Once upon a time, there was a valiant knight named Sir Refsalot: A dragon slayer of great renown. He laughed whenever he saved a village or a maiden from the local monster. He was heard to say again and again, "I've slain dragons like that before now ... but never a really big one!"
Time passed, and his dragon-slaying ways continued, and his already-impressive strength and skills improved, and one day he came across an enormous dragon whose flight was accompanied by storms of thunder. After he slew that terrible beast, Sir Refsalot would say, "I've slain plenty of dragons ... but only one really big one!" And he would laugh as thunder rolled in memory of the dragon he had slain. It was for slaying that dragon, who had threatened the entire kingdom of Bageltoppings, that the knight was elevated to the nobility, and named - he and his line in perpetuity - the Count of Sesame.
After that, he slew many dragons more, some that merely threatened villages and maidens, some gigantic ones that threatened entire kingdoms ... and he would keep track of all the greatest he had slain, and soon was reporting, "I've slain many and many a dragon in my day ... but only five really big ones!" He laughed as he said it, and thunder roared in the sky, in memory of the first such dragon he had slain.
The sixth truly enormous dragon Count Refsalot met was frightening and deadly, but it fled when it saw the great dragon slayer, and hid in its cave. Count Refsalot called a challenge to it, but it answered, "Maybe someday! I'll call for you again when I'm good and ready!" Count Refsalot tested the strength of the mountain and the wall that kept the dragon in, and he started a rockslide to ensure the wall would hold for a long, long time, and though the dragon wasn't yet dead, it troubled the countryside no more, and he tallied it as his sixth really big dragon.
The ninth gigantic dragon Count Refsalot was to meet fled far away in time and space, but was slain in due course when it tried to return, with nineteen other slayings in between. And Count Refsalot of Sesame was heard to proclaim, "I've killed many and many a dragon in my day, and now twenty-eight really big ones!" And he laughed, and a thunderclap rolled out over the plains in memory of the first such dragon he had slain.
Then at last, Count Refsalot met a truly powerful dragon: A dragon as cunning as powerful, with a hoard so vast that the gaudiest of misers' dreams fell short of its glory, who had worked for ages without end to compile and expand it, ever hungrier to acquire wealth though already rich beyond the dreams of avarice. The largest dragon Count Refsalot had ever seen, and the most dangerous, peered down at him with one great fiery eye, and asked him, "Aren't you a little tired of slaying dragons by now? You haven't even risen up within your feudal system since you killed that thunder dragon years ago. I don't feel like fighting you. I know I outweigh you a million to one at least, but I know you don't win by strength; you win by policy. I'd like to make you my advisor, and rule the world together, to turn it into one vast hoard, to make you rich - although, of course, not nearly so rich as me!"
"I am not moved by wealth, nor by power and advancement," proclaimed Count Refsalot proudly.
The dragon sighed deeply. "Well, okay. But how about this? You must be bored of fighting dragons. Why not do something more? Think how much fun it would be to conquer the world, and then the galaxy!"
Raising his gleaming sword, Count Refsalot laughed aloud. "Nay, fun is where you find it, and as for world conquest ... wait, the galaxy?" Count Refsalot blinked, then blinked again, and put his sword away. He squinted up at the dragon. "What's a galaxy?"
A long explanation and a short but decisive war later, the new rulers of the world started hatching from their eggs, building a colony ship and a pair of little scouts along with their first high-tech factories. So it was that Count Refsalot met and became advisor to the greatest dragon of them all: Really Big One #29.
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Next: Common Ground?
