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Feuerschwinge (English: "Fire Wings", "Fire Maw" or "The Firewing") is a female Great Western Dragon of orange-red color, who awoke in 2012 in the Harz Mountains in the old Federal Republic of Germany. She is popularly known as the first dragon to be killed by metahumanity. Subsequent events brought her death into question, and her current status remains unclear.

She was, presumably, the mate of the Great Dragon Kaltenstein.

History[]

Feuerschwinge awakened around the same time as Lofwyr, Nebelherr, and Kaltenstein in Germany in 2012. She was first sighted in May of that year over the German Harz Mountains, where she promptly began her assault on a number of towns and villages in the area.

According to official reports, the German military killed her on September 16, 2012 over the SOX, ending a four-month campaign of her terrorizing the nation. Her body was never discovered. Civilian casualties from her rampage were reported to be in the thousands.

Despite her death, there was one reported sighting of her over Iceland in 2015, but it was not confirmed.

Her lair in the Harz Mountains has never been discovered, leading many treasure hunters to the mountain range to attempt to discover it.

Fate[]

After the dragon Feuerschwinge destroyed parts of the Harz in 2012 - immediately after its appearance - it was pursued by Bundeswehr task forces across the English Channel, and eventually shot down over the SOX.

As I know from one of the Bundis who was there at the time, it crashed right into the ruins of Völklingen...
~ Eismann

In this case, an early nanoweapon developed by German engineer Dr. Adrian Vauclair at Diehl Defense based on the warfare agents "Doom" was used in a special warhead he designed.

However, since no body has been found, the fate of the dragon is unknown, but it is officially presumed dead, making it the first great dragon killed by humans since the dawn of the Sixth World.

Feuerschwinge is not dead! SHE is alive and hiding in the SOX, I heard! - However, due to all the poisons there, HER mind has also gone bye-bye, so that SHE is completely insane and also totally mutated. Some voices in the shadows also claim that the punks who live in the SOX worship Feuerschwinge!
~ Panic!

Kaltenstein attacked Luftwaffe planes over the English Channel in defense of Feuerschwinge, and later engaged in a dogfight with his fellow Nebelherr over Frankfurt, as the latter tried to prevent him from flying into SOX to search for Feuerschwinge. In this, Kaltenstein was defeated only because the weaker Nebelherr received support from Lofwyr.

Rumors[]

It is believed by some that the German military did not kill Feuerschwinge, and that the radiation of the SOX has trapped and driven her insane. Claims that Feuerschwinge is possibly alive, and in human form as "Ignifera" the leader of the Glowpunk sect "Disciples of the Cleansing Fire" and that she - in dragon form - Template:Shx intervened in a battle with the MET2000 in the ruins of Völklingen are usually dismissed as implausible as well, as are their alleged sightings in Iceland Template:Shx.

There is some speculation that the 2015 sighting of Feuerschwinge over Iceland was her astral form; this assumption stems from the idea that her body was killed but her astral form still exists, or that she is somehow trapped in human form and cannot physically leave the SOX, possibly due to the unpredictable effects of nuclear radiation on Awakened beings. Since then, Feuerschwinge's spirit has been trying to regain a dragon body.

Some also associate Feuerschwinge's name (and spirit) with the machinations of the AI Apex in anarchist Berlin of the 2050s and an alleged conspiracy aimed at a dracozide - an extermination of dragons.

In video games[]

In the Dragonfall series of events transpiring in 2054 it was revealed that Feuerschwinge was incapacitated by Adrian Vauclair via the usage of a specialized weapon that separated her soul from her body. The dragon's soul was trapped in the body of a human woman that Vauclair's organization captured, while the dragon's body was kept in hibernation underground. In an attempt to exterminate all dragons, Vauclair spent over four decades engineering a virus and planned to use Feuerschwinge as a carrier to infect metahumanity and dragonkind.

Feuerschwinge's ultimate fate in Dragonfall depends on the player character's choices when confronting Vauclair:

  • Feuerschwinge is made whole and freed
  • Feuerschwinge is euthanized
  • Feuerschwinge is enslaved to the APEX AI
  • Feuerschwinge is abandoned, her human host left in captivity
  • Feuerschwinge is reunited with her body but used to deliver the Panacea biological weapon. She goes on a rampage over Berlin, killing and infecting thousands with the virus before being shot down by corporate air forces.

Hoard[]

Its possible that, the reason for her rampage after Feuerschwinge's awakening was probably not (or not exclusively) "hibernation trauma" and shock upon awakening, which is what the Welsh Great Dragon Rhonabwy blamed his rampage on in Carmarthen, but the rage over the theft of a certain artifact that had been stolen by humans from her hoard during her long sleep. This stolen object was, possibly, the "Ring of the Nibelungs" - a gift from her beloved companion Kaltenstein.

Treasure hunters trace Feuerschwinge's hoard to this day in the Harz mountains in vain. Other interested parties, however, believe that it is actually located on Iceland ... the present-day "Thule Protectorate" under the rule of the NAN member Trans-Polar Aleut Nation. The question of which of the two theories is now true is eagerly discussed in the forums of the Matrix Portals "DIVE".

Comment[]

There are conflicting statements on the gender of Feuerschwinge, but for the purpose of this article it is presumed that the dragon is female, since that is how recent books such as the o34954845Sixth World Almanac describe her.

o45457298Dragons of the Sixth World states that Feuerschwinge was shot down by the German Military in May of 2012. o34954845Sixth World Almanac gives the exact date and says she was shot down four months later, in September. Shadowrun Returns Dragonfall confirms the date to be September 16, 2012, and has possibly retconned the time when Lofwyr, Nebelherr, and Kaltenstein had their duel to be the same date as Feuerschwinge's fall into the SOX. That would mean that the motivation for the duel was probably Kaltenstein attempting to save Feuerschwinge while Lofwyr and Nebelherr were attempting to stop him.

Harlequin implied in a statement in Dragons of the Sixth World that Kaltenstein and Feuerschwinge were mates, which may explain Kaltenstein's violent attempt to intervene in her downfall. This is, however, complicated by the fact that Kaltenstein began to actively hunt down and destroy toxic shamans after the Dragonfall, a strange course of action considering the fact that toxic cults such as the Disciples of the Cleansing Fire were believed to be tied to Feuerschwinge. Or, possibly going through them trying to find her and then killing them in anger when they are not her.

While Feuerschwinge is often thought by metahumanity to be brutal and antagonistic due to her post-Awakening rampage, Lofwyr privately imparted that she was perhaps the kindest and most pure-hearted of all of the Great Dragons. According to him, her violent attacks on Sixth World Germany were an instinctive reaction to the environmental devastation wrought by humanity upon the Earth since the closing of the Fourth Age.

Source[]

This article is based on the article Template:Shx in the Template:Shx, where it is maintained under GNUFDL. For a list of authors, see here.

Primary sources for Feuerschwinge are: Sourcebooks:

Novels:

  • God's Angel - by Markus Heitz
  • Shadowhunters - Novel Collections.
  • The Vitruvian Moment - novel by Martina Nöth

Other:

External links[]


Video Game Characters
SNES Jake ArmitageKitsuneDrake
Dragonfall Monika SchäferDietrichGloryEigerBlitzLofwyrFeuerschwinge
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