For millennia dragons have raided and pillaged human villages for gold. Lately, however, they’ve heard of something called ‘wages’ where humans will just GIVE them gold for doing jobs.
Capitalism saves the day.
“You mean instead of spending an hour burning down the entire village and maybe stealing 100 gold pieces. All you want me to do is just spend 10 minutes lightly breathing under the forges and you’ll give me 25 pieces each week just like that?”
“Every week”
“How will you afford this?”
“Well we wont have to rebuild the village once a month for starters”
eventually the dragons see how little gold they are getting for their labor. without them the forges would not be lit and the metal would be very sub par. Regular metal is not nearly as impressive as metal forged in dragons flame. The dragon demands higher wage because its his labor that makes the weapons worth buying over any other blacksmith. the blacksmiths apprentice agrees because the blacksmith hardly even makes any of the weapons. The dragon and the apprentice form a union.