Cold-drake

Cold-drakes were dragons that were unable to breath fire, but instead could possess an icy "cold breath" which froze people and induced fear. Morgoth bred and used cold-drakes in the late First Age. After the War of Wrath, some cold-drakes were found in the waste north of the Grey Mountains.

As the millennia passed, their numbers grew, until they became a serious threat in the later centuries of the Third Age to the Dwarves that mined the Grey Mountains. In T.A. 2589, Dáin I, King of Durin's Folk, and his second son Frór were slain at the gates of their hall by a cold-drake. The attacks of these fearsome creatures persuaded the Dwarves to migrate eastwards from the Grey Mountains, and it was soon afterward that their realms in the Iron Hills and at Erebor were established.