Glaurung : Glaurung was the first of the Dragons and one of the greatest.He first issued from Angband in 265 (First Age) but not being fully grown at that time,the Noldor under Fingon were able to drive him back.In the Dagor Bragollach and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad,Glaurung was in the vanguard of Morgoth's forces and having grown to his full power,he wreaked great destruction on those battlefields.In the Nirnaeth,he was driven back to Angband by the heavily armoured Dwarves,though their lord Azagh�l was slain in that battle.Glaurung led the assault by Morgoth on Nargothrond and there came across T�rin for the first time.He dwelt in the ruined halls of Finrod Felagund for a while but came forth at last to seek T�rin.He was slain by T�rin's black sword Gurthang in the Forest of Brethil.
Scatha : One of the greatest of the dragons to infest the Grey Mountains of the north.Of his life little is known, except that he was slain by Fram son of Frumgar(an ancestor of Eorl the Young)in the early days of the �oth�od. His recovered hoard was the subject of great dispute between the Men of the �oth�od and the Dwarves of that region,who claimed the hoard as their own.Fram rebuked their claim and sent them the teeth of the dragon, with the words, "Jewels such as these you will not match in your treasuries,for they are hard to come by".Thereafter there was war between the �oth�od and the Dwarves,a war in which Fram met his end.However this dispute was resolved(we are not told),it seems that Fram's people retained at least some of the hoard and brought it south with them when they settled in Rohan.The horn that �owyn gave to Merry Brandybuck after the War of the Ring (many hundred years later) was said to have come from it.
Smaug : Smaug was the last of the great fire-drakes and said to be the greatest dragon of his time.At some time during the twenty-eighth century of the Third Age,he came to hear of the immense wealth held by the Dwarves of Erebor.Where he came from we do not know for certain but in the year III 2770 he descended in fire on the Lonely Mountain,destroying the Dwarf-kingdom and the nearby township of Dale.Gathering together the treasures of the Dwarves,he formed himself an immense bed of gold and jewels and settled within the ruined halls of Erebor.Slowly the years and decades passed,until the people of the Long Lake to the south had almost forgotten the Dragon of Erebor and Smaug imagined himself unassailable.Then,one day in the October of III 2941,one hundred and seventy-one years after his arrival in Erebor,Smaug awoke to find his treasure disturbed.Of all that mountain of wealth,he noticed with rage that a single two-handled cup had been taken.He could not have imagined that the loss of that cup signalled his own imminent downfall;Thorin,the heir of the King under the Mountain that Smaug had driven from his halls those many years before,had returned to reclaim his kingdom.With him came Bilbo Baggins,a hobbit with a magical Ring with which he had invisibly removed that single cup from Smaug's treasure.In his anger,the dragon flew from his halls,scorching and breaking the mountainside.Thorin, Bilbo and their companions were sealed in a hidden tunnel and at last the frustrated Smaug gave up his attack on the mountain.Realizing that they must have had help from Lake-town to the south,he set out to punish the Men of the Lake instead.That was to be Smaug's last flight.Bilbo had managed to discover an open patch in the dragon's armour and word of this had been carried to Lake-town.In particular,it reached the heir of another of Smaug's victims,Bard,the descendant of Girion of Dale.Bard shot Smaug with an arrow and though Lake-town was devastated in his attack and fall,the dragon was defeated.In years to come,beneath the waters of the lake his mighty bones could be seen and the jewels that had lined his hide:the last remains of the greatest dragon of his age.
