you can fire at will at peasants without drawing damage at all. so they obvoiusly have a classification of NPC/characters whom you can't hit / can't hurt.....yet you can hurt the Dook or the Golden Goose and some random farm animals in Ravensford, etc.they could have just set ALL of those characters to the same classification as the peasants/shopkeepers you can't hurt. But the DOok obvoiusly has a hit-point total, you can damage him and kill him.
(just funny as heck that his guards sit there doing nothing the whole time)