasonable form of attack, black represented that well, and thus the fifth kind of malign race of dragons was born. All five were based on the most common European depiction of the 'fire drake', of course. This was because the base game they were devised for assumed a quasi-medieval environment, similar to that of the European fairy-tale paradigm. That ended the near-complacency of would-be dragon slayers. No longer could a single set of defences and attacks apply when a dragon was known to be on the loose. Better still, one only glimpsed was still likely an enigma, for its colour, weapon and vulnerabilities could be anyone of five different sorts.
To balance these evil drakes there soon came the noble gold dragon, based on the Oriental form of dragon. To bolster the benign ranks of dragons led by that creature, there followed the other 'Metallic' dragons—silver, bronze, copper and brass. Next came Tiamat the evil Chromatic queen, and Bahamut the good platinum king to command these two families of mighty creatures. Even all that was just the beginning…

Gary Gygax (1938–2008), Slayer's Guide to Dragons (2002)

While separately dragons made of ice, dragons that breathe freezing cold, dragons that live in arctic conditions, and dragons with white scales have examples from a long time ago, it seems that Gygax synthesized the concept of a dragon with white scales that lives in arctic conditions and breathes frost.

I'm curious to see others articles like this on the other dragon colors and breath weapons.

 

[ClusterFluster]

No one "invents" a dragon, they are the physical manifestations of the spiritual energies of the ambitious.

They are the symbolism of Destiny incarnate as a godly beast of savage fury in yearning.

Edit:
Indeed, they are the fire-breathing titans made of your greatest dreams, your fevered secrets, or even you deepest, darkest shadows...

 

[Storyteller Hero]

The Zhulong/Zhuyin from ancient Chinese mythology apparently breathes "seasonal winds", which include the winds of winter.

Zhulong (mythology) - Wikipedia

 

[Charlaquin]

Silly George, thinking no one had come up with the idea of an ice dragon before him. I’m pretty sure everyone who’s thought about fire-breathing dragons for more than a few minutes has had the thought, “what if one breathed ice instead?” He hedges the claim significantly by saying he thinks his ice dragon is the only one in fantasy fiction to both breathe ice and be made of ice, but that’s a significantly weaker thing to claim as a “unique contribution to the genre,” and it’s still far from undisputed.