How to Slay a Dragon by Jonathan Starspear
29th August 2006
Jonathan Starspear’s treatise How to Slay a Dragon: the experiences and expertise of the first and greatest ever dragon hunter, Jonathan Starspear details the first successful adventurer-led dragon hunt.
Jonathan Starspear invented the share system, organized a 790 person strong force of heroic adventurers, and led them on a hunt for the powerful Red Dragon, Senlo.
Topics include how to find a dragon, how to defeat a dragon, how to find a dragon’s lair, how to slay a dragon, and how to collect a dragon’s treasure. To summarize, after finding a dragon and doing battle with it, a divining ritual must be cast to find the dragon’s lair.
If the force is powerful enough, a dragon will collect its most precious items and abandon the lair. Many times, the dragon will battle the adventurers in its layer. Here the dragon will have several advantages: the dragon will know it’s lair well and may have a number of tricks to help it defeat invaders. Also, it’s unlikely that a froce of hundreds will be able to do battle the dragon simultaneously within the confines of the dragon’s lair. Adventurers who are unused to opertain in large groups and who are unfamilair with most of their company may have difficulty working well as a unit.
Once the dragon has retreated or been defeated cursed items must be identified and the real treasure must be divided by the shareholding adventurers.
Today the share system is widely used by adventurers to organize large forces. The average dragon horde is worth 50,000 gold. If 1,000 shares are issued, each becomes worth 50 gold. Before the shares’ final value is calculated, magic and mundane items in the treasure horde are auctioned off. Only shareholders may bid and winners must pay immediately. The gold raised from this auction is totaled with other coins and awarded to the shareholders.
Shares are not only used for hunting dragons. The share system has been used for hunting many powerful foes including wizards, vampires (and all types of greater undead), and any adversary perceived to have enough treasure to make the share system viable. Generally from 20 - 1,000 are issued depnding on the strength and supposed treasure of the hunted.
In larger groups, where personal accountability is difficult, shareholders will be required to voluntarily submit to a quest ritual. This insures that they will do what their part in the hunt. Without the quest ritual, adventurers would hesitate to put themselves in harm’s way during the hunt, preferring to collect their shares by doing as little work and taking as little risk as they can.