Meanwhile, the Designated Heroes were also less than thrilled.
“Nope. Absolutely not. We categorically refuse.” Several saurian heads nodded in agreement. A few jets of flame punctuated the spokesworm’s remarks.
“But — it’s absolutely standard for dragons. It’s hardcoded into the behavioral subroutines. You have to do it!”
“No dice. None of us is doing any more treasure sitting until we get more ergonomic hoards.” The dragon blinked its eyes once, and the peanut gallery spoke up.
“Do you know what that does to our spines? You try finding a proper chiropractor when you’ve got over seventy vertebra.”
“I’ve got hemmorhoids.”
“The facets chap...”
Meanwhile, the Designated Heroes were also less than thrilled.
“You were pretty good with your details,” said one. “The dragons actually have dragon breath. The seasonal habits synch up. They even get sick when they eat a drugged virgin.”
“I thought of everything,” said the designer pridefully.
“Really?”
The designer paused. “What did I leave out?”
Shaking his head slightly, the hero replied, “It’s more like what you included that’s causing the problem. F’rinstance, you’ve got things balanced so that the dragons will start the really aggressive hoarding when the local economy hits an inflationary run. That keeps an ingot from becoming massively devalued. Then one of us kills the dragons and reclaims the horde — which keeps deflation in check.”
“Yes, but- oh. Wait. Is this about heroes having a better chance of succeeding if there’s no danger of inflation?”
“No. Though it is kind of hard to muster up the courage to go stalking a dragon when you know that everyone’s got enough money, so you’re more likely to die. Think it through: what happens when one of us kills a dragon?”
“Ummmmm...you take the hoard?”
The hero refrained from rolling his eyes. “Remember how many details you included? When an animal dies, the body tries to make itself...unappetizing. Ever see how dragon-doo affects gold? Or how difficult it is to clean jewelry covered in that stuff? You try giving your lady fair a trifle knowing — knowing! — that you had to spend three weeks scrubbing it clean!”
This entire scene came into my head, as is, several years ago. I had recently re-read The Sherwood Game, wherein a VR game designer creates a Robin-Hood game and Robin comes to life; and had just started Grailblazers, which follows a wet noodle of an Arthurian Knight.
This snippet is published under the Creative Commons license. Take and use, modify, anything you wish; but please at least give me a nod. (If it’s used in something that eventually gets published, I’ll accept an autographed copy. And a Starbuck’s card.)
Keywords: | satire | Holidailies | fiction |
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