🐉 The Dragon

It does not reason. It does not negotiate. It wakes up every turn and it is hungrier than the last one.

The dragon is the game's ever-present antagonist. The kingdom owes it tribute and must pay or be eaten. Every turn, the king has one question to answer: do I bribe it this time, or do I let it come?

Appetite: how much does the bribe cost?

The dragon's appetite grows with the game. In the balanced preset the bribe cost is fixed at 100g base with no growth per turn — but it's on a 4-turn cooldown, meaning the king can only pay a bribe every fourth turn. On all other turns, the dragon is unbribeable and either fed or let loose.

Why the cooldown The cooldown forces the king to rotate between "safe" turns (bribed) and "risky" turns (not bribed, someone probably dies). It prevents a perfect-information safe game and makes each unbribed turn a real moment of tension.

What happens when the dragon isn't bribed

On an unbribed turn, the dragon attacks. It picks a victim and eats them. Who it picks depends on several factors:

Who is near the forest — players who chose Search Forest this turn are more exposed.
Who has followers — followers can die instead of their owner, effectively acting as a meat shield.
Whose base survival is weak — princes and citizens are in real trouble without followers.
Role base survival in forest context: peasant 70% · knight 75% · citizen 25% · prince 10% · special function vampires/werewolves 95%.

Outside of forest context, the dragon picks roughly at random weighted against protection. The king is not immune (in the balanced preset). A poorly-bribing king can absolutely be eaten by their own dragon.

When someone dies

A dragon death does three things:

The player is removed from the game. No revival, no resurrection.
50% of their gold goes to the treasury (death_gold_treasury_fraction: 0.5). The other 50% is lost.
Every item in their inventory is moved to the Pawn Shop where other players can buy it.

A dead player's follower pack is dispersed (children run home, squires flee the field, etc.) — they don't join anyone else.

Killing the dragon

Dragon slaying is an instant game win. Any living subject who assembles a complete dragon-killing weapon set can attempt it. There are four paths — one per role — and an ever-growing fifth path via the Pawn Shop. See Dragon-Slay Paths for full details.

Attempting to slay with a weapon from your dedicated role always succeeds (100%). Attempting with a weapon meant for another role has a 30% success rate. On failure, the attacker dies and their items go to the Pawn Shop — which is often where a weapon set will then be assembled by a luckier player.

Bribing strategy for kings

Early game: bribe every 4th turn if you can afford it — losing a peasant is survivable but losing a knight early is hard to recover from.
Mid game: your treasury should be growing. Each bribe is ~100g but you're earning 350g/turn in NPC income. Don't skip.
Late game: if you're far from 10,000, consider not bribing. Every death generates pawn shop sales that refill the treasury — sometimes more cheaply than raising taxes would.
Emergency: if a knight or prince has a nearly-complete weapon set, it may be worth skipping a bribe specifically to make them more likely to attempt (and possibly fail-and-drop) their set.