Dragons of Winter Night
1985 novel by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Dragons of Winter Night is a fantasy novel by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Based on the Dungeons & Dragons gaming modules, it is the second book in the Chronicles Trilogy, preceded by Dragons of Autumn Twilight and followed by Dragons of Spring Dawning. It was the second Dragonlance novel, being released in 1985. It is the second novel in the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy, which along with the Legends Trilogy introduces the Dragonlance world. Specifically, it details the darker days of the War of the Lance.
The novel is part of the beginning of the entire series. It departs from the original game session that Dragons of Autumn Twilight was based upon, but is still based on the events of the previous novel. It continues upon many of the most important characters, the Heroes of the Lance. According to the Dragonlance Nexus, the Chronicles Trilogy is essential to setting up the foundation for the rest of the novels.
Development
To describe the scene in which the city of Tarsis is destroyed by dragons, Margaret Weis studied World War II films of the bombing of London.
“Dragons of Winter Night” enters the record as 1985 novel by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dragons, Winter and Night can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Dragons of Winter Night” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dragons, Winter and Night provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2662175. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dragons of Winter Night” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.