Fafnir and Dragon Disease
by Fuensanta Arismendi
“Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy…thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”
—C. S. Lewis, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”
In his book The Pathwalker’s Guide to the Nine Worlds
(p. 407), Raven Kaldera mentions how the Duergar sometimes temporarily hide
their hoard and themselves “in a paranoid fear of being robbed” and adds that
they call this the “dragon-disease” in memory of the half-Duergr Fafnir who
turned himself into a dragon in order to better guard his hoard. “Generally, it
is considered a kind of temporary insanity that one outgrows…” Some, like the
unfortunate Fafnir, however, do not outgrow it. Amongst humans, dragon-disease
is a very real threat. It lies dormant within many of us, and flares up at
unexpected times. Those humans who gain control over it do so by learning to
manage it, very rarely by outgrowing it; we learn to ride out the bouts, with
the Gods’ help.
Fafnir’s tragedy is not that He guards His hoard; we should guard what is rightfully ours. It lies in the manner of His guarding. The treasure is all He cares about, oddly enough at the expense of the hoard itself. Fafnir will not allow it to grow, dwindle, flow, transform, and thus condemns it and Himself to terminal stagnation, not unlike those misers who will hide their money in their home and prevent it from earning interest, or giving joy to others. Guarding His hoard gradually becomes more important for Fafnir than the hoard itself, and so He loses sight of what He once loved and eventually even of His own identity.
We turn our backs on Fafnir as on the Pacific Ocean: at our own grave peril. What we refuse to face will conquer us, and His is a very easy path to fall into, usually with the best of intentions—at least initially. “I have to save money for my old age,”—a very reasonable attitude—becomes: “I’ll live very frugally,”—still a reasonable attitude. “Therefore, I’ll never eat out again.” This in turn becomes “I know my daughter really wants this doll for her birthday, but it’ll cost $24. Let me see, $24 invested at 8% over 30 years, with accrued interest could give me…” and we sit on the hoard and guard it, no longer in joy but in fear.
Fafnir’s fate has befallen many of us—Love gone wrong; Love turned sour; Love turned to fear and from fear to rage—Fafnir is present in all of that. The person that kills his/her lover rather than let the beloved free: Fafnir. The person that ruins a child’s life by pushing it into that career the parent wanted and did not have: Fafnir. The multimillionaire mother who gives her son a set of secondhand wine glasses, one of them cracked, on his fortieth birthday: Fafnir. (Oh, and by the way, I know that lady and her son well—I am related to them by blood.)
Perhaps Fafnir found it impossible to recover from dragon-disease because He was only half-Duergr. That should be no comfort to us. It means we risk even greater danger than He.
Hail Fafnir, in Your chosen cloak of hard scales, in Your chosen fate of immobility. Hail to You who weigh heavily upon that which You guard. May we find the path that unfolds between Your way and that of profligacy. May we walk it with Andvari’s help, without swerving too much in either direction. May we never forget that there, but for the grace of the Gods go we.
Hail Fafnir. May You find Your rightful measure of peace in death, and may nothing take it away from You.