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During the dark ages (early middle ages), the Vikings visited an isle surrounded by strong waves and giant whirlpools that seemingly appears sporadically. The island is populated with many walrus and there is also a cavern covered in abundance of silver and iron ore. Unfortunately, it is also a lair home to a 25m long thunder wyvern measuring from snort to coccyx with a wing spans of 100m when fully extended. During the day, the island will be covered in a thick fog and miasma. The effluvia seems to be both corrosive and poisonous to most living things except the wyvern. Therefore the Vikings had to wait until nightfall when the fog and the miasma dissipates, and the nocturnal wyvern comes out of its lair to hunt. The thunder wyvern got its name from the deafening and piercing screech it emits as well as the sighting of hundreds of ball lightnings that seemingly pop out of nowhere every time the creature spreads its wings before it takes off from the ground! A typical lightning ball can release up to 300,000,000 volts of electricity and is about 30,000 Amperes. As soon as the lightning ball appears, the surrounding air around it starts sparkling and explodes with a force of 0.12 tons of TNT with a wide radius of 5m. The richness of the island is too lucrative to pass up. I am wondering how can the Vikings defeat the thunder wyvern for good?

Vikings's wishlist: Red meat, Ivory, Leather, Silver, Iron, Trophy, etc.

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Sound the Great Horn!

The wyvern is truly powerful and blessed among beasts. Yet its defeat proves that it is mortal, and everything that has an end has a beginning. And either the natural rarity of apex predators, or lunatic gods, appointed this island with but one wyvern. Which leads us to an uncomfortable, but useful, deduction: there is another!

The Vikings sail around the island, and listen for the plaintive cries of this lonely wyvern. They enlist their best musicians and the horn of a great narwhal (a beast doubtless even larger than the wyvern, but how they dealt with it will be left for another story...). With bellows and well-muscled rowers, they duplicate the calls with great precision, and send their flagship sailing about the islands until something answers it. Now, yes, calling out to a second lonely wyvern is probably not the wisest pastime, but Valhalla awaits the bold! Eventually, their musicians have learned the cries of the other sex of wyvern, and so they make a second horn, tuned to duplicate that wyvern.

And last but not least, they set up camp in a cavern extending deep, deep below the surface of a nearby barren island, and they periodically sally forth to sound their Great Horn. Upon hearing it, the wyvern they wish to avoid will go to the barren island, leaving them free to walk into its home cavern in search of fabulous treasure.

Alas, the wyvern's cave contains only ore, which they cannot simply haul away like a kind donation from a Mercian king. So they must fortify the entrance to the wyvern's cavern, and when it returns in disappointment and confusion, they must provoke it so extraordinarily that it collapses its own entry tunnel while trying to taser the burglars.

Shut out from its cave, and remembering the promise of companionship one island away, the wyvern goes back there to found its new home. The Vikings help themselves to the old, and in time mine quite a fortune in metals.

Postscript:

  • The plan here involves provoking calls from a wyvern without being killed, hiding underground from an amorous wyvern on a barren island without being killed, and fortifying a wyvern's burrow against its return, then fleeing or hiding inside it before it is blasted with lightning without being killed. We should observe the general pattern of battle plans and dragons everywhere: 1) The battle plan rarely survives contact with the enemy. 2) Neither do the planners...

  • A purist may carp that narwhals have tusks rather than horns. Nonetheless, a giant narwhal is a Sea Unicorn, and unicorns, everyone knows, have horns. Boring dentists will fight for the honor to drill the pulp and dentine from a giant narwhal tusk to make it a cone of enamel, which is sort of like a horn. What Viking would not be impressed by such a heroic feat when choosing a dentist?

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  1. Hide. Watch.
  2. Watch wyvern leave to hunt. Keep hiding.
  3. Watch wyvern come back with prey. Keep hiding.
  4. Let wyvern eat. It will sleep afterwards.
  5. Stop hiding. Collect treasures, quietly.
  6. Leave. Sell treasures.
  7. Return to island later.
  8. GOTO 1
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  • $\begingroup$ the Vikings's gods came into my dream and told me that your plan is excellent and they wants the rest of the plan, especially the part that involve heart pounding figuratively as well as literally ;D $\endgroup$
    – user6760
    Dec 11, 2021 at 2:04
  • $\begingroup$ After eating prey, all the extra energy is going into digestion and the lightning balls can't appear. That is when to attack. $\endgroup$
    – David R
    Dec 11, 2021 at 15:08
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Wait for good weather, to hunt Wyverns

Skinny dragons, brainless.. a wyvern can't be tamed. When a wyvern bothers your village, no use to argue with it about human rights. Hunt it down when the sun is shining and kill it. Wyverns are incompetent cowards, dragons without brains.. they need to catch lightning, to produce their fire. When the sky is clear, they are disarmed, they will try to hide.

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