Sep 29, 2024
The Lair of the White Worm - art by Pamela Colman Smith (1911)
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The Lair of the White Worm - art by Pamela Colman Smith (1911)
The Lambton Worm by Johan Egerkrans
The Lair of the White Worm
1988
13 LAMBTOWN WORM
by Andréa Boloch
Do you have a fun fact in these trying times?
Tell me, friend, do you know the story of the Lambton Worm? If not, then Today You Learned about it.
[This story is in, like, ALL the dragon books.]
The story goes that some time in the ages of the Crusades, the town of Lambton was doing its usual Sunday business of going to Mass–except for the young heir to the Lambton Estate, John Lambton, who was going fishing instead. He got a few disapproving looks from people on the way to church, but he kept fishing because he was a rebel like that. He had trouble catching actual fish, but as Mass was wrapping up, he caught something!
A worm that looked like the Devil.
Okay, so ‘worm’ in those days can also mean a serpent, and Wikipedia describes it as something eel-like. Just… he picked up something on his fishing line that was limbless, not that big, but ugly as all getout. John Lambton was freaked out by this, and he chucked it in the local well. Deciding this was punishment for his non-churchgoing ways, Johnny grows up, trying to forget about the worm. When he grows a little older, he even takes the Cross and goes on Crusade as penance.
Except the worm survived. And it grew down in that well, poisoning the water with its venom or perhaps its general ugliness. The worm eventually grows large enough to slither out of the well and starts to eat things–small animals, mostly. Then it starts drinking cows’ milk (which is a bad thing to feed dragons if you don’t want them to grow bigger), and THEN it gets big enough to start eating cows and small children.
This, as you may realize, is A Problem.
The people of Lambton, and its lord, realize that they can placate the thing by offering it milk and cows, but it keeps growing bigger, and they try to get people to come kill it. And of course knights come along and try to kill this dragon worm thing. It doesn’t work, though. Maybe they hack off a piece, but it grows back, and the worm wraps itself around a man in armor and squeezes him to death.
Finally, John Lambton, heir to Lambton, comes back from Crusade. He realizes what’s going on, and knows that it’s a problem he started in the first place, so he has to fix it. Though he sees that no one’s had much luck in killing it. So he goes to a local wise woman, and she tells him that he can kill the Worm, but first he has to make a special suit of armor, one with spearheads fused all over it. Then, when he chops it to bits, he must dump the remains in the river. And THEN, after the deed is done, he must kill the first living thing he sees. Otherwise, the house of Lambton will be cursed for nine generations.
Well, Johnny Lamb commissions the suit of armor, and then he tells his dad to arrange that when he’s done the deed, he’ll blow a horn, and so then a hunting dog will be released and John will kill it.
Lambton faces the Worm, which of course, wraps around him to constrict him. But it doesn’t work! Because his armor is covered in spikes! And so the worm pierces itself on his armor! And he has enough room to start chopping this thing to pieces. Then he throws those in the river, where the pieces are swept away before they can put themselves back together.
[C.E. Brock's illustration.]
Lambton blows the horn to signal victory. But ohes noes! His father is so happy that he forgets to release the hound, and runs to his son and kills him. John Lambton obviously cannot go through with killing his father, so he tries to kill the hound anyway, but it doesn’t work to avert the curse. For nine generations, none of the Lambton heirs died a peaceful death in their beds.
And that’s the story of the Lambton Worm, friendo!
[John Dickenson Batten's illustration]
The Lambton Worm, by Stephen Cartwright.
From Dragons (Usborne Story Books, 1979).
Lambton Worm
“The Serpent” © Rasmus Poulsen, accessed at his ArtStation here
[The Lambton Worm is a monster I have been considering off and on for literally a decade or more, and I’ve finally figured out how to do it mechanically. The legend of the Lambton Worm is one of the better known regional dragons in England, and one that I think is conventionally misinterpreted. A number of authors see it as a representation of the struggle between Christianity and paganism. I blame Bram Stoker for this take, as it appears in his atrocious The Lair of the White Worm. Yes, snakes and dragons do often represent the Devil, but the overarching theme in the story of the Lambton Worm is how much John Lambton sucks. He discovers the Worm when skipping church, throws it into a well, leaves his land for seven years, allowing the monster to grow up and start killing people, and finally fails in the sacrificial obligation to prevent his family line from being cursed for nine generations. So I interpret the Lambton Worm as more of a Fisher King style representation of the link between a lord and his land, and run with that interpretation in my flavor text below.]
Lambton Worm CR 17 LE Dragon This serpent is longer than a castle wall, with a horned head and bleary red eyes. It drools a foul liquid.
The Lambton Worm is a draconic serpent that punishes dereliction of duty. It emerges in lands where the local lords are callow and slothful, and ravages the land to make it represent its lord’s moral character. They eat livestock and children, damage farms and pollute water supplies, never enough to completely destroy a fiefdom but enough to make those living there miserable and sick. It then establishes itself as a surrogate lord, holding the people hostage in exchange for milk, meat and treasure. There is only one Lambton Worm, but it has said to have been born and reborn a dozen times in a dozen realms.
The Lambton Worm is large enough to level forests and buildings but can and does squeeze itself to fit into wells and caves. It enjoys drawing battles out in order to showcase its power, tearing a tree from the ground and wielding it like an enormous club in its prehensile tail. The beast’s jaws drip acidic venom, and it can vomit this out in lethal torrents. The worst quality of the Lambton Worm is its supernatural resilience; not only do they heal rapidly from wounds, they can even return to life once slain. Only by destroying or scattering the Worm’s body quickly can this rejuvenation be prevented.
The Lambton Worm is intelligent, but it rarely speaks—just enough to set the terms of its extortion. They may also boast that only those of noble heart and pure blood can slay them. This is a trap, as they delight in nothing else than to shatter social structures and delight in the death of kings and princes. Some scholars believe that the Lambton Worm owes its fealty to an archdevil, but the monster does not discuss its own origins.
Hey, here's where Dirtifer came from. I was actually really surprised to see a dockalfer show up in Wizard School Mysteries Book 1, I think I designed him before the book was released? Related was my attempt to draw a Beelzebub to varying results.
Most of this page is dedicated to the knucker and Lambton worm. The knucker was designed after seeing the kettles and pot-hole lakes named after knuckers. It made me think of them as a type of pest which lodges themselves into these holes, with spikes to prevent people from removing them. Their ears also have long scales or hairs to mimic reeds. The Lambton worm was drawn to make it look a little more like an eft, or juvenile newt, which the worm was supposed to resemble.
Finally at the bottom, Drake lets his hair down, to the admiration of his friend. We'll see more of her on the next sketch page, but she's part of an extended friend group, a "TDG Junior" if you will. Fun facts: her name is Angel and she predates both Ariel and Drake!