ignore the icon

Donald Trump gets attacked by an eagle.

it’s run by a fascist

it’s been trending further right for years

it needs serious reform

things you can’t say about the USA:

it’s unique in any of the above mentioned issues

it’s the most right wing or conservative place on earth

That is, when an official told you, a rice farmer, that you owed more taxes than you really did, it was very useful if you were good enough at math to know he was lying (and could prove it) and if you were good enough at writing to write a letter to your government defending your case.

It's, it's just that dragons are the primordial embodiment of avarice wrought into fire and flesh. They are truly, supernaturally good at finding large amounts of valuables, that's why the big mines hire those Dragon Scouts to go sniff out their lairs and mark them on the maps as potential mining ventures. You know, in case someone slays the relevant dragon. Which doesn't happen often because, milord, they are simply not that easily slain.

No I know you've hired many knights, blooded warriors and true. Yes, I was there when you gave the ten most impressive ones their special sashes. Very grand, very high honors, of course. Ehm. It's just, none of them have ever actually faced a dragon. Yes no I know Sir Edbert says he did but Sir Edbert is rather notoriously prone to exaggerated and tragically unverifiable tales---

Well no milord of course I would not doubt the word of a sworn knight. Perhaps his sobriety, but not his word, as such.

The point is that the grand treasury, while surely grand and a very special notion, is just... it is mayhaps not the ideal way of handling the realm's finances? Perhaps a series of smaller vaults, capped well below the dangerous wealth threshold at which gold is known to whet the appetite of colossal winged harbingers of death, in different corners of the realms or...?

No, I, yes well I do realize that will impede anyone's interests in coming into the vault to hurl around the gold coins and go "whee, I'm so rich!" I am aware of its deficiencies as a plan in that regard. No, I see I've misjudged a few things.

Actually, thinking on it, milord, I truly believe what you need is a fresh set of skilled wizards on this job. The court magician and I, we cannot keep up with your visionary thinking. We're too old-fashioned. But the wizards revolutionizing the eldritch academies seem to be more on this sort of level. I hear they've made some truly remarkable choices in terms of outsourcing all of their spellwork to the Ever-Whispering Void, such that it takes mere minutes for them to set up an entire defensive array. That's just the sort of innovative thinking you require.

A professional with a large stock of costumes (or several friend pooling their own collections) could stage a dress shop or secondhand clothes market scene.

Property sale scene where you take pictures in front of a cool looking building and the models are pointing and looking, and then shaking hands, and then exchanging a bag of coins for a key & property deed. Wouldn't even need to get inside the building for that! And it'd work just as well if the building was abandoned and falling apart, and the creatures dressed shabbily.

Shoe shining is quite an old job with a very simple setup that's portable and can be done pretty much anywhere, and newspaper seller is another good one. Think of what fun it'd be coming up with headlines for the prop newspapers! Maybe a wrinkly old wizard could buy one and then go read it on a park bench and feed the birds.