c. 34 AC, hatched from an egg laid in the cradle of the infant Prince Jaehaerys
Died
130 AC, at Second Tumbleton, locked with Seasmoke and Tessarion
Size
Second in size only to Vhagar among the dragons still living at the Dance's start, and nearly a century old besides — by a wide margin the largest dragon any commoner rider dared to climb aboard in the whole of the war.
Temperament
Quiet and unclaimed for most of his adult life, which makes his sudden, easy acceptance of a baseborn smith at the Sowing one of the stranger footnotes of the Dance — whatever the bond between dragon and rider truly requires, birth evidently was not it.
Vermithor spent the greater part of a century as Jaehaerys the Old King's own dragon, flown through the long, largely peaceful decades that made the King's reign the standard every later ruler is measured against and found wanting. When Jaehaerys died, Vermithor did what riderless dragons of great age tend to do: he went quiet, kept mostly to Dragonstone's slopes, and was left alone by the sensible for the better part of three decades, being generally agreed to be far too large a proposition for any but a Targaryen to attempt.
The Dance overturned that assumption along with much else. At the Sowing, when Rhaenyra's council threw open the dragon pens to any claimant desperate or brave enough to try, a bastard smith named Hugh Hammer walked up to the largest unclaimed dragon in the world and came away its rider — a piece of news that unsettled lords considerably more than any single battle managed to. Roused after a lifetime's slumber, the Bronze Fury burned Tumbleton to answer for it, and died not long after at Second Tumbleton, tangled with two smaller dragons in a melee that killed all three of them together. That such a beast could be claimed at all by a man of no name is, the Citadel notes, rather more troubling to the old order than his death ever was.
The fate of Vermithor
This carries how the dragon's story ends in the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
Died in the chaotic three-dragon melee at Second Tumbleton, one of the war's single bloodiest afternoons for dragonkind — a beast that had slept riderless for the better part of a century, woken only to be spent within a single season of fighting.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
In the timeline
SourcesFire & Blood
Who was Vermithor?
Vermithor spent the greater part of a century as Jaehaerys the Old King's own dragon, flown through the long, largely peaceful decades that made the King's reign the standard every later ruler is measured against and found wanting. When Jaehaerys died, Vermithor did what riderless dragons of great age tend to do: he went quiet, kept mostly to Dragonstone's slopes, and was left alone by the sensible for the better part of three decades, being generally agreed to be far too large a proposition for any but a Targaryen to attempt.
Is Vermithor from the books or the show?
Book canon. This entry follows George R. R. Martin's novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.