Dragons and Other Great Worms

In the East, the model is wingless, with four legs and scales. It is shown with a variety of different fin-scale patterns, usually down the center of the spine. The eastern version is a symbol of good things, and is generally welcomed. In ancient China, only the Emperor could wear the symbol of a dragon with five toes; four- or three-toed varieties were acceptable for the hoi polloi.

In the West, the dragon of myth was often, but not always, winged, and fire-breathing. They were usually symbols of adversity - something a knight would have to overcome to prevail. They could be either brute beast or sentient being, and dragons are often depicted in legend as engaging in tricky banter.

Great Worms, Fantastical

Dragons in fantasy are almost always the western, winged variety. They are usually sentient, and can communicate with our heroes, either through verbalization (and thbey are often shown as wisecrackers), or mentally through a draconic telepathy.

Except in a few cases, they are not evil, but simply very powerful - sometimes so much our superiors that it is dangerous to mess with them, just because they can't bring their minds down to our puny level. The Hobbit's Smaug is one of the exceptions - a dragon that must be slain so that his plunder and home can be reclaimed from those he stole it from.

The Dragons of Bingtown and the Six Duchies

Robin Hobb's three series of books set in the Six Duchies and Bingtown presents probably the most confusing picture of dragonkind ever in fantasy literature.

The Farseer Trilogy, made up of Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assasin's Quest, ends with the King of the Six Duchies carving a dragon out of a black stone known as 'skill stone', the 'Skill' being the mental powers that run in the FarSeer line which allows the user to talk mind-to-mind to other Skill users and influence the thoughts of non-skilled people. Once King Verity's dragon has been carved, he puts all his thoughts and memories in the stone, vanishing himself into the stone and 'becoming' the beast, which rises to the defense of his realm, at the cost of the King's own independent life.

The LiveShip Traders trilogy, made up of Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, and Ship of Destiny, is set down the coast from the Six Duchies. Here, the 'nobility' are the great trading families, and the greatest possess Live Ships, sentient ships that waken to themselves after they have served three generations of the same family. This trilogy, if followed through to the end, presents a surprising new look at where the dragons of old came from, and what happened to them.

The final trilogy from that fantastic world, The Tawny Man, goes back to the Six Duchies in Fool's Errand, Golden Fool and Fool's Fate, with some minor character overlap between the previous two trilogies, and a cohesive view of dragonkind that is a masterwork of world-building. One wonders if Hobb had the entire thing mapped out when she first sat down to write Assassin's Apprentice?

The most famous fantasy-literature dragons, of course, are Anne McCaffrey's The Dragonriders of Pern.