Dragons are all about sleeping on piles of coins and trying to rule the world would interfere with their nap time. The only reason why most campaign worlds in Dungeons & Dragons haven't been taken over by dragons is due to their lack of a union. There is a good reason why dragons are part of the name of the game and why they have the best treasure, as they are often the most challenging foes of all. A dragon in the hands of an experienced dungeon master will soon show them the error of their ways, as a dragon can utterly destroy a party if it uses smart tactics. The less experienced adventuring parties are usually excited to fight a dragon, as they are dreaming about all of the awesome treasure that they will be able to claim from its hoard. My memory isn't what it used to be the rum saw to that.It's hard to imagine a Dungeons & Dragonscampaign that doesn't feature at least one dragon, considering that they are in the name of the game. Thus leading to stories and legends of unclaimed booty in big (standardized) wooden treasure chests, hidden in caves and guarded by the dead, the secret location remembered only by a rum-addled sailor who might draw out a crude treasure map from memory. And sometimes, a captain may be taken, captured, or hanged for piracy or treason or any number of war crimes, before they could return for their tax-evading plunder. So bribery and piracy and tax evasion all were related. This didn't always work, of course, and it relied on lenient or neglectful port officials signing off on suspiciously quick returns to port, or suspiciously similar contents, from these back-to-back privateering takes. At which point, there was strong incentive to craft a second box, bury it, return to port and cash out their take, then return for the second box, transfer the treasure to their duty free box, hit a fishing vessel for cover, and claim the fishing vessel was smuggling whatever the crew had recovered from their second (or third, or fourth, etc.) box. If a ship captured 6-8 prizes before returning to port, they may find they have more valuables worth keeping than would fit in a single box. This standardized chest wasn't universal and each nation could change it or remove it from their Letters of Marque as they saw fit, so whoever offered the biggest chest often had the most privateers working for them.Īnd of course, since it was limited by size rather than value, these chests were often stuffed with whatever the crew captured that was highest value-preferably gold, silver, gems, art, or other iconic high-value items the ship may have captured as part of its privateering. Some Letters of Marque (basically a license to legally capture ships belonging to rival nations) would include a big wooden box with specific dimensions, and anything the crew could fit in that box was excluded from the tax and duty owed to the crown who issued their Letter of Marque (in other words, the captain and crew kept 100% of it, rather than 1/8th or 1/10th or whatever the Letter of Marque detailed for the rest of the ship and cargo). But as the wars continued and demanded more revenue, shares dwindled-enticing piracy, or worse, treason. Normally, captured ships and their cargo were assessed and sued by the crown, and the crew of the privateer ship would get a share of the proceeds. So, I'm operating on memory here, but if I recall correctly, tax evasion was the source of the iconic treasure chest.īack during the golden age of piracy, some nations would entice privateers to switch sides (and thus operating as auxillary naval units) by including 'duty-free chests' as part of a privateer's authorized prize-taking when capturing a ship.
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