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View Full Version : So we may have just robbed the government blind...



Heliomance
2009-01-10, 03:08 PM
Playing a D&D game set in a modern setting. Our latest quest was set us by the vice president of the city-state we're working in, and we ended up getting stiffed - during the flight to our destination, gass came out the air vents, and when we woke up we were in Antarctica. Antarctica in this setting is where all the nuclear test were made, and is a fairly radioactive place - with both normal and magical radiation. Mind flayers live there. Well, we beat up some mind flayers, and some erinyes that really had no business being there, and used copious amounts of C4 on the summoning circle that had brought the erinyes there. We then went home, by nicking the plane that had brought us there in the first place.

Once we got back to our base, we found out that the big bad of the campaign - a lich - kept creating different companies every few years, doing different things, all of them shady. Well, four years ago, it was pharmaceuticals. A hospital had opened in a poorer part of the world, and was offering free health care to those that couldn't afford the normal hospitals. Many people jumped at this offer, naturally. However, an awful lot of people ended up in solitary, being experimented on with psychotropic drugs. The reason this enterprise went down was because one of the "patients" they took in was a mercenary. The rest of his company came looking for him. The place was rather a mess after they finished.

We managed to get the numbers of three of the victims of this place, including the mercenary in question. The third one I phoned up, was a woman in tears, who asked me if I was with the bailiffs. On asking for the person I was looking for, I was told that they were preparing for her funeral. She had committed suicide some eight days before.

It's funny where an adventurer's buttons are. Screw with him, you'll annoy him. Try to kill him, he'll laugh it off. He'll beat you up a bit, but if you surrender, he'll probably let you live.

Drive a 16 year old girl to suicide, he'll get downright vindictive.

During our absence, the man that sent us on the mission to Antarctica had been elected president. He'd also set up some really stupid taxes, including one on metal spoons and one on fizzy drinks, most of the money from which was going into his pocket. We have strong reason to believe he's involved with the big bad, the guy who set up the hospital. We also hate his guts.

We phoned the mercenary back, and asked if he wanted to help us screw this guy over, and help out this woman who was being hounded for debts while trying to fund her daughter's funeral. He said sure. So he got his company's fixer to set up five dummy bank accounts where they were, halfway across the continent. Our party's hacker got access to the president's bank account and wired the cash from the taxes - some 12.25 million - to the dummy bank accounts. We then unleashed a particularly nasty virus we've got on one of the computers the transfer went through, utterly obliterating the trail.

So, we've got 12.25 million in the keeping of a mercenary company halfway across the continent. They extract it as cash, skim off a chunk for themselves, and send the rest to us via underworld couriers. We send a million or so to the girl's mother, keep a goodly chunk for ourselves, then donate the rest to charity.

We decided to be nice to the DM and not keep the whole lot, but after spending the whole campaign with very little loot, we've now two levels ahead of WBL, we've helped out one of the victims of the project, and we've really really annoyed one of our enemies.


Is this awesome y/n

KKL
2009-01-10, 03:16 PM
VERY, VERY Y.

Hope your GM doesn't do anything horrible to you guys.

Lord Mancow
2009-01-10, 03:48 PM
Very Awesome.

I am going to ask though, why didn't you get more money from the taxes? Why only 12.25 million? I'm assuming that your in the United State by the way. How long was the President in for though cause that kind of tax would bring in a lot of money really quickly.

I just want to know why you didn't get more money out of the transfer.

Still very awesome. And nice touch with giving some to charity though if your GM hates you that charity will die from having money attained through crimes.

Heliomance
2009-01-10, 03:50 PM
No, we're in a homebrew world rather than the US. Also, the president had only been in for a few days, he probably had the new taxes ready to roll beforehand. Apparently there'd been quite a few new laws enacted in the past few days, while we were gone.

Lord Mancow
2009-01-10, 05:14 PM
Thanks for that.

Still awesome and I hope some of that charity money went towards Alzheimer's Disease.

Ganurath
2009-01-10, 05:22 PM
Congratulations on an awesome job helping to repair the damage the bad guy inflicted. Now, how are you going to hurt the one responsible? 12 million is petty change at his level.

Epic_Wizard
2009-01-10, 05:58 PM
Yeah that's pretty awesome. Suggestion as for your wealth by level delema. Put the cash into something that won't necessarily tip the balance in your favor (at least the part of it that puts you over WBL) like a secret base or some such. Then again it's a good idea to talk to the DM about this so that you know he isn't expecting you to spend the treasure and is therefore not going to give you any for the next two levels...

Heliomance
2009-01-10, 06:05 PM
Oh, we're so going to spend it. It's the first windfall we've got our hands on. We started at level 10 and are now level 12, and we tend to get money in groups of a few thousand. We were horrifically behind WBL, and now we've got some decent cash we're going to make use of it.

Also, we don't need to buy a secret base. Our rogue is using the 3.0 class Roofrunner, which gets a secret base as a class feature which can't be found by any non-magical means short of another roofrunner.

Ganurath
2009-01-10, 11:53 PM
Oh, we're so going to spend it. It's the first windfall we've got our hands on. We started at level 10 and are now level 12, and we tend to get money in groups of a few thousand. We were horrifically behind WBL, and now we've got some decent cash we're going to make use of it.Would this investment involve exposing the lich's nature to the public at large?

Heliomance
2009-01-11, 04:45 AM
Probably not. We don't actually know where he is at the moment. We've killed him once, but we couldn't find his phylactery, and he's gone into hiding.

Jayngfet
2009-01-11, 05:18 AM
12 mil and merc contacts.

You know, with enough time, you could gather all mercenaries(plus lots of scorned people with weapon proficencies), and more hackers. Sap their funds and boost you're own at once. While thier weak arm you're guys and buy heat seekers. Take over when they're weak. I bet the 'flayers wont like his using their land as a garbage can and they'd be valuble. You dig up some more dirt and the public pitches in too.

Heliomance
2009-01-11, 05:22 AM
Heh, that would be mean. The DM's writing a novel in this world, and the merc company are the main characters. We've already altered canon somewhat by phoning the guy up and setting the whoe shebange going, hiring the entire company to take down the government would derail her plot so much. I'm really not sure why she gave us their phone number though.

Jayngfet
2009-01-11, 05:36 AM
What about other merc`s? Like the one's delivering money. Offer him half a mil and he gives you the names of other mercs he knows, repeat til you have just enough left to fund a barage of missiles and a cople of tanks.

Heliomance
2009-01-12, 02:36 AM
It's possible, I suppose. It woud be rather unfriendly.

Trouble is, you knock over a government, other governments tend to start ganging up on you.

Solaris
2009-01-12, 03:44 AM
Heh, that would be mean. The DM's writing a novel in this world, and the merc company are the main characters. We've already altered canon somewhat by phoning the guy up and setting the whoe shebange going, hiring the entire company to take down the government would derail her plot so much. I'm really not sure why she gave us their phone number though.
Two words: Alternate Continuity. It's a necessity for writing a story in the same world PCs are running around in.