Dungeons and Dragons Lore: Linnorm Dragons
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ต.ค. 2024
- Known as the Nordic dragons due to their origin in the folklore of the vikings, Linnorms are some of the most powerful, ancient, enormous and evil of all dragon kind. Many are descended from legendary serpents such as Jörmungandr and at least one of them can go toe to toe with Tiamat or Bahamut in the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game.
Linnorms. feels like home. Also nice that you use art from the Swedish tabletop. Dragons and Demons (DoD) and most specificly from the Trudvang setting. Nidvallir was never a realm in norse myth though. it was a mountain range. the nine realms are Asaheim (asgard) Vanaheim, Elfheim,Manaheim(midgard) Svartalfheim(realm of the dwarfs) Jotunnheim, Muspelheim,Nifelheim and Helheim
It’s debatable, for one Helheim is in Niflheim so that is a bit redundant too.
even so. helheim is a realm accounted for amongst the nine
Eldagusto The Norse didn't really have a specific map imagined for their Celestial realms. So certain places are said to be in multiple places at once if you take all the lore in at once.
Wasn't jotenheim the relm of the Giants?
And I think nefilheim was the relm of darkelvs
"Oh, Linnorm dragon, what's that?" Clicks video.
"...Ooooh, lindwyrms!!!! Nope, nein, нет! I know what THOSE are!" Pulls out notebook to plan the PCs ultimate nightmare from this video
My party was in the under dark, taking this massive dwarven mining lift down some extensive cavern hundreds and hundreds of feet down. Half way down they met a Dread linnorm, 2 of the 5 players survived. The dread linnorm did as well. xD
Yikes! That would be a pretty intense fight.
Wait. Wait. Did you just say an Ancient Sea Linnorm can have a Kraken as a pet????? Ow My Goodness.
If you go by some myths they're siblings.
Oof I know he thinking what I’m thinking XD
They all have a kraken....a Crack in their butt lol
While not strictly D&D anymore, Pathfinder gave some much-needed love to linnorms. They are described as primevial dragons that hail from the First World, Pathfinder's name for Plane of Faerie. While not all that smart, they are mighty, have always active true seeing and free movement, and many of them possess powerful and unusual breath weapons. However, the signature ability of Pathfinder linnorms is Death Curse, affecting the slayer in horrible ways until dispelled by powerful magic, ways that vary depending on the linnorm, like ice linnorms' Curse of Frost, which makes you vulnerable to cold damage, fjord linnorm's Curse of Drowning, which impedes your ability to hold breath and makes you immune to water breathing spells, or cairn linnorm's Curse of Decay, which makes you age as if a year passed with each day. Most powerful linnorm's curse, of one named Fafnheir, of course, makes you transform into Fafnheir yourself. Also, one of the Eldest, the most powerful archfey in Pathfinder's setting, is Ragadahn the Water Lord, who holds himself as the ancestor of all linnorms and dragons as whole, a claim which true dragons despise. While Chaotic Evil, he is not as stupid as his supposed decendants, controls a city of underwater fey in the Plane of Faerie, and expresses interest in arcane knowledge.
Tenosit Sergeich well, it's a good thing lindworms aren't true dragons, nor do they have the intelligence of one.
Corpse Tearer: *"Oh boy here I go killing again!"*
These could have been in Fizban's. Let that sink in for a moment.
Ahhh, another Dungeons & Dragons lore video. Time to take off my pants, pour a Jameson, and kick back as AJ's sensual voice educates me on big scaly beasts.
Pants on Dan, this is a family show.
Midgard is also the name of the D&D world set made by Kobold press. It is said that the world is held together what the book calls the world serpent. You should check that out.
I swear every time I finish a game and see your latest uploaded video the next day, I wish I could’ve added that thing in.
It’s interesting to see how a single plane of existence can have such a huge amount of lore and creatures. I can imagine a world infested by Linnorms to be one where humans are severely endangered. I wonder if Linnorms would simply go inside if all humanoid creatures were wiped out. But for some reason I have the feeling they’d find a different species to obsess and hate over.
sanddry yes, the fight each other and have no "species loyalty".
My favorite Linnorm not from Norse myth would be Glaurung from Tolkien's Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Stories, the father of dragons, the first dragon made by Morgoth, and so, so, so evil. The whole story surrounding him is so tragic for the hero, even though he manages to slay the dragon, Glaurung still gets the last laugh.
"welcome players I'm your new DM, Lets start a new adventure called Linnorm hunt, You all start with Level 1 characters but I don't forse that to be a problem"..
Anacronian sounds like a recipe for tpk
Anacronian said linnoworm
Anacronian they can win if it laughs itself to death.
Sooo the PCs are the bait and their questgiver is quite confident it will work out as planned...and if everything goes south remember: just keep the lizard occupied (until I got away unidentified & untraceable), the rest is optional.
Theses things should have been in fizban's treasury of dragon
Wow gonna need Thor for this one. Not the comic book version, he'd get his ass kicked. The genuine God of thunder is required. Forget the terrasque, jormmungander is the real terror here.
The Midgard uses the Tarrasque as a back scratcher.
Rune king thor in the comics can fight multiple universe destroying enemies at once though. He can also pick up the world serpent in his base form.
@@williethenerfherder2193 Comic book thor is a travesty. North myth makes it perfectly clear that Thor cannor lift the world serpent, he tries to do it twice in the myths prior to Ragnarök, once when he goes fishing and once at the court of Loki of Utgard. Of course he does eventually slay the wyrm in Ragnarök but not before getting enough f it's poison to kill him.
One way I could think of fighting these horrors is finding one of the Metallic (hell maybe even Chromatic) dragons and finding a way to convince them to fight it. Maybe even a couple dragons cause these Linnorms sound freakishly powerful. I could see Steel Dragons who like to live among humans being especially keen on fighting these things. Also Golds for their crusade against evil.
Our group started playing 3.5e after feeling we've mastered 5th. I was immediately captured by the strange and cruel linnorms. I was upset how little has been written about them but here you have a 30 minute video on the subject. Thank you very much
3:5e is one hell of a edition.
That was some seriously sweet lore! I have a campaign where an obsessive art collector has decided to move his treasures by ship, and (of course) the main ship sank... I hadn't decided what sank the ship. Until today! (Cue ominous music) The characters are too low-level to survive an encounter with a sea linnorm, but I'll let you know if anything interesting happens! I love linnorms, and enjoy your videos, so thank you twice for your hard work and thoroughness! Looking forward to more!
Tossing out a suggestion here, could you cover Colossi, Gargantua's and Titans?
My pun addicted brain also came up with the idea of a combination of a "Walking Worm" & a "Linnorm," picture a nightmarish Linnorm made of worms crawling over everything & devouring anything they come across, leaving a barren lifeless train in their wake where nothing will grow for a generation.
Actually the Star spawn do that but they’re from the far realm
Bahahaha your description of the funnel webbed me laughing so hard that my girl thought I was choking because I was just shaking without any noise coming from me
Those words are heart felt, I will never forget my gut reaction to seeing that cursed thing for the first time. The Horror...
The lindwyrm is one of my favorite dragon kin, along with the Glüschwandz
We need a pact of the Dragon warlock 🧙🏻♂️ these would make perfect Parton!
agreed
I'm a fan of all mythologies and I put multiple cultures and pantheons all over the fantasy worlds I create. In the last campaign I ran, I had an event called "The Great Dragon War". For some reason, all of the dragons all over the world converged on the Northmen territories. Most people saw it as a war the dragons had, collecting on my version of Northern Europe, in which humans were often food for the evil dragons participating. That area spawned the Dragon Slayer kit. No one really knew what caused them to collect there, cooperate in apparent diplomacy, then turn to a Dragon vs. Dragon war. The Dragons saw the growing evil of the Northern Wyrms (Norse mythology dragons). They hunted them to extinction save for the giant orbital dragon and, with the common blight enemy dead, they went back to their natural enemy statuses before they returned to their home territories. I integrated multiple mythologies and did a lot of work to explain why many of their mythical monsters outside of my sources did not exist in my campaign worlds. I did not have these dragons in my sources, so I had to explain why they were replaced by more classical northern dragons and why Frost Giants returned to power, much to the dismay of their version of Thor and Tyr worshippers. Since I made that land a Dragon Battleground, I made their populous typically extremely hardy and hybrid rogue dragons existed there. Discovering the Northmen unlocked future character creation of Half-Dragon, Man-Dragon, and the kits of Dragon Slayer and Giant Hunter. Creating a typical Northmen character did not give a boost to character creation, it was just creating an average or below average Northman on average.
I was not blessed with having Linnorm Dragons as source material, it would have made that campaign a lot more interesting and closer to Norse mythology and culture, which I styled my Northmen off of.
Fafnir.
...
Wait, the weird gamer guy that lives with that office nerd?
2:00 "Are you always this articulate?"
*hangs head in shame*
@@AJPickett Lol, your good. happens to the best of us.
🐉 Cooool monster 🐉
I think a 20 foot wide exhale is silly small for such an enormous creature though id ramp it to 60 at least
Incredible breakdown of the Linnorm. I plan on making a spelljack/Midgard campaign very soon. I plan on making these beasties the focal point of the campaign.
I have an idea of a FORCE Linnorm that makes it body out of the surrounding environment itself or objects it takes along with them. Picture a giant two limbed serpent made of a sea of broken glass or river stones. Their breath weapon would be simply a blast of pure kinetic force in a cone that would deafen any nearby without protection.
That is a great concept!
Poltergeist
@@AJPickettwhich type of Linnorm is that at 15 :09.
Tell us how you really feel about spiders. Lol
But really, I love these boys. So evil!
As a Dane and Norwegian, I have been looking forward to seeing this video.
Among the monstrous creatures and dragons in Norse mythology, Níðhöggr stands apart from all others, save for maybe Surtr. As, according to the Norse myths of creation, these two beings simply have no origin. They predate Ymir, from whose corpse all other life sprang. Surtr is often associated with Wrath while Níðhöggr is often associated with Hatred. Níðhöggr gnaws upon the roots of the world-tree, Yggdrasil, in the hopes of unmaking all that spawned from Ymir, whom Níðhöggr would have seen as being an unwelcome intruder on reality itself. All the other monstrous creatures and dragons have some sort of origin myth of their own, but not Níðhöggr and Surtr. Perhaps Níðhöggr _ate_ its origins...
In religions this often means the being was worshipped by a more ancient people who were conquered
see, this is why, when fans of Star Wars or Star Trek say "man don't you wish you could live in..." I always say FUCK NO. D&D and Warhammer 40K would be horrifying to live in.
I know right?
Both are places that death finds you so easily, then you end up in a kind of endless hell realm. Not fun at all. Yet at least in d&d realm you might be able to crawl your way up from a larvae to a powerful demon, or devil. Yet is that even any good?? No sir.
You know a monster's god level powerful when it was abandoned in 4th edition
For monsters this big, I feel like damage thresholds, like we see on some objects like ships, are necessary to portray they're massive size accurately
Ok this was fairly scary. Something that even Tiamat and Bahamut don't want to f with. Maybe you could bribe Hel into leaving it dead. I mean she's short of a reasonable goddess. A mad amount of bribery could work.
Funnel Webs are cool, huh? As a kid i'd "play" with them when we went camping at my Uncle's land near Port Macquarie. Gotta love Australia.
Linnorms are actually my favorite type of dragon alongside the Longs for their serpentine appearance. I only wish they kept him as relevant as they where advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition, especially given the fact not too long ago actually managed to scare up the monsters compendium they appeared in along with the Viking sourcebook to be able to use the rune magic some of them have ( the Frost and Land Linnorms as I recall). Oh well, at least Pathfinder managed to pick up the slack for use with the more contemporary 3.5 rules.
This feels like one of your best, bravo! It adds a lot to the setting.
The dragon came raging,
Wild-mooded stranger, when these words had been uttered,
seeking enemies,
Men that were hated, with hot-gleaming fire-waves;
With blaze-billows burned the board to its edges:
The fight-armour failed then to furnish assistance.
Favorite dragon sub-species
Linnorm Bodak. 'Nuff said.
Vultiidsah The Memelord
**Eldritch Screaming Intensifies**
Corpse Tearer? Sounds like the name of a drummer in a Norwegian Black Metal band!
Turns out black metal bands are just named after streets in Norway.
Had linnorms attack the players while on an adventure in Ysgard. They were tracking down Loki, who stole a maguffin and he led them to Yggdrasil, where a horde of linnorms would spring from the ground. The players however utilized an army of Ysgardian dwarves, Svartelheim drow, high elves, avariel, and einherjar. One of the players ended up very dead but would be resurrected lol
Always a grand pleasure listening to high loremaster gluesticks videos
24:23 you got like... a thing for these flame linnorm creatures? how chaotic evil...
These videos are the best on the net of their kind! Most extensive information given on each type of creature. I L o v e these videos!
I've never heard of these before. It's like the perfect mix of Asian and Western dragons. Really cool:D
Eh, I would say the worst mix of the Asian lung and Europe dragon, and more like a snake with two legs and magic.
Scandinavian dragons
My first experience with Linnorms was the Corpse Tearer in the Year of The Rogue Dragons series. Never heard of them outside of Norse mythology before.
Super glad they're a part of D&D, but I can't say I'm particularly excited to encounter one in a campaign.
I prefer my linnorms to stay in the novels where I dont have to try to survive them. Killing one is pretty much out of the question.
Dragon bane weapons, and targeting their weakest saving throw is the best option. They all probably have 21 to 22 ac.
Best video of it's kind muffled sound and all
These guys are so cool! And they tie with Red Dragons, Blie Dragons, and Deep Dragons, to be my favorite! I couldn't truly choose if I wanted to! I'm writing detailed back stories for various big bads and NPCs for a few of my local acquaintances to use in their campaigns, with some of my free time this Winter. I don't think that I want to play again, as WoW will take up my gaming time. But I love learning the Lore of D&D! And I love to write, and create characters! One of my original ideas is either a Red Dragon, or a Blue Dragon that has strong armed some Dwarves in to creating a massive Ring of Polymorph! So that he can easily infiltrate humanoid society, to cause more trouble. I might make him a Green Dragon though, as they seem as if they'd be in to that sort of shenanigan.
This is my favorite of your videos along with angels and the abyssal dragons.
haha, While you were talking about the Forest Linnorm I thought about how a party member could be zoning out looking at a small group of deer in the forest. The rest of the party all talking about where to go next/whether or not they should camp here and get an early start. All of the sudden half of one of the deer disappears and the back half falls to the ground dead
Thanks for the Vid A.J. watching it now!
The dread lindwyrm is my favorite with all the power it can unleash on players.
Hmmm... I guess if I was to place a Frost Linnorm, maybe place it in a location of Endless Ice sea, Sea of Moving Ice or High Ice
Frost linnorm is pretty dope definitely
Nidavellir, huh? It doesnt happen to have a dying star forge run by a giant dwarf, does it?
I mean... it could.
One of my games had the players meet a land wyrm and they named him bob because they couldn't pronounce his name.
Bit of a shame they're all evil in D&D because they're not all evil in norse myth. There are many stories of cursed Lindorms who reward those who break their curse with great treasure in norse myth.
There is also some Very cursed treasure :D
Maybe they have a sense of honor.
I've met creeps who "always follow the rules".
are there?
I missed this video so much! A week ago I was talking to a friend about this creatures but sadly I couldn't find the video on the spot.
The Corpse Terror Lennor makes me think of Vaal Hazaak from monster hunter world
You can set "fafnir" the dwarf turned dragon from norse mythology free from his chains in god of war (PS4) ;) Which is a great game btw if you're into norse mythology ;)
Love your vids AJ. I'm still catching up on some of the older content from last yr. But can you do a video or a mini series on the Dead 3- Bane,Bhaal and myrkul.
Hmmm, I'll add them to the list.
Thanks AJ - i am sick tonight and this vid has gone someways as to make me feel a bit better --
Linnorm ?
Asmodeus natural form yet 10's of thousand kilometers long.
I never knew about these dragons.. Thanks, great video!
And so it was proclaimed by Tiamat and Bahamut That since these creatures fouled and loathsome as they are Would not learn their place they are to be slain any sacrificed in their name and also sacrifice is the horde of this beast show there by gain the strength of whatever it was that they killed
Good luck. Lol
Played properly by the DM, in other words making full use of their abilities, nature and lore, most chromatic and metalic dragons would be very hard pressed to actually challenge linnorms.
@@NyarlathotepCrawlingChaos They both have innate spellcasting. They would probably rip apart continents with their bouts if they were both ancient.
I'm curious how much control they have on colour of their scales. For example could they reproduce an image they've seen?
Man I sure hope so, that would be cool
just had scene play in my head, "no young one, was not I. This is how your father died" *replays fight scene*
Coooool question.......
I'm curious why Tiamat would not team up with the Midgard linnorm seeing as they both seem to be of similar evil nature and would probably have similar want to get rid of Bahamut or just anything else. Could be a creative team up for a campaign setting big bad.
Similar does not equate to besties. :)
Quite right. And most "evil" characters do tend to have very large superiority complexes over everyone, that might also make it difficult, and the thing that many evil hierarchies seem to be in constant strife with those lower trying to take over the ones above them.
Still think it might be an interesting temporary partnership as a major plot line. Possibly a long game backstab of sorts even at some point because of the differences.
You mean the "rule of two" right?
But probably would be more on that line from that side of the alignment side, where those who are good do not expect others who are good to stab them in the back (unless you want to get into the "good" who go to war with others for their own gain), with the "evil" alignment side you almost always know that the ones below you and cooperating are only doing so with the intent to further their own power and probably take you out when it becomes easy enough for them and beneficial. Just like with the "rule of two", though they accept it as a good thing there.
Its called the "rule of two" because there is 1 sith lord and 1 apprentice, though they always know their apprentice is looking for their own apprentice and the moment they will be able to kill off their own master. That rule came about in the Darth Bane series where he didn't like the sith having more of a cooperating society developed (oddly was working decently for them), so he separated and started the rule of two when he thought that the rest of the sith were almost fully wiped out.
They are highly aggressive sociopaths.
If I was a mean dm I would have my players encounter a forest linnorm and have the forest linnorm just look at them and kind of shutter then mutter my god that rough to look at lol
Sounds like a lung dragon or eastern dragon in shape
I'm glad you covered the Linnorms, especially in such detail. This are one of my favorite monsters in the game and mythology. For me, I am tired of dragons, and the Linnorms fill that niche wonderfully...or horrifically if you prefer.
great vid as always AJ now i personally prefer the pathfinder lore version of the linnorms but this was nice nonetheless
Jorgmengond is actually in the forgotten realms? I know the astral plane can get you to Yggrisil but have they come in contact? That's be nuts
Theoretically. The massive serpent that Forgotten Realms has to worry about is Dendar the Night Serpent, slumbering away under the Volcanoes of Chult.
Are you trying to say Jörmungandr?
Linnorm aren't a match for anything birthed in "God's killing fields" i,e, Australia.
@@AJPickett what're you on about, we still have Shai hulud down 'ere.
Is there any more lore on these guys? And where can I get it? Any suggestions are much appreciated!
Hello Aj, is it possible for an Aasimir to have a devil as a “angelic” guide? Like since Asmodeus and Zariel are Fallen Angels could they be the angelic guide to said Aasimir? Of course they are Lawful Evil but I was wondering this for a few days since I’m reading Mordenkainen’s tome of foes
Anything is possible in your own D&D games.
Warwick: The Uncaged Wrath of Zaun, I already thought of making the character fallen Aasimir, thank you for the thought though, i was just wondering if it would be possible to have devil/demon lords as the overseer of an Aasimir and make sense in a more by the rules standpoint rather than homebrew.
Can you do videos on the elemental planes pretty please?
Hey AJ, would it be possible for you to use both the Imperial and the Metric system for us europeans? Its especially confusing now since Linnorms has no feet... Awesome video as always though, never even heard of these slithering snake scholars
I once heard the imperial measurement system described as having been invented by "a drunk mathematician rolling dice". I can deal with it because I've lived in the U.S. my entire life, but I'll admit that metric makes much more sense.
The majority of my audience is American. I am a New Zealander, but, when playing D&D I use feet & miles & pounds, always have. Doesn't bother me one iota.
+AJ Pickett I understand if you don't think you need to expand your audience. Speaking as someone who don't even play DnD but love the universe, your videos are the one with the most information. But since I don't play it I'm not familiar if it uses the Imperial system or not.
I have heard AJ mix in the metric measurements in vids before. So, he's not entirely trying to exclude you folks;)
@@Dude_1864 Yeah certainly not, god forbid anyone wiggle their thumb or click a new tab and just convert it themselves on the device they are watching the video on.
Would love to see what a campaign setting would be like if pc's got in the middle of a struggle between Midgard and Dendar.
That fight would reshape a continent.
Does anybody else see how closely this resembles a skull crawler?
The Skull crawlers resemble the Linnorms.
:)
Nicely done. I enjoyed the vid.
Having PTSD flashbacks of fighting one of these bastards on Core in Kingmaker...
Did not know Sweden had serpent like dragons.
Is that the reason why many English chronicles show great English figures killing serpent like dragons?
John Isaac Felipe no, also, lindworms in Swedish folklore are not dragons, nor are they smart as dragons, and strong as dragons, but alot of English men did come from Sweden, Norway, and prehistoric Germany, which all have lindworms, thus where lindworm slaying came from.
John Isaac Felipe nah, it's a religious thing
Linnorms are also known as Lindwurms.
it's kinda funny to see all the different things the captions are guessing you're saying. 20 minutes in and I don't think it guessed the same thing twice any time you've linnorms
honest to God I would rather fight tarrasques then midgard
Somewhere in the Host tower of the Arcane is a red alarm bell and a hotline sending stone which will get two words to Elminster immediately, those words are "It's awake"
I second that motion!
Isn't it hypocritical to hate humanoids but love art? Like who the fuck is going to make your coins and art if all the people are dead?
Young dragons
They must be communist. ie: hate corporations, love all the stuff they produce. ;)
The next civilization to crawl out of the dirt will do.
The shocking story of true dragons evolution is they evolved from linnorm and wyvern hybrids.
Are they the same as Lindwyrms? They featured one of those in Hilda
means the same thing I think.
Yes, though the D&D creature has been D&Dified, Lindwyrms in norse myth are far from all evil. In fact catching a lindwyrm was considered good luck.
Hey man, can you do a video on "Hurl Through Hell?" can't find any videos on it!
Conveniently enough, that's a good way to kill one of these.
Could we.... maybe..... get a stat sheet?
maybe
AJ! Your reaction to the Funnel Web Spider sounds about the same as the one that I had when I saw a huge spider, either a Wolf Spider, or a Hobo Spider, run out from behind a small stack of stones that we had next to our front door, our only door actually, to grab some poor insect that landed on its web. Sadly, I was on the phone with my grandmother, and it was enough to cause me to drop an F-bomb, very loudly, for the first time in my life, in front of her. I apologized profusely, despite being in my twenties! But I explained that had she seen the monster run out of it's dark lair as I had, she'd have likely had the same reaction! It freaked me out more to realize that we had walked by it, within 2 feet, dozens of time, without knowing! Later that evening, I poured a 3 gallon pot of boiling water in to those rocks! It either left, or died! Hopefully the latter! I usually dont kill spiders outside of our house. Ive even been known to toss crickets on to their webs. But that one had to go!
How would you put amphiphtere, kirin and ouroboro in draconic race. What set i put in a Hydra wyvern or hydra Dragon hybrid as encounter
I am a noob, only really know d and d from playing baldurs gate 1 and 2 plus reading drizz books, recently started playing the pathfinder games and noticed they have a version of linnorms but no mention of them in 5E. Was wondering if they were retconned out lore wise?
They aren't retconned. There just hasn't been any official publication on them. They are very much still like the d&d multiverse.
You mentioned some kinds of Linnorm caring for their children, and yet they are evil... Any info on how they care for their young? Are they good to them? Or harsh and tyranical?
Most linnorms don't survive past hatchling age, and the older Linnorms get, the more paranoid and insane they become, so, either they get murdered by their siblings, or abused and possibly murdered by their parent... either way, only the most vicious and self serving survive.
Linnorm. I should have known
great video AJ
Good one AJ!