Oh good, he doesn't hate this specific thing about them!

"A poor substitute for hunting, certainly, but we cannot go entirely without. Else the children will think that status comes only from inheriting land, and not defending it."

The game is this: Three still targets are set against the estate wall, one large and two small. Everyone who can shoot may participate - man or woman, adult or child, noble or attendant. The top quarter, or those with three center shots - whichever group is larger - advance to the second round, where three small targets are thrown in succession. The top half, or those who hit all three, advance to a round where targets are thrown two at a time. Most gatherings do not require a round where targets are thrown three at a time, but in theory the game progresses with more targets at a time until no one can hit every target.

The third round is usually all adult men, usually all titled, but usually not neatly ordered by title. Seats at the table are assigned by score today. Good blood rises; weak blood perishes. But since this may have the unfortunate effect of excluding the archduchess from the best dinner conversation - no one knows yet whether she can shoot - the archduke announces that the second seat at the table will be decided by the winner. Politics after all. It is, in the end, what they're here for. 

Llei will make it near the end, though he has no hope of winning. The unmarried daughter he brought with him will narrowly fail to pass to the second round; not so bad for a young woman, even if it disappoints her.

The archduchess is about as good as the young lady and knows it, and will just as soon sit out.

Aniol's a good archer. He secured his seat at the head of Juncosa with his sale, but he was in the running in the first place because he can put an arrow where he wants it to go.

The Iomedaeans would probably have gone to the Worldwound after officer training if things hadn't changed, but they haven't actually done so yet and so have only respectable archery skills. That's all right because the most powerful paladin since Iomedae Herself is obviously going to make everyone else here look like a small child.

The archduke would win this contest in most other company. He has forty years of experience with targets, and thirty against monsters. If his raw strength is less than it was twenty years ago, his aim has only gotten better. He can usually hit two targets thrown at the same time, through he knows from prior practice that he can only very rarely hit three.

Ramirez was not raised in Menador, and has not been practicing archery since he was six years old, and is accordingly a much worse archer than the other Menadorian nobles. He prefers the axe or sword anyways. He'll participate anyways, as a matter of pride, but he kind of wishes they'd occasionally do close-up sport fighting instead of archery competition after archery competition. Maybe now that Iomedae's legal and they can get some more damn healers up in the Archduchy.

Alex' aim is not that much better than the best of them - he is not an archer himself, and the targets aren't Evil - but he's faster and can reliably hit three targets before they hit the ground. He graciously offers the second seat to the Archduchess as is expected, and takes a very small portion of food so as to not have an empty plate and to be able to compliment his host if appropriate.

Jilia knows enough to give informed compliments, if not much more, and to thank Count Cansellarion very much for the honor.

"I wish I had time to keep up my archery practice, but I've had to protect my city by other means too much to ever train; thank you for permitting me at your high table all the same."

There is great enthusiasm and applause for Cancellarion's performance. If there is jealousy, it does not overpower admiration, at least in the group as a whole.

Llei is feeling more comfortable now that he's earned a seat near the head of the table fairly. He's secure in the Archduke's respect for him, but many other nobles are more sensitive about rank, and about the wrong people dominating or participating in conversation, especially when some of those people are technically not even titled. In this company... he decides that the worse handicap is his face, and that he is usually easier to hate when he remains silent.

"The game is only approximate, in the end. Rebels and Thrunes bite much worse than targets. But more to the point, we are selfish, and thank Lord Cansellarion for indulging it. You have been in the city longer, and I expect that both of you know more about the landscape of this convention than the rest of us. Are there real decisions before us? Or is it another game, in which one strives to guess correct answers already decided on?"

"Real decisions, I think, judging from my acquaintance with the Archmage Cotonnet. He's a sincere republican, and doesn't toy with people like that. If there were answers already decided upon, he would not be making us guess, and he likely would not have picked delegates by lot."

"I was incapacitated during his personal visit to my city, but that is what I would expect as well. Games of loyalty and punishment aren't nearly so popular outside Cheliax."

"I see. I'm not immediately sure if that's better or worse. On the one hand, I don't have to play one of my least favorite games. On the other, it's not obvious to me whether there are any limits to the damage the convention can do, if we are really about to do what they did in Galt."

"I am sure the archmages will not allow it to get out of hand, but that should only reassure you insofar as what counts as 'in hand' to Élie Cotonnet is an acceptable outcome to you. I think he was displeased with the way the Galtan assembly went, towards the end, and may have moderated with age and experience, for what it's worth."

"I confess, I am still confused about the purpose of the delegates by lot. I understand the impulse to include the common people, but elections do that. I understand the impulse to let the gods decide, but the religious seats do that. Cheliax had the finest system of public schools in the world before last year - in the realms of literacy and mathematics, if not history or faith - but I don't believe they covered much of the workings of government."

"Not to gainsay you, Archduke, but note that we have among us, by that standard, a representative of the common people: Baron Ramirez. I can see how a Galtan radical might predict this to be a common result and consider it inadequate, despite the Baron being entirely worthy and all your objections being entirely true."

"I suspect the Archduchess has identified the meat of the Archmage's reasoning. Those who win the election represent - not so much the commons, but the most charming and persuasive people who cared to try. Nobles, lawyers, businessmen. But not farmers or laborers."

"But the Baron was born common. He is here on merit three times over. First that he won his freedom, second that he won his lands by killing a dragon that threatened them, and third that he was selected by the people of his county as their representative. Had we selected swords this afternoon, he would sit where I do. It is one thing to scoff at status granted by birth. It seems another to scoff at any process which might risk allowing a man to earn due respect. Election may be a poor process for it, but not worse than no process at all."

" ...but I suppose this argument is not intended for anyone present. Or for anyone at all, given circumstances."

"Radicals can be very strange in what they consider important, though I imagine that would convince a good many of them. I would like to hear that story some time, Baron, if you haven't grown tired of telling it."

"Which one, my lady? There are three tales there, though the last one is not very exciting."

"The dragon does grab the attention, though if the first victory makes a good tale I would like to hear it, too."

"At another time, perhaps, unless the lords Cansellarion and Narikopolus will indulge my boasting."

"I would have no complaint."

"Go ahead."

He tells the tale, then. Starting with the backstory, which he readily admits he was not there for, how the old baron of Barthol's Peak was a greedy man, who became very rich but hoarded his wealth in the form of gold rather than spending it on swords and bows; How the dragon Kaarlis the Emberscale came out of the mountains and took the castle on Barthol's Peak for her lair. How the people who lived beneath the mountain fled, or were forced to pay tribute in beasts, and then in men, for they had no gold to give. Enter the young and foolish Baronet Antonio Ramirez, wandering adventurer whose manor-house in the heartlands did not get attacked by enough monsters for his taste. He had some adventuring companions -  a slip called Softfoot who made a horrible pickpocket but a half-decent burglar, (And you just must have a burglar, for this sort of work) a wizard who got maimed and discharged from the army for reasons he kept as secret as his name (a real prodigy, of sorts, could cast all his spells silently and using only two fingers, which was a good thing too because that's all he had) and half a dozen men-at-arms. And an insane barber-surgeon because of course you couldn't find a cleric that could heal worth a damn in those days, and the clerics you could find you didn't want. And then, eventually, the grandson of the old incinerated baron of Barthol's Peak, who hired the lot of them to reclaim his birthright. He was also such an entitled prick. Have 2-3 anecdotes illustrating his prickishness.

There were the usual trials and tribulations on the way to the dragon's lair. Horrible snowstorms, mountainsides to scale, chasms to o'erleap. Orc raiders and goblin goblins. And then the fight with the wyrm itself! Now, he's heard it said that she wasn't a very big dragon, as dragons go. Only about half-again as long as this table. Not counting the tail. They snuck their way in hoping to come upon her in the great hall of the castle, hopefully at rest. They went in with enchanted blades and arrows, warded against flames, all of that, but Kaarlis was clever. She must've heard them coming or something because when they got to the great hall there she was, awake and ready and waiting. She did some magic of her own, stripped away their fire ward, and set to roasting them alive. The heir, useless commoner that he was, died instantly. Softfoot found his way into a giant-ass urn from somewhere across the crown of the world and waited out the fight there. But for the rest of them - heroics all around. It was a rough fight, most of the men-at-arms died valiantly, the wizard lost his last two fingers, Ramirez got chewed on a bit, but eventually and after many blow-by-blow accounts they triumphed. The wizard had a healing wand in his pack, and Softfoot managed to get it at least kind of working so they didn't need the barber-surgeon. And then they all retired to slightly less dangerous lives. The archduke - Ignasi's father - granted Ramirez the barony, the old family being both extinguished and clearly not up to the task of holding it. Softfoot's still there, helps run the castle and keep the books, hasn't stolen everything yet. The wizard got an escort to the border with Druma, where he was able to buy a regenerate spell with his share of the loot, then disappeared to do mysterious wizard things somewhere else. The barber-surgeon stayed on and got himself killed picking a fight with a giant mountain turtle a few years later.

And there! That's the story, 100% true and 30% embellished.

A good story well-told deserves applause.