Overplunder

A story of gold and greed

The King

Ragmasung the Red really didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to know about how much the war effort against the hated Haracens was costing him. He didn’t want to hear about villagers complaining about the loss of their firstborn sons to the war effort. And above all, he did not want to hear this scrawny academic bleat at him.

“-in conclusion,” the man wittered. “I beseech you, sire, to scale back operations.”

Ragmasung the Red contemplated a well-chewed turkey leg. “Scale back?” he said.

“Yes, sire.” A pause. “Beseechingly.”

“Scale back plundering dragon’s gold?” he checked.

“Yes sire.” The academic considered another “beseechingly” and decided against it.

“We shouldn’t be stealing back our own gold back from filthy monsters? We shouldn’t be relying on our main source of wealth and power? We should be underfunding our own military and leaving us at risk of attack?”

“As I mentioned, sire,” said the academic who had just spent the last fifteen minutes on explaining why this was necessary, “if we take too much we risk both running out of gold and angering the dragons.”

“Anger dragons?” roared Ragmasung finally losing his temper. “Who gives a fuck about dragons? They’re monsters!”

“They’re a natural resource,” said the academic.

Ragmasung wondered exactly how angry the university would be if he beheaded one of their professors.

The Foreman

Halfdan sucked his teeth. “More plundering?” he said.

“Increased quotas,” said Oddvar, his assistant. “War effort and everything.”

Halfdan wondered if anyone ever read any of his reports. “Dungeon in the Temple of Mudra went dry two months back,” he said looking at the map tacked to his wall. “We’ve been getting scraps out of the Blood Forest for the past moon. Ain’t worth sending men there anymore.”

“Lot of dragons re-roosting in the Worldspine mountains,” Oddvar pointed out.

“I don’t like that clustering,” Oddvar said. “It ain’t natural behavior for dragons. Too many of them in too little space.”

“Well,” Oddvar said, “we’re overplundering.”

“I know that!” Halfdan snapped. “I send those reports to those damn university types and then they tell me to do the opposite of all that’s sensible and sane.” He shook his head.

“Best chance of getting some good hauls, though,” Oddvar said though, tapping the Worldspine on the map. “Send some crews up there.”

“Gods save them,” Halfdan said.

The Barbarian

Look, Gunnar had known what the life expectancy of a plunderer was when he signed up for this. But it wasn’t like anyone in the Frozen Wastes was seeing many years beyond their thirtieth. They weren’t called the Frozen Wastes because of what a bucolic delight they were. At least as a plunderer, he’d figured, he’d have a chance to live filthy rich and covered in glory.

Except, now, he and his crew had had to crawl up into the Worldspine. Did the folk who ran these operations have any idea what it was like here on the ground? There was hazard pay, and then there was flagrant suicide pay.

Dragons had been flocking to the Worldspine for months. Which wasn’t good. Did no-one go to temple anymore? Did they not remember the stories of dragon swarms cleansing the world through fire and Osgard the One-Eyed rebuilding mankind from ash and his own spit? Gunnar didn’t know about anyone else, but he had no desire to be rebuilt from a God’s flob.

And yet, what else was he to do? He had three wives in three separate mining towns to support. So here he was sneaking down a tunnel, sword drawn, and prayers whispered.

The tunnel opened out onto a cavern, and for a moment his breath caught. Because they hadn’t seen a hoard of gold like this in months, maybe not years. Because maybe prayer worked and there was hope after all.

But then his caught breath turned into a gasp, because he saw what had gathered this hoard. Not one great beast, as was right and expected, but instead gnashing, snarling, group of dragons. And that wasn’t right at all he thought, because dragons were solitary beasts. They didn’t share. Something was very wrong, he thought, very wrong indeed.

And then his world filled with fire, and he didn’t think anymore at all.

The Activist

Ragmasung the Red was definitely going to behead this one.

“I will plunder as much as I damn well please!” he thundered.

“You are robbing our own children’s future!” Elgar the beloved of Osgard shouted back. “You are endangering us all with this wild overplundering! We have to find a path to a sustainable future!”

“Sustain dragons?” Ragmasung the Red couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“They’re misunderstood beasts,” Elgar insisted.

“They’re giant lizards who devour my citizens and steal my gold.”

“They don’t steal, they gather,” Elgar said, seizing on Ragmasung’s words. “From all nations. You benefit from their acquisitiveness far more than you suffer. And if you dig too deep into those hoards, they will run dry. And if they run dry, the dragons will react.”

“Why does everyone think I give a shit about dragons!” Ragmasung bellowed.

Which was quite remarkable timing for, at almost precisely that moment, the sky above his head darkened with a great mass of dragons driven past their breaking point. And a few moments after that, a great firestorm descended upon the capital, and upon Ragmasung’s palace in particular.

All of this could have been quite educational for Ragmasung on the topic of both why he should care about the conservation of a natural resource, and the laws of cause and effect. However, instead of learning anything, he merely died in a great deal of pain.

But Elgar, though, who survived by hiding behind a great marble pillar, it was quite satisfying to be proven right.