I wanna run an adventure where a dragon secretly runs a bank, and nobody can tell because it acts exactly like every other banker.
In Shadowrun universe, many corpos are run by dragons.
In actuality, most corpos are run by people. Lofwyr, whose corporate umbrella includes 4758 companies, is an outlier and should not have been counted. /s
But Lofwyr literally controls 95% of the GDP with those companies, who are run by his extended family!
No spoilers, but you should check out the Sword Interval webcomic.
Sword Interval https://www.webtoons.com/en/supernatural/sword-interval/list?title_no=486
Thanks for the recommendation!
spoiler
Edit: and if anyone cares about the specific dialog referenced: https://www.webtoons.com/en/supernatural/sword-interval/ep-39-do-not-steal/viewer?title_no=486&episode_no=39, plus the comic after.
This will have spoilers given it is 39 pages into the comic.)
The king answering with anything other than some variation of “Because I ordered you to” broke my immersion.
Ironically, this king was the one exception that was benevolent and fair. The knight, of course, was a member of MAGA - Make Arcadia Great Again.
One of the reasons I can never stomach Nick Bostrom’s Fable of the Dragon Tyrant because it depicts the idea of a stoic king who cares about his people.
(Also, glosses over completely how an ageless soceity would be stacked under feudal-capitalism)
Many powerful people like to make people believe (and possibly believe themselves) that they’re just rulers. And it’s just plainly more effective when your underlings are well-informed of your intentions (assuming you’re not trying to set them up). e.g. imagine if the knight thinks that a dragon is a direct threat to the king and burns down the countryside to hunt it (any means necessary etc.), when in reality it’s not a direct threat to the king at all and you were just supposed to keep the countryside safe from dragonfire.
Of course, the entire premise is that it’s not obvious to the knight why a dragon must be killed and what are acceptable means to achieve that. e.g. in Faerun’s Sword Coast, you’d expect that every knight is well-informed about this.
It’s almost as if the stories of dragons were an allegory for the king or the one sin charge
I too have played the Shadowrun Returns series
A+ character concept.
Removed by mod
Did kings hoard all the wealth? I thought kings had a monopoly on violence, not necessarily wealth
Under feudalism the king owned everything. He would delegate some rights to lesser nobles so they would hold and manage lands in his stead, but the king owned everything and everyone
While that’s true, kings often went into massive debt to fund a war. Like Edward III borrowed significant sums from Italian banks to fund his wars.
I don’t think Edward III was feudal.
You need massive amounts of wealth to gain and maintain a monopoly on violence. So they did both.
Also if you possess a monopoly on violence wealth is not difficult to obtain
And once you have that wealth you NEED a monopoly on violence to maintain it, which requires more wealth, and so on.
IIRC everything you had was considered to be used by permission of the king. Like, he ostensibly owned everything and was just letting you use it.
There have been various degrees of absolutely and constitutional monarchies throughout history. One famous example is the limits imposed by the Magna Carta, which only benefited nobles.
There has often been a distinction between royal property and the personal property of the royal family or members of the royal family.
For instance, many of the palaces of the British royal family are national property and Parliament has a say in their use and must provide a budget for their upkeep. The total family privately owns a significant percentage of the rented agricultural land in England, and vast amounts of residential rentals in London.
Armies are expensive, and war is REALLY expensive.
The wealth was needed to pay soldiers. You needed soldiers to make sure people did what the king wanted, such as people paying taxes to get wealth. The whole thing with taxes and needing gold as money was basically invented for supporting militia, according to some.
Here there be
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-d29z8G6U28 And here this exact post is, animated with the original voice acting!
Well
No
the voice acting comes from a different channel @ZacSpeaksGiant but the animator and him have a mutually beneficial relationship.
True, and he does link the source.
I must have missed the part where the dragon funded infrastructure, hired knights to keep his populace safe, propped up the food stores and economy in times of famine, and negotiated with neighboring kingdoms when needed. Oh and funding research. Forgot how often dragons did that.
And for those asking about benevolent kings:
Aragorn
T’Challa/Black Panther
Mufasa
King Arthur
King Leonidas
King Tirian
Some real life good kings(and a queen)
Emperor Augustus(look up the slave who broke a crystal glass)
Empress Wu Zerian
Cyrus the Great
A yes, the benevolent ruler, almost as common as the benevolent slave owner.
Funded infrastructure
Or, returned a small amount of the value extracted in order to facilitate further extraction
Hired knights to
Keep his interests safe
(Hoarded resources and returned a pittance to prop up) food stores and the economy in times of famine
Negotiated with neighboring kingdoms
To further state interests
Funded research
At public expense for private gain
Still more common than the benevolent dragon though.
Never would have thought to find a shill for royalty in the year 2025
In regards to King v. Dragon.
They both suck
Mufasa
Lol you cannot be for real
What? It’s a fictional kingdom based on Hamlet. You’re not going to split hairs over it being fiction when the second half of the equation is a dragon are you?.
Show me this king that personally leads the road building crew
Well, I said funded so…
Show me this king that creates value.
show me a dragon that doesnt burn down villages
Show us a fucking dragon
can it be fucking a car?
Preferably, yes
