Smaug

"My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!"

- Smaug

Smaug the Golden was a powerful, though greedy, reddish-gold dragon of Middle-earth, considered the mightiest Dragon of his time. He is the most prominent antagonist in The Hobbit. In the book, he lives in the Lonely Mountain, to the east of the Mirkwood Forest.

Life
"Revenge! Revenge! The King under the Mountain is dead and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and where are his sons' sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and none dare resist."

- Smaug

In the twenty-eighth century of the Third Age, the chronologies of the Westlands tell of how the mightiest Dragon of the Age came from the north to the great kingdom of the Dwarves in Erebor, the Lonely Mountain. The fire-drake called Smaug the Golden was vast and bat-winged and a fearsome bane to Dwarves and Men. With consuming Dragon-flame, Smaug ruined the city of the Men of Dale and broke the door and wall of the Lonely Mountain. The Dwarves then fled or were slain and Smaug took the riches of the mountain and the town: gold and gemstones, mithril and silver, elf gems and pearls, the many faceted crystals of emerald, sapphire and diamond, as well as the Arkenstone.

For two centuries, Smaug ruled Erebor uncontested, laying waste to the lands around the mountain. Yet in the year TA 2941, a company of 14 adventurers led by the heir of the former Dwarf-kingdom, Thorin Oakenshield, and his Hobbit 'burglar' named Bilbo Baggins. They approached the Fire-drake by stealth and were surprised to find that Smaug was larger than they had expected. He was armored as all of his race with scales of impenetrable iron, but in wariness, he protected his soft underbelly from assault: as he lay sprawled upon the wealth of his hoard he allowed diamonds and hard gemstones to imbed in his belly, armoring his only weakness.

During a confrontation with the dragon, Baggins noticed one missing scale in the monster's bejewelled belly. With this invaluable information, he escaped the Mountain and was overhead by a friendly bird, which carried the secret to Bard the Bowman in nearby Lake-Town.

Smaug was aroused by the burgling of the Hobbit, and he came out in fiery wrath and loosed his fire upon the land. In vengeance, he came to Esgaroth; the town built on the Long Lake and devastated it. In the midst of the wreck, Bard the Bowman, heir to the throne of Dale did his best to rally the defenders. Bard, guided by the secret of the Smaug's weakness, shot a magic black arrow into the beast's vitals. Screaming in fury and pain, Smaug fell, crashing into the flaming ruins of Lake-Town.

After Death
After Smaug's death, Thorin and Company claimed the treasure as theirs by birthright. This created a conflict with Bard and the Elvish king Thranduil of Mirkwood, who each wanted a portion of the gold as reimbursement for all the damage Smaug had caused their kingdoms over the years. Thorin refused to share the treasure and declared war on both of them.

According to Gandalf, it was fortunate that Smaug had been slain, since had he lived he would almost certainly have come under Sauron's control and been used to assault Rivendell and destroy the elves of Mirkwood. It is told in the Appendix of The Lord of the Rings that Gandalf and Thorin happened to be in the same Inn at the same time both pondering what was to be done with Smaug when they met. Upon meeting Thorin, Gandalf relized he had found someone who might be able to dispatch Smaug. His reason for choosing Bilbo is still unknown, but it is believed that his specialization of Hobbits prompted Gandalf to choose as he did. Bilbo is also a decendant of Old Took, who was a brave adventurer, and not just by the standards of hobbits.

Behind the Scenes
In the books, the name Smaug is presented as a translation of the "original Dalish" Trâgu, and is related to Sméagol/Trahald. According to Tolkien, the name Smaug is "the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb Smugan, to squeeze through a hole" (Letter No. 31); others have noted that it has echoes of "smoke" and "smog", though this connection is illusory at best, since in Tolkien's phonology, the "au" phoneme is pronounced like the "ou" phoneme in sound or house. Therefore names such as Sauron or Smaug are pronounced like Sow-ron or sm-ow-g.

In the 1977 animated version of The Hobbit, Smaug was voiced by Richard Boone, and his head looked much like that of a cat.

In the 2003 video game release, Smaug was voiced by James Horan.