by M. H. Bartels
The great five-headed dragon is the first monster seen in the
series; she appears in the opening
credits.
Addressed by Venger in The Hall of Bones as Dragon Queen
during their aerial combat, Tiamat is
certainly the most impressive and intelligent of all the dragons
that is seen in the Realm.
Her name is, of course, directly taken from the ancient goddess
of Chaos and Salt Water, who was
defeated by one of her own progeny, Marduk. This Tiamat, however,
is quite different from the old
goddess that couldnīt handle her brats.
Just for starters, Tiamat isnīt a goddess. She is, quote
Sheila and Diana from The Last Illusion: 'A
giant dragon with wings. Five heads, and sheīs as big
as a barn.' And she is completely in control of
her affairs; not even Venger, the most powerful wizard in all
the Realm, can hold a candle to the
brutal might that is Tiamat. Every one of her five heads boasts
an impressive breath-weapon.
The central red one, which does most of the talking (although
her voice sounds like itīs made up out
of multiple voices) spits fire. The blue one to the immediate
right blasts an opponent with lightning, the
ultimate right one, black, spits some sort of acidic tar. To
the immediate left, the green head breathes
out some sort of toxic gas, while the ultimate left one, white,
curdles the blood with a breath of snow
and ice.
This is, however, not all. Tiamat is able to form dimensional
portals under her own power, enabling
her to travel between the Realm and her home, The Dragonīs
Graveyard, as well as another
dimension that can be reached through Zandoraīs Box. Conceivably,
there are a plethora of other
realms that she can swoop into and terrorise.
Strangely enough, she does quite little of that - as far as I
know. The first episode appearance that
Tiamat makes, Night of no Tomorrow, she is just angry
at the kids waking her up from her
beauty-sleep (Boy, does she need one!), and proceeds with an
attempt to pound them into the
ground.
Her vindictive streak then motivates her to pursue the kids to
Merlinīs castle, where she is trapped in
the old castle dungeons. Upon release, she immediately rips
the castle apart, possibly in pursuit of
Venger. Apparently she wasnīt very amused by her brief
sojourn in the dungeons, nor by Vengerīs
remark while disguised as Merlin that theyīd find a way
to deal with her later.
Deals are, strangely enough, an option with Tiamat. In The
Dragonīs Graveyard, she is once again
roused from her sleep (inside a giant dragon skull) by those
noisy little kids. As in the first episode,
she proceeds to attack and destroy.
Her powers are immense; not even the enhanced Weapons of Power
are able to stop her, until she
overhears the kids sniping about in being a dumb idea to enlist
her against Venger.
I thought her question: 'What do you know of Venger?' was a bit
strange. Certainly it seems to
indicate an enmity that has existed for a very long time, and
has spawned a fine crop of hatred on
both sides.
Tiamat immediately grasps the concept of assisting the children,
pulling a Dungeon Master-like move
on them by revealing that, while inside the Dragonīs Graveyard,
they could defeat Venger themselves.
The only thing that she needs to help with, is the bringing
of said horn-head, which she promptly does,
ignoring his attack and sending him through one of her portals
with a single buffet from her wings.
Strangely enough, she reacts to Venger's words, spoken just before
in private, as if she could hear
him through the walls she busted down to get to him. Venger
said: "I must have those Weapons. They
are all that stands between me, and total conquest of the Realm."
Tiamat: "You shall have your chance
to claim the weapons, in the Dragonīs Graveyard."
Exceptional hearing, or more dragon magic? Both are possible.
It did show a certain amount of trust
in the childrenīs abilities, considering the fact that
Venger had her pinned for a moment in The Hall of
Bones, using the last energy in the Weapons.
If Venger had won, he could have taken care of her once and for
all. Personally, I think that Venger
would be just as happy enslaving Tiamat as mastering her. In
The Hall of Bones, he tries to impose
his will on her: 'Tiamat, you have met your master.'
As always, Venger tries to impose his very own brand of order
on that which he sees, to crush all
resistance against his reign. Dark, evil and oppressive, but
order still. Tiamat however, true to the
being she was named for, the embodiment of chaos, replies: 'I
have no master.'
Chaos is very much at the core of Tiamatīs character, I
think. The only reason that she appears is to
fight Venger, to oppose the order sweeping across the realm.
Unfortunately her nature is not a benign
one. If the opening credits can be viewed as part of the story,
it may have been Tiamat who killed
Uniīs family group, and was chasing her down as a dessert.
A dragon has to eat, hasnīt she? But the sounds Uni makes
do irritate her; in her first appearance, she
seemed to ingore the yelling of the kids outside her cave to
produce an echo. It wasnīt until Uni tried,
that she came out roaring: 'Who dares awaken me?' This may be
a coincidence, but the credits did
show her chasing down Uni...
Tiamat also works against the natural order of her own race.
The Dragonīs Graveyard, according to
Dungeon Master, is where the dragons go to die. But to Tiamat,
itīs the place where she hangs her
five hats. She sleeps inside of the skeletons of dragons of
yore, dragons that dwarfed her by a factor
of one thousand or probably more.
Maybe thatīs just her way of pointing out to everyone that
sheīs top dragon around this universe...
Apart from that and her nearly unstoppable force, she doesnīt
do anything else to show off. Thereīs
no treasure that we know off, no army of smaller, subservient
dragons toadying up to her, sheīs just
who she is.