How much tribute can a dragon get away with?

Okay, here's a classic situation:

The countryside is plagued by a dragon, who demands tribute from the local city on the basis of them being in his territory.

Now, the dragon here doesn't actually demand the humans to sacrifice virgin women, and if he did, it would be for an entirely different (but consensual) purpose (c'mon, how else am I supposed to place half-dragons into the world?).

So, the dragon demands food (whatever a normal human would eat) tribute to be brought to a certain spot every three days. His standards aren't high (a bit higher than that of an average peasant), but he gets slightly angry when the tribute is deliberately lacking or doesn't contain any fruit.

The dragon doesn't show it but in his heart, he's afraid of humans, more precisely an army of humans, so he would obviously play it safe by making his slaying more costly than paying the tribute.

With an aerosol aqua regia breath, he's quite formidable and if things go south (read an army shows up), he can fly away, but once he does that, returning would most likely result in his death.

Assuming an average late-medieval city, just how much and what should an average tribute be in this case?

posted about 4 years ago

Mephistopheles‭

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