I am pretty sure it says that smaug was the last dragon, but there might have been some cold drakes still around. as far as the relative strength of middle earth dragons, smaug lived in a mountain, a large mountain but not the largest. anglecon the black when he was defeated and fell from the sky he fell upon thangorodrim the largest mtns of there time, made my the debris morgoth had pulled out of his underground fortress. well when anglicon landed on the mtns he ruined them. so that sounds like to me he was a much larger dragon.
Yes, Ancalagon was pretty damn huge. Blimp size with flamethrower attachements?
Ya know, the only reason Gandalf helped in Thorin's little crusade to reclaim Erebor was because he didn't want Sauron to make Smaug a minion of his, just incase.
Err... well, one of TWO reasons; the other is that without a Dwarven Kingdom there then Sauron's armies in that part would have swept through and destroyed it and then moved on down towards Minas Tirith.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
You know I actually read somewhere (I can't remember now where) that Sauron used dragons in the mountains near Morder and in the South and East to give birth to his Fell Beasts. Does anyone know anything new about the possiblity of other dragons?
I don't think that's right....although I'm not sure. The only thing I'm aware of that Tolkien said definitively was that his "fell-beasts" would be fairly represented by the flying reptiles of ancient times.
I remember there being a dragon who attacked the Rohirrim at some point....Smaug was the last of the "great dragons," if I remember correctly....
I think it's a possibility that Sauron did breed dragons and fell beasts, seeing as he was a creator of things, he had parts of every other Valar in him, that's why he was special. But he had Aule and the other creator-type Valar in his nature.
Funny how Gandalf managed to wipe out the last great beasts of ME. First Smaug then Durin's Bane, oh and then of course Sauron himself Gives men a pretty secure future.