this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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Here's what's weird about it, when you have that much money, you don't tend to work for anyone.
Why get involved in some complicated spy game? You're rich, you don't have to do shit, and in fact you're so rich you can do whatever you want... with children... I mean can you picture those same people who feel they are above the law, being beholden to anyone?
I don't know honestly. If I had several million dollars I would probably stop there, invest it and live off the interest and never have to work. I may hold down a job as a hobby, but I wouldn't be beholden to anyone. I guess I would never become a truly wealthy person.
Obviously there is something else driving these billionaires. It is never enough for them and I think it probably is something along the lines of a mental illness.
It's dragon sickness. Seriously. In all of high fantasy, there is exactly one dragon that has more than $1,000,000,000, when the story or setting was created. His name is Smaug. That gigantic pile of good and treasure amounts to somewhere between $10,000,000,000 - $15,000,000,000. In every other story or game, all the dragons (except of maybe one single Red dragon) have less than $1,000,000,000 in gold. (Admittedly the price of gold isn't helping here)
RAW: all other types of dragons have less wealth than Red Ancient Wyrms. A Red Ancient Wyrm will have between 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 gold pieces worth of wealth. We'll assume they are a Philistine, and all their wealth is in gold. That means that one single Red Wyrm per world might have somewhere around 500,000 oz of gold. Currently that much gold would be worth just over 2 billion dollars, but again that is the extreme statistical outlier of the literal greediest and most evil type of dragon.
Edit: oh and the worst part? The billionaires don't have an excuse. If the evil dragons don't hoard and eat their wealth just before they die, Tiamat / Thakisis will kill their soul. They literally take it with them. Our billionaires have no such rules governing them, they're just mentally ill.
Edit 2: I'm aware that shadowrun exists. That's not high fantasy.