The Ballista and the Dragon

Thirty years ago, I was running a group of my good friends through a fantasy roleplaying game. If you’re not familiar, roleplaying games are like collaborative storytelling with rules and dice and where one person, the Game Master, is in charge of dreaming up the skeleton of the story and adjudicating unscripted events. For instance, the players had learned of a dragon’s lair, and had set off across the countryside, facing goblin raiders and wyverns and demon-worshiping cultists, eventually arriving at the foot of a mountain, within whose snowy peak slept the dragon.

It was at this point the players devised a plan. They were worried a dragon was simply too powerful a foe to overcome by normal means. So, they designed and built a ballista, a piece of primitive artillery, that could be disassembled for the journey up the mountain and then reassembled once they reached the lair. This plan required a lot of time and gold, there were arguments and tantrums, but in the end, it was built, and the party began their slog toward the icy summit, dragging that cumbersome engine.

Eventually, they reached the entrance to the dragon’s cave, assembled their ballista, and rolled it through twisting tunnels and over deep crevasses, until, rounding a final corner, they met the beast herself. As dragons are wont to do, she immediately reared back, inhaled mightily . . . at which point I paused in my description of the unfolding action, and asked, “What was that ballista made of again? Was it wood?”

And she breathed a great plume of fire, singeing the party, but lighting the ballista up like a matchstick. Through moans of disappointment they carried on, and managed to slay the dragon with their swords and spells, find her treasure (though that’s yet another story), and return from the mountain richer and maybe a little wiser.

Did I, the Game Master, have to rule that the dragon’s breath was hot enough to torch the ballista? No, I did not. From a certain angle it could be seen as a cruel and punitive adjudication. But the writer and storyteller in me saw value in laying waste to their plans. And, indeed, thirty years later, the tale of The Ballista and the Dragon remains one of the stories these friends are most fond of telling when we reminisce about the games we’ve played.

I know none of us want to suffer. I know it can feel sometimes that our plans are the only active power we have in making real what waits unseen in our heart, and that the wheel of life is meanwhile turning indifferently against our desires. But there has always been a part of me who does not participate in all my plan-making, who would rather wait and see, who is quickly amused by my little complaints and fears, knowing he was born capable of emerging unscathed from all the jaws and fires of life’s unfolding.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com