Wyrm

**Wyrms** are a kind of snake-like fae beast.

## Physical Description

Some wyrms have 'jewel-like eyes', which helps differentiate them from snakes.

## Characteristics (culture, habits)

A group of carnivorous wyrms used to reside in what is now called Trowna. Thousands of years before the story present, 'the trows tamed the standing stones and coaxed a new family to their sea, and . . . the standing stones rewarded them by crushing their enemies to death.' This involved chasing out the wyrms, which the trows sometimes memorialize in 'ceramics and the rugs and the wall hangings'.

It's possible that wyrms reside in the Bridge and/or in the underworlds, since Gwyn ap Nudd described the Bridge as 'a world of wyrms and gods of death and an underworld that he wasn’t comfortable within and wasn’t supposed to be, even if he was Unseelie.'

Small wyrms live in certain lakes in the fae realm. They dwell in underwater caves.

There are a group of 'giant wyrms with metal spikes attached to their heads for sweeping Unseelie out of the way' that the Seelie military used against the Unseelie Court during Albion's war with the Unseelie Court.

## Trivia

* Augus Each Uisge meets a spirit snake-wyrm while healing lakes of the Blight, who was protective of the wyrms that dwelt in their lake.
* In Gwyn's transformed Unseelie Court, there is a corridor decorated with 'Unseelie satyr, merfolk and wyrms'.

## Folklore/Mythology

'A sea serpent or sea dragon is a type of dragon sea monster described in various mythologies, most notably Mesopotamian (Tiamat), Hebrew (Leviathan), Greek (Cetus, Echidna, Hydra, Scylla), and Norse (Jörmungandr).

The *Drachenkampf* mytheme, the chief god in the role of the hero slaying a sea serpent, is widespread both in the ancient Near East and in Indo-European mythology, e.g. Lotan and Hadad, Leviathan and Yahweh, Tiamat and Marduk (see also Labbu, Bašmu, Mušḫuššu), Illuyanka and Tarhunt, Yammu and Baal in the Baal Cycle etc. . . . In the Aeneid, a pair of sea serpents killed Laocoön and his sons when Laocoön argued against bringing the Trojan Horse into Troy.

In antiquity . . . dragons were envisioned as huge serpentine monsters, which means that the image of a dragon with two or four legs and wings came much later during the Late Middle Ages. Stories depicting sea-dwelling serpents may include the Babylonian myths of Tiamat, the myths of the Hydra, Scylla, Cetus and Echidna in the Greek mythology, and even the Leviathan.

In Norse mythology, *Jörmungandr* (or *Midgarðsormr*) was a sea serpent so long that it encircled the entire world, Midgard. Some stories report of sailors mistaking its back for a chain of islands. Sea serpents also appear frequently in later Scandinavian folklore, particularly in that of Norway.'

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 26 June 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/9517437. Chapter 49: Battle.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 24 October 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/5561123. Chapter 15: Blight.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 3 - The Ice Plague.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 28 October 2021. https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/86595049. Chapter 18: The Silent Dances.
4. ↑ not\_poignant. “Game Theory.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 18 November 2013. https://archiveofourown.org/works/915296/chapters/2101316. Chapter 27: Compulsion.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 23 January 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/7005020. Chapter 27: Healing.
6. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 1 - The Forest of Fire.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 18 November 2017. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036105/chapters/29092809. Chapter 8: Hand of God.
7. ↑ "Sea serpent". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea\_serpent. Accessed 7 June 2021.