Would you choose the Fortress or the Dragon?

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  • #223080

     

    Imagine you are a citizen in the fictional country of Fandonia which is a fantasy middle ages type world where things like elves, magic and castles exist.

    Now imagine you have 2 choices of how to live your life.

    The choices are:

    Choice 1:

    You in this life have deal with living under the constant danger and threat of a massive fire breathing dragon. This dragon has attacked and killed many many people all throughout Fandonia for the past centuries maybe even before Humans came to the continent.

    Most people in the land except for the people at the Fandonia Fortress have not yet made weapons good enough to kill or at least break the dragon’s rock hard invincible skin but it isn’t impossible for the people in Fandonia at some point in the future after a long time of trial and error to figure out a way of killing him but that could be a very very long time with a long time of research and development.

    Whenever the dragon isn’t around and sleeping in his tall mountain cave which are long periods of peace but they don’t last but are still long periods of times none the less of peace as he will need to come out a feed from time to time, people can live their lives like normal however they want like building their houses as big, tall or wide as they want.

    Building a home is hard work as your neighbours might not help you or you are too late to get the resources needed but you always have an opportunity if you are willing to work at it.

    You can even attempt to build defences in case of the dragon but it may have a high chance of failing but there could also be very possible rare chance you create a defence that can by luck injury or kill the dragon?

    People can gather as much food as they want then store as much of it as they want with no limit, people can breed as many farm animals as they want, and people can have families as big as they want.

    So with this freedom of much choice and opportunity in their lives, people in Fandonia will always have that looming threat of the dragon eventually waking up, soaring through the skies and be a danger to them, their families, and their livelihoods.

    The dragon is such a constant danger he makes many many people pray to their different Gods for comfort and for others not pray to any God as they wonder if there is a God or Gods why did they create this dragon and unleash him upon them.

    Though the dragon rules the skies and can kill you along with all you know at anytime, the Dragon can’t take your individual belief or disbelief away as the creature is indiscriminate in who he chooses as his victim and doesn’t care who you pray or don’t pray to. No praying to any God or Gods can stop the dragon from coming after a victim.

    So people can walk all across Fandonia and live anywhere they wish in the country or be with whoever they wish to be with but they can at any moment be killed by the dragon whether they sense or don’t sense him coming near.

    The dragon is unpredictable, random and a force of nature that can’t be understood by man.

    And man can only do his best to avoid or fight the dragon off as best he can until the dragon grows bored then leaves to do something else.

    You have the option to find enough people throughout the country then build a great army with greater numbers in strength, and different brilliant minds to think up new ways to push back against the dragon but that might take years but it is not impossible just hard to get to.

    Choice 2:

    You in this life have feared the danger of the Dragon of Fandonia so much that you decide to move into Fortress of Fandonia which is the most secure place in all of the country and never except for once or twice a year will attacked by the dragon but the guards there usually chase the dragon off with no civilian deaths.

    At the Fortress of Fandonia there are guards and other warriors that are employed by the Lord of the Fortress of Fandonia to protect the place 24/7. These guards have the whole fortress guarded at all times and are all armed to the teeth with weapons that can actually greatly hurt or even kill the Dragon of Fandonia if the creature ever reared his ugly scaled head at the fortress to cause the trouble.

    In the Fortress of Fandonia, it is ruled by a Lord who’s every word is law and he makes up new laws all the time that he feels is best for his citizens whether they agree it disagree with him?

    The Lord will make up laws that on occasion that can be quite crazy, silly, and even bordering on infringing on his citizens’ rights.

    Like for example the Lord of the Fortress of Fandonia call make up a new law without asking his people for their opinions or votes and he creates a law like this one out of the blue that gives him the power to demand that the most beautiful women of his citizenship must go and have sex with him when he demands of it any time of the day of his choosing whether early dusk, day, noon, afternoon, night or midnight….the beautiful women he personally chooses who must report to him for sex or she is jailed along with her whole family or the woman along with her family are thrown out of the fortress to be prey for the dragon once more.

    The Lord will also have the power to make up another law that if he sees a random man on his streets that he can demand that the man do harsh labor or go to jail or be thrown out to the dragon.

    The laws are nuts but usually these laws happen once in a while but still very frequently that it does affect a good portion of the lives of citizens of the fortress or people they know like their neighbours, friends, and friends of friends who had to deal with the Lord’s unprofessional behaviour.

    The Lord will have a constant law that never changes where all citizens even the kids are expected to give 5 hours of their lives each day to sweep the streets, clean the buildings and do what is needed to keep the place clean for clean fit living.

    All citizens will be given food by the Lord and his nobles but only as much as the rulers say is the limit. No matter who you are or what you do in the fortress you get a supply of food even if you are low life beggar.

    Though farmers exist in the fortress they can’t decide how much to keep or sell, as their farm and their labor though done by them are still the Lord’s right to say how things are disrupted.

    The citizens can’t pick where to live in the Fortress of Fandonia and are instead instructed by the Lord or his nobles where they are assigned to live for their own good and to question the living arrangements might put you in jail or get you thrown out of the fortress.

    Unlike outside the fortress, everyone has a home, a bed, a warm cheaply designed fireplace even if they never were a hard worker to earn the right to have a home in the first place…the Lord just gives a home to everyone but he can also decide who will be homeless which is generally few but it happens when there aren’t enough houses built in the fortress he will pick the random person or persons to be homeless so that others others may have homes.

    Entertainment for the people of the Fortress of Fandonia are plays about the Lord fighting different monsters where in the end he always wins, books all about the biography about the Lord, poems about the Lord, art about the Lord, and just about anything that is supposed to be entertainment has the Lord of the fortress featured in it one way or the other? There is no escaping the Lord even in everyone’s imagination.

    In the fortress you as a citizen are required to obey the religion that the Lord follows whether you believe in a God or not. Any disbelief or questioning of the religion that the Lord follows gets you public shame or jail time or thrown out of the fortress.

    Also if you believed in another God or Gods previous, the Lord demands you put them aside and believe in his God as a main God and your God or Gods as secondary or not even believed in at all.

    As long as you obey his religion to a teeth even if the Lord keeps adding or subtracting from his religion he himself follows he gives you gold for your loyalty to his belief.

    You are allowed to walk around the fortress as that is another constant citizen’s right that the Lord decrees that he himself never breaks but from time to time you will see that throughout the Fortress of Fandonia here and there though the place is mostly invincible you can see a broken wall here and there and you even can see the dragon standing right outside the wall looking at you and the other people inside the fortress with his big red dragon eye.

    You will go to the palace to tell the Lord hoping he’d do something or maybe even give you a reward for helping his city by informing him of an oversight but depending on the Lord’s mood and state of mind he might throw you out for questioning his fortress’ integrity or tell you to just ignore it unless you want to get jail time or he’ll reward you for helping him.

    The Lord’s mind is a bit all over the place and you must think carefully of what you saw as the outcomes of your fate are unpredictable and random.

    You are at the Fortress of Fandonia long enough that the Lord there has consulted with his court wizard and alchemists enough that they have come up with a magic spell along with a potion that when worked together will make the citizens become invisible to the dragon and the creature will leave them alone if they even walked past him outside the fortress.

    The method is never tried before but the Lord assures everyone that what he his wizard and alchemists have created will work and is safe.

    All that has to happen is that each citizen will be given a potion from the alchemists then line up to have a spell be put on them by the wizard.

    To refuse the treatment would make you have a lot public shame from the other citizens of the fortress and might get you thrown out of the fortress.

    So alot of people take the potion then get the spell put on them and a very very small sector of the population has some averse reaction where some of the citizens after the procedure will either turn literally invisible (instead of being visible but invisible to the dragon like most of the people who got the procedure) then disappear forever.

    While the other adverse reaction to the procedure is that the people that got it will…..turn into goblins loss alot of height, turn green or grey in colour along with becoming ugly then attacking their fellow citizens.

    So what is your choice?

    So you had seen the two choices of how you can live in Fandonia, what life would you choose and why? This is a thought experiment I want to ask my readers of what of the two choices they would choose if they were a citizen of the made up fantasy land of Fandonia?

    I am interested in seeing you responses.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    #223105
    Mustangride1
    Moderator

      Neither, May I offer an alternative?

      You stated Magic is real in this world, I would learn Magic and learn spells designed to capture the great Wraith, or at minimum an invisibility spell. With Magic comes the ability to communicate with the Wraith or kill it. Learning of it, and having knowledge that Dragons can be from Puppies in intelligence to above Human Intelligence, I would either train this puppy or come to a mutual understanding for mutual survival  with it.

      A dragon after all can be a powerful ally. Using the alliance, I would then find the Outlanders and explain to them we could live in peace and protection from the Great Wraith, all while spreading rumors of its desolation of the regions to the Fortress People. Having the dragon burn large swaths of land to bolster these tails. All the while we build a wall and man it, to keep the Fortress people out “who wants a dictator and his sheep”

      We then grow in trade with other peoples and become explorers, tradesmen and learn from the Dragon. We live in respect and mutual benefit with it, perhaps locating other dragons in fact, we become the worlds super power, until a new age dawns where we leave on the winds and wings of dragons to hidden lands, an Avalon if you will. There the Great Magic of Elves, Men and Dragons provide us with immortality and peace.

      If the Wraith is a dumb brute, well I would just kill it then or imprison it using magic :)

      #223200

      @Mustangride1

      After reading my own thing I wrote as a reader instead of a writer, I have an alternative to offer also….I could just go across Fandonia talk to other communities that aren’t the Fandonia Fortress, form an alliance then after a long time of talking….I build up a big ass army then attack the Fandonia Fortress and I force the Lord of the Fandonia Fortress to show me how to make the dragon killing weapons then he and smiths have to if they want to live then my big army kills the dragon and after we put the Lord and his minions to working the fields as slaves for being assholes to everyone.

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