#coameh

[draconesmundi]

Dragons in South America and Mesoamerica

My creative project Dracones Mundi is a field guide to dragons of the world - I need to add more dragons to South America and Mesoamerica I think? This is a post to show what I have so far, in honour of Smaugust!

The first dragon I will discuss is the coatl. Coameh have two subspecies: the dry forest coatl and the rainforest coatl (excuse to base appearances closer to Aztec or Maya depictions of coameh, Maya = rainforest, Aztec = dryforest), depicted here is a dry forest coatl; the rainforest one is larger with a smaller frill. These are found in Mexico.

Closely related to the coatl is the flaming serpent, with several more subspecies (tlilcoatl, cherruve, tsamtás, mboitatá, plus a few others I will describe when I do North American dragon post) - it is an iridescent dragon, sometimes black with gold shining iridescence, but usually flame-coloured. When swimming through the air, catching sunlight, it looks like a living fire. These are found throughout Mexico and South America (and, as I mentioned, some in North America too!)

Then we have a dragon from Patagonia, the nguruvilu or fox serpent (I may make longer and add the distinctive tail with a claw on the end of it, this was a rushed doodle just getting the gist of half-fox-half-serpent while still fitting with the Dracones Mundi crocodile-dragon vibe) (the fox colours are based on the grey fox found in South America)

And lastly we have a 100% made up based loosely on pop culture 'fae dragon' or 'butterfly dragon', part of the winged serpent family in Dracones Mundi (dragons with 4 wings and very small arms and a distinctive tail fluke). As I had a group of 4-winged dragons, I thought a butterfly dragon might be fun! I'm plopping these into the Amazon rainforest.

Also, cockatrices have a worldwide distribution so they are found in Mesoamerica and South America too!

[draconesmundi]

In one post you have named two dragons "dryforest coatl" and "rainforest coatl", what was the lore and distinction behind those two, and do you still have them(maybe as subspecies?)

They are subspecies! Rainforest coatl is larger with a shorter ‘wattle mane’, and has a more pronounced nose bulb and lips compared to the dryforest coatl. The rainforest coatl is based on Maya depictions of coameh while the dryforest one is based on Aztec depictions.

Lorewise there isn't a huge difference in their behaviour or anything, so they share one chapter for feathered coameh, but having two distinct subspecies means I can talk about different feathered serpent folklore without lumping everyone's stories and legends in one melting pot.