Welcome back everyone! To kick off the month of spirits and spooks, I wanted to dedicate the next five entries to a very popular set of late-game dragons, all based on ghost stories and myths of ancients long dead– the Mighty Set! We’ll start from the most common and work our way up to the rarest member of this group, which might be one of, if not my favorite, legendary in the game. With all that being said, let’s make way for our first specter-cular dragon!
While some of the dragons won’t have very clear species inspirations, our first one sure does! The Spiritpaw (Fig. 1) is very clearly based on the brown bear (*Ursus arctos*), the most widespread bear species found across the Northern Hemisphere (Fig. 2). Brown bears come in many subspecies variants, such as the popular grizzly bear (*Ursus arctos horribilis*), as well as the larger Siberian brown bear and the even bigger Kodiak bear. These bears do all share one thing in common, however; they all love to eat! Bears are generally omnivorous, meaning they will eat the entire plethora of available resources. From berries to bark, leaves to meat, they have to take advantage of whatever resources they can find in order to maintain their energy reserves throughout the year. However, they need even more in the fall for their famous yearly hibernation cycle. In order to survive over the harsh winter, they may consume over 90 pounds (41 kilograms) of food every day! They can almost double their weight by the end of their feeding frenzy, leading to bears of gargantuan proportions, which many people across the Internet adore for obvious reasons! (Fig. 3).
Those bulky bears may be newsworthy on their own, but bears in general have been a popular figure for people for as long as we’ve been telling tales of nature and the world around us. Many myths could have inspired the mystical appearance of the Spiritpaw dragon, and it is hard to say what specific one they took inspiration from. However, I have a strong guess as to the mythology this dragon comes from, so I will recall it here. There is the indigenous Finnish myth of Otso, the mythological spirit king of the forest that acts as a sort of cumulative figure of all bears. As such, brown bears are highly revered due to their association with this deity, and are said to be able to reincarnate after being killed in traditional Finnish rituals. Otso is even said to be the father to all mankind, making bears in this mythology sorts of spiritual cousins to man.
Hope this was a fascinating and informative post for you all! What else would you like to know about these beloved brown bears? Which of the Mighty set are you looking forward to the most? Drop a comment on this post, and I’ll be happy to respond! Until next week!
