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LPF week 18 - keep it safe
Mar. 28th, 2019 04:50 pmBack again, are we? I wonder if soon I might be seeing some of you children for the last time. No, I'm not dying - don't be ridiculous. But some of you are getting old enough that soon it will be time for you to go out into the world and seek your fortunes. Hmm, that reminds me of a story.
Long ago and far from here, there once lived a mighty dragon and her three young hatchlings. Dragons are, for the most part, very solitary creatures, and the little dragons were quickly reaching the age that their mother would drive them from her lair to forge their own futures. She prepared them for that day as best she could, teaching them all that they would need to know and warning them of the perils they might face, for the world is a cruel and dangerous place, even for a dragon. She even, in the end, let each of them have a tiny share of her hoard.
Now, a dragon without a hoard is a pitiful creature indeed. A dragon that does not sleep on gold sleeps a fitful, restless sleep, and is often plagued by nightmares. Also, gold is very pretty.
The mother dragon's instinctive greed fought her quickly fading sense of parental responsibility as she allowed each little dragon to carry away a third of their weight in gold. She admonished them to do their best to protect themselves and their hoards from grubby humans, and then sent them on their way with a mighty roar that shook the heavens. Or at least it shook the sky. I don't have any reliable accounts as to whether the heavens were affected. Probably not - they tend not to notice much of what goes on down here.
Now, most people can't tell the difference between one dragon roar and another, but there lived in this land at least one man who knew what this particular roar meant. It meant that there were young, inexperienced, and relatively small dragons out in the world with great shiny piles of gold in their possession. And when you're a dragonslayer, as this man was, that is exactly the kind of dragon you want to be trying to slay, because dragonslayers who hunt mature, experienced, enormous dragons tend to die gruesome, violent deaths. So the dragonslayer set about hunting these vulnerable young dragons.
The first little dragon made her lair in a dead volcano. The lingering aura of fiery, destructive power reminded her fondly of her mother, and the lava tubes made excellent caves. She liked the way the jagged obsidian reflected the gleaming gold of her hoard. It would be a wonderful place to build her new life.
The dragonslayer found the first little dragon's cave, murdered her, and then stole her gold.
What? Life is harsh.
The second dragon made his lair in a karst cave filled with marvelous speleothems. What's a karst? What's a speleothem? Don't they teach you children anything in schools these days? It means that it was a cave formed by groundwater dissolving bedrock, and that it was filled with all sorts of wonderful dribbley stone formations like stalactites and flowstone. Well good, you learned some new words today. Any day you don't learn a new word is a day wasted. Actually, that's a ridiculous oversimplification - you can have very productive days in which you learn no new words, such as days you spend digging a tunnel out of your prison cell, or days that you finally figure out which berries are safe to eat on the uninhabited island where you've been shipwrecked. But learning new words is a good thing. We're getting badly off topic.
Anyway, the dragonslayer eventually found the second little dragon's cave, murdered him, and stole his gold.
The third little dragon made her lair in a bank. Through a combination of predatory lending, savvy investment, and tax evasion, the dragon eventually gained a controlling interest in several key local industries. When the dragonslayer showed up, he encountered the dragon's lawyer, who presented him with documents showing that the dragon had purchased herself a title in the local peerage, and was now a viscountess. When the dragonslayer protested and made it clear that he still intended to do the dragon harm, she had him arrested and eventually hanged.
The lesson to learned here is that there are lots of different kinds of caves formed by different natural phenomena, and that any one of them could have a dragon in it. That, and lots of wealthy and powerful people are monsters.
Now, run along, all of you. I'm a very solitary being.
Long ago and far from here, there once lived a mighty dragon and her three young hatchlings. Dragons are, for the most part, very solitary creatures, and the little dragons were quickly reaching the age that their mother would drive them from her lair to forge their own futures. She prepared them for that day as best she could, teaching them all that they would need to know and warning them of the perils they might face, for the world is a cruel and dangerous place, even for a dragon. She even, in the end, let each of them have a tiny share of her hoard.
Now, a dragon without a hoard is a pitiful creature indeed. A dragon that does not sleep on gold sleeps a fitful, restless sleep, and is often plagued by nightmares. Also, gold is very pretty.
The mother dragon's instinctive greed fought her quickly fading sense of parental responsibility as she allowed each little dragon to carry away a third of their weight in gold. She admonished them to do their best to protect themselves and their hoards from grubby humans, and then sent them on their way with a mighty roar that shook the heavens. Or at least it shook the sky. I don't have any reliable accounts as to whether the heavens were affected. Probably not - they tend not to notice much of what goes on down here.
Now, most people can't tell the difference between one dragon roar and another, but there lived in this land at least one man who knew what this particular roar meant. It meant that there were young, inexperienced, and relatively small dragons out in the world with great shiny piles of gold in their possession. And when you're a dragonslayer, as this man was, that is exactly the kind of dragon you want to be trying to slay, because dragonslayers who hunt mature, experienced, enormous dragons tend to die gruesome, violent deaths. So the dragonslayer set about hunting these vulnerable young dragons.
The first little dragon made her lair in a dead volcano. The lingering aura of fiery, destructive power reminded her fondly of her mother, and the lava tubes made excellent caves. She liked the way the jagged obsidian reflected the gleaming gold of her hoard. It would be a wonderful place to build her new life.
The dragonslayer found the first little dragon's cave, murdered her, and then stole her gold.
What? Life is harsh.
The second dragon made his lair in a karst cave filled with marvelous speleothems. What's a karst? What's a speleothem? Don't they teach you children anything in schools these days? It means that it was a cave formed by groundwater dissolving bedrock, and that it was filled with all sorts of wonderful dribbley stone formations like stalactites and flowstone. Well good, you learned some new words today. Any day you don't learn a new word is a day wasted. Actually, that's a ridiculous oversimplification - you can have very productive days in which you learn no new words, such as days you spend digging a tunnel out of your prison cell, or days that you finally figure out which berries are safe to eat on the uninhabited island where you've been shipwrecked. But learning new words is a good thing. We're getting badly off topic.
Anyway, the dragonslayer eventually found the second little dragon's cave, murdered him, and stole his gold.
The third little dragon made her lair in a bank. Through a combination of predatory lending, savvy investment, and tax evasion, the dragon eventually gained a controlling interest in several key local industries. When the dragonslayer showed up, he encountered the dragon's lawyer, who presented him with documents showing that the dragon had purchased herself a title in the local peerage, and was now a viscountess. When the dragonslayer protested and made it clear that he still intended to do the dragon harm, she had him arrested and eventually hanged.
The lesson to learned here is that there are lots of different kinds of caves formed by different natural phenomena, and that any one of them could have a dragon in it. That, and lots of wealthy and powerful people are monsters.
Now, run along, all of you. I'm a very solitary being.
