vampragons

vampragons make great pets. no, i am not talking about the next big breed of your regular dog or cat friend. i am talking about the pets you can buy when playing adventure quest online, the free rpg game by artix entertainment. they are magically bred creatures, the crossings of vampires and dragons. there is one for every element in the game. coming up next is a list of my pet vampragons, seeing that yesterday i have got the eighth and final one :), comprised of the element and a short explanation of the names i've given them (yeah, you can customize those). their "surname" is for each a breed of dragon mentioned in the harry potter series. i just gave them one name when i started out, but then i was thinking about naming one of them and the idea occured to me. you'll see why :) coming up next - vampragons in order of acquisition.

• fire - dark red - razor fireball (razor is the first vampragon i ever got and is named for a blue dragon in the 'dragonlance' book series, even though that one was breathing thunder, not fire; the dragon species is the chinese fireball dragon species, one of the four encountered at the triwizard tournament, assigned to viktor krum)
• light - dark yellow - rashid opaleye (rashid was named after 1001 nights tales' sultan harun al-rashid, which i seem to remember means 'the bright one', though am not sure. anyway, the name fits his light element and i wanted it to have the same starting letter; the dragon species is the antipodean opaleye, native to new zealand)
• wind - dirty white - nino longhorn (well, i was looking for a 'windy' name and came up with nino, which besides meaning 'kid' - he was my errr... youngest pet at that time - is a climatic occurence, so i thought it fits. the dragonspecies is - ha! ha! the romanian longhorn. charlie weasley, would you please show me one of those?)
• energy - light yellow - norbert ridgeback (again, the name was meant to have the same starting letter as the previous. couldn't really come up with something connected to his element ( 'volt' didn't sound paticularly enticing). since i was re-reading volume one of harry potter at that time, i thought of naming him norbert, after hagrid's pet dragon. since that was of the species norwegian ridgeback, i've given all others dragon names, too. ridgeback sounds good for an energy dragon, after all)
• ice - pale blue - sirius ironbelly (i was determined to keep up the family names tradition, and from the series, the ukrainean ironbelly sounded like something that would fit an ice vampragon. well, and sirius comes from everyone's favourite macho-with-a-heart-of-gold-rebel in the harry potter series, sirius black. thought of naming a black vampragon like that, but decided against it, since the black one was of the dark...)
• earth - green - salem horntail (now from the dragons, horntail sounded very much like earth element, though its original posessor is a nasty piece of work and harry's task in the triwizard tournament, the hungarian horntail. again, i had a hard time looking for a first name starting with the 's' letter, when i was reminded of the tomcat in 'sabrina the teenage witch', salem)
• water - light blue - dannie shortsnout (dannie resembles my nickname and my star sign is a water sign. apart from that, i got a light blue pyjamas with a cute diddl mouse on it, and his name is dannie. so i figured that all goes with the water theme. as for the dragon part, the name of short snout somehow evoked the image of seahorses, don't ask why. the swedish short snout is cedric diggory's opponent in the triwizard tournament)
• dark - black - draco vipertooth (there was no question as to which vampragon would be the vipertooth, the dark one, obviously. its namesake is the peruvian vipertooth. keeping in theme with the 'dark' and the 'snake' of my black vipertooth, i thought of the slytherin house of hogwarts, and what name does spring to mind if not that of draco malfoy. oh, and by the way, draco means 'dragon'. couldn't have fitted better)

now, i must mention the other pets i have had. my first was a cardinal bird that i got rid of pretty soon and have not named it. the others were a dark wolf and then a cinder wolf, names remus and lupin - yeah, that's right, i got the habits of naming them after hp characters early :).
then i have had a thundertroll named hathor (after a very nice troll i encountered in another fantasy series, the 'runeswords') and a blue krabb named herman (after melville, the author of 'moby dick', which is obviously sea themed), i thought it such a fitting name for that creature :)