The Promises of a Dragon (5 minutue read)
Once upon a time there was a great dragon.
It lived in a mountain cave and slept all day on a vast hoard of gold.
At night it flew out and gorged itself on a goats and cattle. Sometimes it ate villagers or burned towns.
Eventually, the dwarves who lived in the valley grew tired of being terrorized by the dragon, so they assembled an army and marched on its cave. They defeated the dragon and imprisoned it, but no mortal can slay the great primordial beast.
The victorious dwarves soon fell to arguing about what to do with the dragon’s hoard.
Such a great treasure was difficult to divide. Every dwarf had fought in the battle and many had died, but some fought harder than others, and without the help of the sword smiths and armorers, there could have been no victory.
Guards were set while the dwarves decided what to do with it.
The sly dragon lay on its pile of gold, grinning at the tiny dwarves who thought they had won.
It called out to a guard and he went over to hear its piece. A skinny, spotty dwarf by the name of Little Willy One-eye, the as-yet unsuspecting founder of a great dynasty.
The dragon asked the dwarf, “Congratulations on your victory little one. What will you do now?”
The dwarf thought about it and told the dragon that he would return to his village to work as an apprentice to the forge-master, making weapons and armor to protect the valley. “If only I had a forge of my own, I could make more arms and better defend my people.”
The dragon grinned, displaying rotting gristle and bones between its long dagger-like teeth. “That’s a fine idea. Why don’t I help you? Here, take some of my gold as a loan.”
The guard was suspicious. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. When you have prospered and your wealth has multiplied, bring back my gold, and a few sheep and goats as payment.”
The dwarf did as instructed. He became a great chief, wealthy and prosperous. Still the people couldn’t decide what to do with the treasure, but individually, they had come to an understanding with the dragon.
Every night, dwarves came to the cave to make deals. They left with gold for their enterprises, and came back with the payment. Those who defaulted were eaten or roasted alive the next time they came to visit.
The dragon was happy, and the dwarves were happy. Both felt that they had struck a good bargain. The dragon didn’t have to leave his cave, and the dwarves had funding for their enterprises.
But soon there was no gold left in the cave. All of it was out in the world, changing hands and paying for trade and industry. The great grandson of the first borrower, Lord William IV, came to the cave and found the dragon looking more amused than ever.
He stammered, looking around for the source of the joke, twitching the ermine cloak that adorned his shoulders, “I’m in a little bit of a bother and I need to borrow some gold...”
The dragon laughed, “You don’t need gold, you little crunchy critter. I have something even better for you.” The gigantic beast handed over a long roll of illustrated hide, tiny between its terrible claws.
The dwarf handled it nervously. “What should I do with this?”
The dragon squinted at him; its great burning green eye meters high. “Present it anywhere that you would normally spend your money. It’s a dragon’s promise and is better than gold.”
Soon this became the norm. After just a few years, there were more promises than there was gold. A lot more. But no one worried, because the whole economy was predicated on the promise of the dragon, not the promise of gold.
Although he gave out promises, the dragon usually asked for gold in payment. It didn't take long before, coin by coin, his hoard was returned to the cave.
Sometimes the dragon was too greedy and open handed with its promises. It gave out too many and people lost confidence for a while. The ornate scrolls became near worthless. Usually though, the beast was tight with its generosity, refusing loans unless they were in service of its own interests.
Even more than in the age of gold, the dwarven community restructured itself around serving the needs of the dragon. Vast grazing lands were put in service of its daily feeding. Its cave soon became bright and gay with beautiful art works and luxuries.
A bed of gold and silver, deeper and more extravagant than ever covered the floor of the cave. Little brass bells on silver chains warned the dragon if anyone tried to sneak in unannounced.
A ring of dwarven warriors, clad in the best mail that money could buy now surrounded the cave, guarding the dragon against anyone who might become discontent with the arrangement. People could still fund their enterprises, as long as those projects aligned with the interests of the dragon.
But dragons and dwarves have different needs.
One day the dwarven council held a meeting and the great, great, great grandson of Lord William the Mighty stood before them.
His lordly clothes were ragged and torn. He’d had a run of bad luck and feared to go before the dragon to ask for more money when he had loans outstanding. He looked around the hall, now fallen in to disrepair and saw the same sorry state among all the great lords.
“If this is the condition which we have fallen to, how must the ordinary dwarf on the street be suffering now?”
One especially handsome and charismatic dwarf stood up and stepped bravely forward, “It’s all the fault of the goblins!”
His neighbor leaped to his feat. “That’s right, it’s all because of those green-skinned little bastards!”
All around him a roar of righteous anger rose up to the rafters of the dirty old hall.
Sometime later, having exhausted themselves in a fruitless war of annihilation against the goblins, the dwarves one again stood in the drafty great hall. Still no better off, for all their valor and glory on the field of battle.
The great lords sat in sullen silence until a dwarven maid stepped forward. She pointed out over the dead fields and poisoned, choked waterways of the valley. The wave of her hand took in the denuded forests and the dilapidated buildings where starving dwarven children huddled against the cold.
“Look at you, foolish old grey-beards. Why do you defend a system which causes this?”
William XIV turned his rheumy gaze towards her, too tired even to move his big old head.
“What do you mean, woman? There’s no alternative!”
The woman put her hands on her hips and looked at him with scorn.
“Of course there’s an alternative!”
A bony old dwarf with spectacles stood beside her, holding a scroll in his hands. “I agree, and I have here some ideas for what we could do differently...”
Soon many other ordinary dwarves filed in to the great hall, adding their own voices of discontent.
Lord William lumbered to his feet and shouted down at them, “You don’t have any authority here! We are the lords and we make the decisions!”
The angry crowd surged forward and Old Lord William disappeared under a wave of tiny furious fists. The last in a long line of idiots.
[Here the story teller might pause and ask the children what they would do. How would they solve the problem of the dragon’s promises?]
From that day, no more dwarves went to the cave in search of money. The council of dwarves expanded in to regional and village halls. Each made its own decisions on how money would be created and where it should be spent. Every town and village had their own solutions.
These new promises could be spent anywhere in the same way as real gold. One community might issue a package of promises to pay for a new roof on the school, and the builders would take them home and spend them on dinner and clothes and all the things a dwarf needed to survive.
New wealth bubbled up from the bottom, created in the building and maintenance of schools, hospitals and libraries. And of course, even taverns, theaters and breweries...
Sometimes the communities issued too many promises, and confidence would ebb. Other times they would issue too few and they would become more highly prized. But no one complained too much, because they weren’t children and they knew how to order their own affairs. There was never too much or too little money, unless you were the sort of person who liked to bury a golden hoard under your bed.
An enterprise might fail and the promises would still go to feed families. The materials used were still available to be converted to other uses. A farmer would come to the community for a grant of a promise so that he could use it to bring his field back to life. If he wasted the money on frivolities, the community would remember, and next time he would be turned away.
In the fall, promises were collected and used to pay for fines and taxes. Those who had accumulated a lot in terms of assets paid something back to the community in recognition of the fact that no one could prosper alone. The expired paper promises were shaped and formed by little hands in to a huge paper dragon to be burned at the harvest festival.
The real beast sat alone in its cave.
It wondered what had happened to the daily feed.
It stared at the walls of its prison and waited.
It didn’t worry too much, because it knew that nothing could kill a dragon, not even hunger and one day someone would be along to beg for a loan...
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