Chapter 3: Dragons Don't Share
Drakkenstadt was roaring. In a good way. In the early days, Ember had wasted little(1) time teaching the populace the arts of smithing, metallurgy, construction, masonry, and other such needful things for building a city.
Once she had educated what she felt was enough teachers of the practical arts (and taught them the concept of trading knowledge for more tangible treasure), she moved on to the fine arts.
Little effort was spent on painting(2). More effort was given to jewelry(3), with higher levels of success among the more mature dragons. What dragons really took to like fire to linseed oil, was sculpture. Clay, metal, marble… just about any medium(4) that could be considered permanent at high temperatures, as long as it could be made to look like a dragon.
“How do you like your new statue, friend?” Talc asked.
“I like it,” Garble replied. “I think it really captures my essence.”
“It looks sort of… angry. Like it wants to rip off my head and breathe fire down my neck.”
“That’s sorta what I meant.”
Garble was quite pleased with the somewhat larger-than-life(5) statue. Its polished red granite body upright on its haunches, claws ready to eviscerate the unfortunate creature its yellow scapolite eyes were presumably glaring down at. The gaping maw being lined with teeth cast in white gold was a particularly nice touch, he thought, and the detailed lines being accentuated with gold inlay didn't hurt either. It was a likeness any proper dragon should be proud to display in their front room.
It may have cost him more treasure to commission than he’d earned in his entire life before coming to Drakkenstadt, but it wasn't a large enough expenditure to make him lose sleep over nowadays, and hadn't been since a couple years after he’d taken up finance(6) as the smart drake’s way to grow his hoard. After all, nodragon defaulted on a Garble loan.
“So, uh...” Talc said with fidgeting claws, once they’d made their way to Garble’s sitting room. “Have you heard the Dragonlord's most recent proclamation?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
Talc’s expression went instantly from nervous to floored.
“Bu— Wha— You can't be telling me that you, that Mister Wait For the Dragonlord to Get Torn Limb from Limb and then Swoop in to Take her Place, are okay with this!”
“Eh, I can't exactly say I like it, but when has that ever meant anything? So the Dragonlord wants us to trade with other species. Big whoop. I’ll let a few early adopters take it in the teeth, and then move in in a way that actually makes sense. Like I always end up doing whenever she makes a proclamation trying to turn the world upside-down. Hate to say it, but everything that Cunning Optimist touches turns to gold, even if it spends some time as coal along the way. Tartarus, even the Acquisitions Tax I was sure would go over like an osmium balloon led to dragons clamoring to donate their finest works, in hopes that they’d get featured in the gallery of the Cobalt Palace(7).
“Anyway, my sources in Wyrmwood have been telling me that the small-scale pony-dragon grey market trade there hasn't been hurting things for them. I’d actually considered importing some pony-made quartz cake from there, if you’ve got to know.”
“So, you are okay with this,” Talc said, visibly relaxing.
“Close enough. I figure if the world is as mad as Ember is, I might as well roll with it and take what I can get. And ‘what I can get’ has been pretty good so far.
“Besides,” he said, a grin spreading across his face, “it was really hard to argue with her closing remark. ‘Greed is good.’”
(1) Some time was admittedly lost on false starts translating theory to practice.
(2) Not only are canvas and linseed oil quite flammable, dragons find the heavy-metal-based pigments delicious.
(3) More time was lost on trying to give dragons the concept of fine jewelry. Jewelry, to a dragon, is viewed very similarly to how flower arrangement is viewed by ponies. A particularly fancy gem setting has about the same life expectancy around a dragon as would a specially arranged bouquet of exotic flowers around a perpetually starving earth pony.
(4) Some of the more eccentric dragons even commissioned statues made out of pieces of their personal hoards.
(5) 1.2:1 scale, at the time of its creation.
(6) Once Talc finally managed to explain the idea of financial interest to him, Garble found giving out loans quite interesting indeed.
(7) In much the same manner as a mother might hang her child’s hoof-painting on the fridge.
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I understood that reference.
Garble Gecko.
This makes perfect sense.
Splendid!
8033721
Glad you thought so.
8033657 8033678
Ember got to be in the position of a matriarch who has to make do with being proud when her kid puts the paste on the paper instead of in their mouth. Everybody's got to start somewhere, right?
That's not to say there was nothing truly museum-worthy in the mix, though.
Glad you had as much fun reading the footnotes as I had writing them!
And I'm also really glad that prologue got a good laugh out of you.
Insanity is a mentality that deviates from group consensus. Driving your entire civilization mad can be tricky, but having an obedience-compelling artifact definitely helps.
Fantastic story of how dragons had civilization forced upon them, even among the most grudging adopters. I can only imagine what Spike thought of these developments. Indeed, I'd love to see what Celestia thought of them. I don't think she saw this one coming. Plus, the idea of Ember getting just as much pony lore as Twilight did that of dragons is a fantastic idea in general.
Really, there's nothing here I didn't love. Thank you for it, and best of luck in the judging.
I think Talc should have the last line to Garble saying Greed is Good.
Yes, Minister.
8033798 To reply to other comment y'left - that's my 'Stuff that tickles me in the perfect way', so can't easily answer it because, well, it's sort of a 'Either it does or doesn't scenario and this one has no real flaws sticking out to critique, on my end :)
8034032
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Senpai noticed me!
Ahem.
"Sister, come quick!" Luna said(1), snatching a startled Celestia in her telekinetic aura and teleporting the both of them into the skies above Stalliongrad.
After shaking her head and ensuring she didn't plummet to the busy streets below, Celestia fixed her sister with one of her medium rare glares of irritation. "Luna, what is the meaning of this?"
Unfortunately for Celestia, Luna had long since grown immune to every last one of Celestia's lesser glares. "Look!" Luna said as she once more grabbed Celestia's snout in her telekinesis and twisted it towards the Problem.
She swiftly forgot her erstwhile irritation.
"What in my name(2)..."
A massive hoard(3) of dragons, ranging from adults to whelps, was marching towards the city.
"By Star Swirl's famed invisible pants(4)!" Luna shouted, chipping some shingles off an unfortunate roof. "They're bringing..."
After a moment of Celestial squinting, followed by an air-lensing spell, Celestia turned back to her sister. "Statues, among other things."
"The fiends intend to shatter our walls with golems of stone and steel, then! We must rally the troops at once!"
"Nay, sister. Hold your horses," Celestia said, the wheels within wheels of her brain visibly turning. "
Some of the letters I've been receiving from Princess Twilight are beginning to make sense. I think we should have a word with whichever dragon is in charge."
"The largest, then?"
"Most likely."
(1) The words "Luna shouted" are reserved for instances involving actual property damage.
(2) People at the top have unique lexical difficulties.
(3) The proper name for a large gathering of dragons.
(4) Some people are more creative about resolving the aforementioned lexical difficulties than others.
8034222
I'd say Spike is a lot closer to golden dragons in diet and demeanor than to any sort of chromatic dragon I've ever heard of, but perhaps Tiamat would be able to look past such details for his sake. Thanks for the scene!
8034552
But then we'd have nested references. Don't want this getting too crazy.
8034558
Can't fault you for that. Taste is a fickle, hard-to-pin-down thing.
Welp. I guess I'll have to settle for 2nd place now.
8035587
I mean, it can't be that good.
8035813
Oops! Fixing...
Clever, funny, and an interesting take on dragon culture. Good stuff.
Do wish it had been a bit longer, if only to smooth things out a bit. Word count may have been a factor, still a bit rough.
A fun story about Ember being a much-better-than-expected Dragonlord. Though I can't help but think Celestia might come to regret that when she has to deal with a thriving nation of industrious, larger than life dragons living right next door.
8040106
Glad you had fun following the rise of dragonkind.
And why wouldn't Celestia be happy about it? Twilight assures her that their Dragonlord is perfectly friendly.
(A sequel dealing with the effects of modernized dragons on pony (and other) society could be fascinating, come to think of it... No promises just yet.)
Simplistic, but pretty good.
8040718
Like banker dragons, for example? Because I´m not sure teaching a race of overpowered, fire breathing lizards defined by greed the joys of capitalism and globalization was a good idea to begin with.
8041203
Thank you.
8041272
Well, I'm not claiming it'd all be sunshine and rainbows. A loan shark would be way less intimidating than a loan dragon, after all. And I don't currently have a handle on just how international lending would work, or how extradition for contracts in default would function, or... Well, international trade is complicated.
It would certainly make the world more interesting, though.
8041272
see, the ferengi were bad enough, but when your ferengi can destroy a small town...
that cover art...
reminds me of Napoleon
8042788
Makes sense, as the art is an allusion to a painting of him.
8043040
ahh that would explain it
Amusing and, as far as I know or care, an unique take on dragons and on Ember's career as their leader. Of course Garble would be swept up in the progress, just like the rest, only meaner and less self-aware about being influenced than most.
8067922
It's amazing how fun it is to have a character at either extreme on the self-awareness spectrum.
Glad you enjoyed it!
8071635 Your welcome to use it...I don't have a good enough of an editor to pull a story off with this...in fact I don't have an editor period...
"Cunning optimist"... I've heard that particular phrase before, but where?
Anyway, good fic.
8081055
If it's been used elsewhere, that's news to me.
Glad you liked the fic.
There are no typos here, good job :V
That was fun. ;D
8082827
I couldn't find anything definitive on the proper term for a female dragon, but vixen was the term I saw mentioned that I liked best. And I figured that since I was the author, and canon hadn't said anything on the subject...
Firstfruits is, in fact, a perfectly cromulent word. It refers, typically, to the first produce of a harvest. I'm using it a bit more figuratively here.
8082834
You are a knave and a scoundrel!
...
You are also right. Fixed!
Glad you enjoyed the fic!
8082834
I see what you did there, you son of a horse.
Well played!
And then began the Red Trade... the more unscrupulous ponies selling their own kind as dragon snacks.
Twas a dark day indeed... well, except for Luna, who found she could once again go back to gobbling up ponies.
8093913 Did you just took that from the 'Horizon: Zero Dawn' game ?
8094614 That's in a game? I was just using the 'red' as symbolic of selling ponies to get crunched up in dragon jaws.
8096565 Well, there's a tribe raiding other tribes for people to sacrifice to the ''Sun god'', so that ''he'' gives them mercy from robotic animals attacks... and these raids are called ''Red raids''(Red-something) by others.
8100692 Eh, simple phrases are always bound to exist somewhere before anyone thinks of them anymore. 7 billion minds; only so many words.
Imposing Sovereigns reviews conclude with a look at the madmares.
I was convinced that "Cunning Optimist" had to be a term taken from Pratchett, but it seems not. It may be more a Garble story than an Ember one, but it's way up in the ranks of Garble stories. Suddenly introducing footnotes partway through the fic is a bit odd, and they're not all that amusing. But the last line has a lot going for it!
8241806
Not the first time I have been mistaken for Sir Pterry, and not just because of the footnotes. I'll take that as a compliment.
I'll admit, the footnotes crept in on a whim and I didn't feel like backtracking to make them consistent.
Glad you enjoyed the fic apart from that, though!
8242814
Being mistaken for TP (not that sort of TP) is definitely a compliment, yes!
The last line there, I know what movie that is from, but I have never seen it.
How many years in to the future from Gauntlet of fire is the ending. Dragons has now gone from the stone age to the 1980s.
8252197
Wall Street is certainly worth watching, and not just the '80s zeitgeist and a taste of the yuppie era. The sequel isn't as good, but is still worth a look. And you could wrap them up with The Big Short, about the rise and fall of the subprime bubble.
Surely you ment to say Dragon Greed is Good.
I might also have a story by that name already.
This was fun! Clearly I need to ready more of your stuff
8434426
By the way, you are the first person to pick out that line as a favorite.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I need to read more of your stuff, too.
You can has review!
10483661
Sweet!