>>721152493
>game lets you buy out the contract of a dragon via donation to its massive hoard of wealth
>serves as a unit not out of malice but because it was paid to do so
You could probably do a story based around an ancient evil encroaching on the lands only to get stopped by an equally ancient dragon who has taken residence there. Subversion and falseflags don't really work anymore because it has become a near universal constant for all of the people living in the area. Being witness to the rise and fall of numerous empires and and states that have come and go.
Not powerful enough to become an entity in its own right but having the level of consistency to see the patterns manifest in real time from the near eons worth of observation.