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GC13, Soren, and David discuss the nineteenth episode of Delicious in Dungeon, Hag and Nightmare.
Never has Delicious in Dungeon felt more like two episodes stuck together into one, but we suppose starting your second half in a dream and going full Inception will do that sort of thing to you.
Izutsumi may not have needed to threaten Marcille, but thankfully the party goes easy on her. She’s given Laios hope for Falin, and in exchange they’ve given her a place in the party—and a lesson in spoon holding!
2 comments
Love the podcast. Just thought I would try to answer some questions brought up by Soren in this episode about dragons. Apologies for the length of the answer.
The reason Wurms are dragons is because the words Wurm and Worm both come from the old English word Wyrm, which had several meanings but the relevant ones are snake and dragon. So, in this context saying the that a Wurm is a dragon is a tautology because Wurm is just another word for dragon. The word dragon comes from the ancient Greek word drákōn which again had several meanings but the relevant ones are serpent and snake. So, the words Dragon, Wurm, Wyrm and Worm are historically all words for snakes. The association with snakes has been lost in modern English with the most modern example I can think of being slow worms, which in terms of phylogeny aren’t snakes but morphologically they are basically snakes. There are some types of dragons such as the Wyvern and Guivre which are still named after snakes but not through the ancient Greek drákōn. Both Wyvern and Guivre are derived from the Latin word vīpera, i.e. viper.
Mythological dragons from before about the year 1000 were basically all big snakes or sea serpents, the Lernaean Hydra, Typhon, Jörmungandr, Lindworms, depictions of the constellation Draco, Chinese dragons, Fáfnir in the older depictions, etc. Some time between 1000 and 1300 the modern depiction of a dragon replaced the serpentine one in European folklore, the modern depiction (as a winged lizard that breathes fire) seems to originate from Beowulf where he fights a dragon described like that. Though there were previously serpents with legs, wings or fiery breath, these depictions hadn’t really coalesced and were much rarer than the dragon being a massive serpent with dangerous poison, like Fáfnir.
I’m not sure of the exact timeline but there seems to be a pattern where the oldest dragons are sea serpents then in Europe lindworm style terrestrial giant venomous snakes, often hoarding treasure in caves, became the most popular type of dragon then these were replaced by the more modern Beowulf style fire breathing winged lizards. In China the original sea serpent style dragon is still the main dragon with the loongs (traditional Chinese dragons) being described as serpentine and related to water, they often control water or are rulers of different seas. Related to this is the Chinese mythological creature the Shen which is as Wikipedia says “a shapeshifting dragon or shellfish-type sea monster believed to create mirages.” the Nightmares in this episode of dungeon meshi Laios says are also called Shen and are the story’s interpretation of Shen.
I think Dungeon Meshi is more concerned with the ecology of monsters than the phylogeny, I also think our understandings of genealogy and phylogeny don’t apply very well to the setting’s monsters due to details revealed much later in the story. Though I’m not sure that I’ve satisfactorily answered how Wurms, Shen and Dragons are all related I’ve hopefully made some sense of why they’re related.
Based answer