PDA

View Full Version : [Fantasy; Any] Problems for Citizens



Audious
2010-11-15, 05:51 PM
In my D&D campaign, a war ended 10 years ago, causing the area the PCs are in to be run by a new royal court. The PCs are being contacted by the Grand Constable of the army to accompany him to a small trade hub for the rural towns around the region so he can make a public appearance and address the citizens' unhappiness. The only reason the PCs are being tapped is because the majority of major political/military figures are being stalked and terrorized by the minions of a... resistance of sorts, eventually trying to kidnap and kill the VIPs.

One of the PCs is tasked with mingling with the villagers during the festival and getting a grasp of the larger issues (adventure hooks) that the villagers have been dealing with since the end of the war. I'm hitting a wall when trying to come up with them. Any help would be appreciated.

The style of campaign is pretty cinematic, runs the gamut between serious and slightly silly.

Frenchy147
2010-11-15, 06:07 PM
Well, since the war ended, defences could be weakened so they might be dealing with some kind of raids from barbarians or goblins or orcs or something

AslanCross
2010-11-15, 06:14 PM
1. Holdout renegades who have survived the war have become bandits who plague remote passes.

2. I'd think your "resistance movement" can be seen as a problem as well.

3. Major battlefields are lucrative areas of salvage, and depending on the scale of the battles, they could still be free. When the PCs get there, though, they might find that it's a trap, and that the resistance wants to recruit them.

4. Alternatively, a great fey entity (say, a Ragewalker; this is D&D 3.5, right?) drawn to anger and hate has taken up residence in a battlefield and has been sending its not-so-benevolent minions to terrorize bordering villages and settlements.

Audious
2010-11-15, 06:17 PM
4. Alternatively, a great fey entity (say, a Ragewalker; this is D&D 3.5, right?) drawn to anger and hate has taken up residence in a battlefield and has been sending its not-so-benevolent minions to terrorize bordering villages and settlements.

4E, actually, but making tailor-made monsters is fairly simple.

Thanks for the suggestions so far, guys!

"The Resistance" isn't like a military resistance so much as a man who despises the current regime for causing the war that killed everyone he cares about, so he makes sort-of golems to kidnap and kill those in power.

Frenchy147
2010-11-15, 08:21 PM
Ooo, oo all the soldiers killed in the battle come back as undead. cliche? I know. Fun? YES.

Coidzor
2010-11-15, 08:35 PM
But they only rise up at night, and can only travel a certain distance away, which is why they haven't laid waste to the country side, just been a bit of a problem, especially for anyone who was, say, farming near that land or wants to reopen some profitable mines that are blocked off by this necrotic blight.

Could even crib something from frank and k's tome of necromancy (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=34248) for adjudicating it, like the forsaken graveyard.

Some more thoughts on that similar vein, there could be a group of corpse crabs that moved into the area, but after a decade the corpses have decayed to the point where they're starting to migrate away and killing all those they come across to add to their collection.

Kobolds could be claim jumping on mines that are trying to be reopened after the militia finally put down some remnant from the war or bandits in the area were preventing the mineowners from getting to them to reopen them, requiring either attention from higher up or at least someone with the authority to deal with them from a trade standpoint.

Corrupt individuals/civic officials/landed gentry unlawfully seized lands in the chaos of the war and are trying to cover this up so that they don't have to return or pay for the land.

Ashtar
2010-11-15, 09:10 PM
The number of men who died changed the structure of society. Many men died and now women are a larger part of the workforce than in other parts of the land. Most are not willing to give back their jobs and some are even refusing to marry!

"I mean women, working in a mine? Or as lumberjacks! Something should be done!"

In the mine this could be seen as bad luck, for example. Or attract the attention of more feys in the forest.

The situation can become exacerbated if a few of the remaining men in some villages disappear: Being taken as slaves by the drow? Murdered by a vigilate who refuses the return of men to positions of power?

Randel
2010-11-15, 09:41 PM
1. If necromancy was involved then there might be a few undead in the battlefields as well, mindless soldiers that were trapped or buried in some battle but have slowly been clawing their way up out of the muck ever since. Some might occasionally hit the surface and despite being badly weakened will start fighting again.

2. Cadaver Collectors (a type of construct in one of the 3.5 monster manuals) were used in the war to collect dead bodies from the battlefields. Either for necromancers to use their raw materials, the military to reclaim equipment and give to newly inscripted soldiers (best for really evil or really cheap armies) or maybe there was some deal where the army wanted to reclaim all the dead bodies to return to families (dead from the other side would be ransomed/sold back) or to make sure that enemy soldiers weren't playing dead.

Regardless, there are constructs, undead, or other things out there who regularly sift through the battlefields collecting bones and corpses. This either creeps the citizens out or the cadaver collectors have recently started targeting civilian graveyards or the like. They haven't yet targeted any living things but its still creepy.

3. Wars are really expensive. Buying all that equipment and food for the soldiers costs money and might well have drained the governments coffers. The government might be taxing the people to make up for the costs of the war even to this day (especially if they had to borrow money to fund it). Thus, people hate having to pay taxes for an expensive war that they don't think they got anything out of.

Fun Fact: In American history The French and Indian War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_indian_war) was a war between Britan (and its colonies in North America) and the French and their colonies with various native american allies. The war was won by the British but resulted in massive debt which the British wanted to reclaim by taxing the north american colonies.

To quote Wikipedia: "The Seven Years' War nearly doubled Britain's national debt. The Crown, seeking sources of revenue to pay off the debt, attempted to impose new taxes on its colonies. These attempts were met with increasingly stiff resistance, until troops were called in so that representatives of the Crown could safely perform their duties. These acts ultimately led to the start of the American Revolutionary War."

So basically, one factor in the American revolution was that the colonists didn't want to pay the taxes for an expensive war that was arguably fought for their own benefit. There are other factors involved but this point stuck in my mind. Note that the French and Indian War went from 1754 to 1763, while the Americans declared independence in 1776 (13 years later). So I guess it takes a while for people to forget the 'old' war and focus on the problems of today to make way for a new war.

So, you could go that route and make it so the events of the previous war and the dept and taxes generated from that result in unrest that could potentially bring about a revolution.


4. There might be landmines (or magical equivilents) left over from the war that are still causing trouble. Those could be actual magical landmines, traps, zombies that got buried or are currently inert, or magical plagues or curses that are lingering after the war.

5. Maybe one side used lycanthropes to enhance their military power and this results in complications for the soldiers or people involved... like feral werewolves are hiding in the forests without the spoiles they were promised in the war, or there are soldiers who willingly became werewolves (like they were elite supersoldiers or something) and now have to deal with the aftermath of living with a family and not using their werewolf powers in battle.

6. Rumor has it that enchantment magic was involved on people to get recruits (like a bard using his bardic song to get people to join the army, or one person with charm person was getting recruits) and this makes people distrust a kingdom that brainwashes its citizens for war.

7. Secrert military complexes (dungeons) are discovered.

8. One side employed goblins, orcs, or other 'monsterous' races to their side with the promise of splitting the spoils of war. Things didn't pan out and the orcs/goblins were left with nothing. The orcs didn't get paid and they demand that the kingdom make good with its promises. For various reasons, the person who employed them doesnt want to or doesn't feel like they need to pay them and the tribes of monstrous races have remembere that. Ten years later is the next generaton of orcs (assuming orcs grow up faster than humans) and they are intending to raid human settlments until they either get paid the promised amount or they get their spoils from the citizens (plus interest!).

9. Elves, Dwarves, or other races/nations didn't like the war and think it was all due to human savagery and refuse to do business with one or more of the nations involved. This damages trade (no more Dwarven metal or elven goods!) and the human citizenry are kind of angry at the elves and dwarves for acting snooty or at the government for letting things deteriorate so far.

10. As a result of one of the battles, some farmland hasn't been as fertile due to a curse or the druids who normally bless the land died, had to flee, or left the nation.

11. Due to the extent of the war and high recruitment rates, 90% of the male population of some villages died (this is like what happened in WWI when trench warfare started and resulted in truly massive fatality rates for soldiers involved). This results in alot of widows and children who grew up without fathers.

12. Some villiges/areas might have been wiped out during the war and are ghost towns filled with undead, curses, or maybe orcs or goblins. If its populated by orcs then the villigers might want the army to 'take those towns back' even if the orcs in question are willing to do some trade. These particular orcs might not be particularly good aligned, they just prefer to stick with their newly acquired village instead of doing any raiding.

The orcs in question might just be fortifying their new village and farmland from attack and fending it off from werewolves or raiders or whatever... which means the orcs are taking care of trouble the kingdom doesn't want to deal with. The orcs might be planning something or causing minor trouble by harboring actual dangerous orcs or bandits, patrolling one section of road and charging people for it, or just building up their forces and potentially start raiding in the near future. But all in all for now the orcs aren't so much a threat that the military wants to (or can afford) to deal with them unless there is actual evidence the orcs are a problem.

13. Rumors of changelings or hags are spreading through some villiages. Basically some creatures who can change shape and impersonate people. Witch hunting trials might have started with people trying to track down someone "whos skin changes color when ya burn em!". It could have all started when someone was caught doing something wrong and managed to convince people that it was a changeling instead. There might be actual honest changelings around who get caught up in this, but who can know which changeling might be the culprit?

14. Likewise, Eladrin are teleporting into peoples houses and stealing their stuff. Especially bread and whiskey.

15. A spooky old house has a portal to the Shadowfell in its basement and occasionally shadar-kai come out and buy booze, fresh vegetables, pigs, colorful clothes, and other stuff. They pay for it with coins from their plane of reality (its got different markings on it, the weight is different, and its probably not as pure as normal gold coins).

Worse yet, some of them want to stay and work for cheap (hey, whatever the Prime Materials think, at least this dimension isn't full of screaming undead and perpetual twilight), have weird eating habits (they cut their meat into really tiny pieces and overcook it so it doesn't come back as a zombie), and like to talk about their feelings and discuss floral patterns with girls (those emos are trying to steal our women!).

Despite the slight boost to the economy the shadar-kai bring, alot of villagers are worried about having a portal to the world of eternal undeath and darkness in their quaint little town.

Randel
2010-11-15, 09:53 PM
Also it turns out that people from less wealthy families or those without the right connections were sent off to war. So while there are alot of people who lost husbands or family members then there are other families who were unscathed and were able to profit from this.

Like if a family lost the men then they would have trouble running the farm and the wealthy bankers/landlords are threatening to take the farm if they don't make their payments. Maybe the banks themselves are forced to do this to get money in the kingdoms coffers to pay off the dept of the war.

Regardless, with poorer families loosing family members and unable to get work done, then their land might be taken and given to those who can make the land productive. Those families that were unscathed by the war profit from it (or at least don't suffer as badly) and that breeds resentment.


And on the flipside:

Another kingdom is ruled by an evil overlord who targets mainly the aristocracy and bandits in his kingdom (kind of like Vlad the Impaler). The commoners in his land love him because all the crooks and beggers fled his lands and the rich are all careful to obey 'the rules' because they are the ones he looks at.

So some of the poor in the good kingdom might sympathise with the place ruled by the Evil Overlord because it looks like the poor in his kingdom aren't getting evicted from their homes. (though they might have other problems to deal with).


Then, unemployed soldiers might not be able to adjust to peacetime and have become bandits.

Audious
2010-11-15, 10:14 PM
Randel, you are a gentleman and a scholar.

Randel
2010-11-16, 12:18 PM
Randel, you are a gentleman and a scholar.

Thank you! I just might sig this.

Also regarding the possible debt incurred in the war:

Magic items are expenisve compared to the amount of money the average citizen could be expected to earn (and pay in taxes) in the average kingdom.

In 4th edition, most newly conscripted soldiers are probably minions if they were just farmers who were rounded up and handed a crossbow or a spear. That means that they would get killed the first time they get shot in battle. While this might work just fine in previous battles, if this war includes lots of ranged or area attacks then lots of those minions would get wiped out.

An enemy that uses area attacks to wipe out the enemies minion-level soldiers would clear out a good 50 or so percent of the enemies and leave the stronger ones to get turned into pincushions via volleys of ranged attacks. Get some defenses in the form of trenches, razor wire, land mines, and poison gas and you can set up defenses that are simply horrible for a medeval army to try and cross. Heroes might be able to run through them, but your average citizen/soldier would get torn to shreds.

But setting up a magical trench warzone requires lots of magic items (Something that fires ranged area attacks like walls of fire to take out the minions and then high-damage attacks to blow up anything that makes it through the wall). In 4th edition magic items can be created via a ritual that takes an hour, so any spellcaster that can create magic items stays in a factory cranking out magical weaponry and those who can't get sent to the front lines to toss area attacks.

Net result:

Alot of young mages died in the war by being on the front lines while older ones who knew Enchant Magic Item stayed behind and made tons of money enchanting items (at least those who made good contracts for supplying magic weaponry... or skimmed some of the magical components for themselves and delivered sub-par magic items).

The war was the most deadly war in history with huge fatality rates on both sides and cost a huge amount of money to pay for the magic items. Each side thought they could make up the loss by taxing the loser... but it turns out no matter who won they were both broke and lost alot of men.

The trench warfare had near perfect defense on both sides, and the only way to get past the enemy front lines would be to make ALOT of powerful magic armor (really expensive), use high-level soldiers as a human wave (potential to lose alot of heroes in one battle even if you win), or use monsters.

One side could use lycanthropy to turn newly consripted farmers (minions) into werewolves (brutes or whatever other class you want) which means they all get upgrades in fighting capacity and can run through the battlefield.

The other side might use undead which turns corpses (plenty of those around, either in the battlefield or the graveyard) into more soldier with possible immunity to poisons or fire (maybe something like homebrew Kilnborn Skeleton. A skeleton necromantically animated by burning off its flesh in a pyre. They are perpetually warm an immune to fire, poison, or cold attacks).

Team undead can crank out plenty of monsters with immunities to various magical damage (but that costs money) while team werewolf can turn every recruit they want into a super soldier. This breaks the initial trench fighting until one side starts silvering all their weapons and the other brings priests into the battlefield to help fight undead.

Result: One side basically took all the silver in their economy and maybe traded it for paper money (Its your patriotic duty to trade in your silver for the new Silver Note bill. Anyone who refuses will be declared a traitor and either recruited as front-line cannon-fodder or as kilnborn skeletons! This goes especially for any aristocrats or rich people out there...). The other side took lots of priests who likely did healing and protection rituals for the people and put them on the battlefield where they fought undead... and probably died.


With all the money getting poured into the war and men getting killed or turned into monsters, there would be plenty of soldiers who decide to desert. Why die in human wave tactics when you can steal some magic items (that are worth hundreds or thousands of gp!), sneak out in the middle of the night, sell the item or melt it down into residuum, and retire on a beach somewhere with hot drow elves (drow elves live in tropical climates in this setting apparently).

Both sides probably started recruiting goblins and orcs once they ran low on human soldiers (and would have had trouble defending their villiages from raiders) but that just added more debts to the already expensive war (which is fine cause they are stinkin goblins and stuff so theres no need to honor the debt, right?)

Regardless, after the war, alot of people died and the battlefields are huge ruined tracks of land full of razor wire (or caltrops), traps, and improtantly magic items.

If one side was using silvered arrows or crossbow bolts against the lycanthropes then there might be lots of silver tipped arrows in the no-mans land. Scavengers might venure into the old battlefield looking for silvered arrows and with luck a magic item or two off a corpse. The crown would want those items back to make up the lost money but they can't send out lots of people to comb the battlefield without the enemy thinking they are trying to invade and start the whole mess over again.

So, silver arrows and magic items are in the field full of traps and possibly monsters and undead. If you get caught looting the battlefield the crown wants to take the magic items from you to pay off the debt... but you need the money to pay rent and avoid having your farm taken. There could be black-market mages who pay money to those who bring in old magic items (no questions asked) and either melt them down to residuum or transfer the enchantment to a different item (basically filing off the serial numbers so you don't know it was a wartime weapon).

Expect alot of young boys or desperate people to venture into the battlefield to get rich quick so they can pay the bills and avoid getting evicted.


Also, if the one side who fought the werewolves has paper money in their economy instead of silver then they don't have to play by the same economic rules as the others (Okay, they should but if he's evil then who's going to argue?). You can't make silver coins without silver but you can print out lots of paper money. Team Evil could be handing out paper money that everyone should accept (on pain of zombie) and it looks like their economy is working just fine (except nobody outside his kingdom accepts the paper bills).

So the evil overlord guy could be pulling all sorts of stuff to boost his economy (zombie workers, paper money, kill all thieves, bread lines, beat the stuffing out of any rich people who complain) which makes the people in the good kingdom think that they would be better off moving to his kingdom. Which would mean that in the next war then Team Evil would have lots of people in his kingdom while the economy worsens in the other kingdom.


So the Evil kingdom could be just as messed up as the other one in that his treasury is empty and he's got debt and much of his population is dead... but by subsequently looting the saving of the rich, printing paper money, using slavery and zombie workers, and giving out bread and circuses it might look like a decent place for the poor.

On the flipside, there could be lots of 'rich people' who fled from the evil kingdom and defected to the good guys. They had to use up alot of money in bribes but in this place they aren't in immediate danger and might be able to make a profit.


*Whew* that was alot of stuff. And the I made all that up with just "citizens have problems 10 years after a war" I don't even know what the actual war was about or who fought it.

LibraryOgre
2010-11-16, 12:57 PM
A few suggestions from history:

1) Lack of workers. If you had a big war about 10 years ago, you're probably looking at a rural labor shortage, as the men who died in battle aren't doing work necessary to get farms running. Lots of women and children running things. You might also be short necessary specialists... tinkers and farriers instead of blacksmiths, former apprentices without some of the higher-level skills. You'll have a lot of people making do, rather than doing well.

2) Damaged fields and forests. Again, if you had a big war ten years ago, you're looking at feral stock (pigs will do a lot of damage; feral dogs tend to fear people less, but still be dangerous; feral cats can kill a lot of chickens), good farmland made unusuable due to a large amount of corpses and weapons shoved into the ground, or magical devastation. Things will be coming back, certainly, but you're going to have a lot of places that were once green and are now nasty.

3) Lack of security. Brigands left over from the last war. Humanoids taking advantage of instability. These things are going to make folks unhappy.

The Big Dice
2010-11-16, 01:00 PM
Another one from history is disease. Lots of unburied dead usually leads to the local water supply getting contaminated. Clerics and Paladins can help a little, but a big enough outbreak in one place could stretch their resources to the point where they have to start deciding who to Cure and who to leave to suffer.

LibraryOgre
2010-11-16, 02:40 PM
Another one from history is disease. Lots of unburied dead usually leads to the local water supply getting contaminated. Clerics and Paladins can help a little, but a big enough outbreak in one place could stretch their resources to the point where they have to start deciding who to Cure and who to leave to suffer.

I discounted disease largely because of the length of time since the war; while you'd have an initial outbreak of disease after the war, in ten years there shouldn't be any disease outbreaks directly tied to it.

Zen Monkey
2010-11-16, 02:48 PM
Opportunism, and people taking advantage of the bad situation for the town:

Profiteering: The prices of necessary goods (food, lumber, etc) are astronomical because of how difficult it has become to acquire or transport these things and the peasants are being taken for every last copper.

Organized Crime: A self-appointed town guard is running a protection racket on frightened townspeople. They run off the occasional goblin, but are terribly abusive with their power and extorting money, beating anyone who doesn't cooperate, gang/mafia stuff.

LibraryOgre
2010-11-16, 02:59 PM
Opportunism, and people taking advantage of the bad situation for the town:

Profiteering: The prices of necessary goods (food, lumber, etc) are astronomical because of how difficult it has become to acquire or transport these things and the peasants are being taken for every last copper.

Organized Crime: A self-appointed town guard is running a protection racket on frightened townspeople. They run off the occasional goblin, but are terribly abusive with their power and extorting money, beating anyone who doesn't cooperate, gang/mafia stuff.

Good ones! I'd also add general corruption... the town guard might not be self-appointed, the local priest may be charging excessive fees for services ("Burying Grandma: 1000gp"), or the local lord may be letting his children run wild, harassing farm girls.

Randel
2010-11-16, 04:02 PM
Good ones! I'd also add general corruption... the town guard might not be self-appointed, the local priest may be charging excessive fees for services ("Burying Grandma: 1000gp"), or the local lord may be letting his children run wild, harassing farm girls.

Bury Grandma = 1000gp
Sell Grandma "for a good cause" = you get 10gp

With the harassing farm girls thing: If much of the male population has died then many of the women would be unable to marry. Thus, there could be cases of rich lords wanting to start their own harems or have multiple wives, or say "Hey, I gotta do what I gotta do, Babe. If you don't like the way I act then I'll just leave and find a new wife. There's plenty of fish in the sea."

With many men dead then the women get new job opportunities but in turn have trouble marrying (and if the family name goes down through the male line then that could cause problems." The remaining male population might have problems as a result and there would be 'opportunists' who take advantage of this.

Or, the women who want husbands might decide to leave for places where they can get them (if the economy is so bad that they might lose the farm then might as well up and leave anyway). Or they might try getting men from elsewhere (Who knows, maybe some elves or orcs or whatnot might make good husbands?).

There might even have cases of women kidnapping men to marry them and then forcing him to stay at home so he can't wander off. ("My wife works as a lumberjack and I'm stuck at home chained to the houses foundation. Seriously, I have a manacle around my neck and everything. She has me clean up the place and do the dishes... one time I tried picking the lock with a fork and when she came home she just looked at me like she knew all about it and just held that axe in her hand for a good twenty minutes. I need to get out of here. Please help me.")

Again. if the society looks unfavorably on women who don't marry then some women might try marrying members of other races. Imagine if a bunch of orcs wander into town and are shocked when the women there start handing them food and stuff. The players come by and find that one village is mostly human women with orc men who have been convinced to marry them (For laughs, some of the women might be super-strong from working in the mines and chopping wood and the orcs are afraid/respectful of them).

Or human raiding parties of women who attack orc villages and carry off the men.

Okay, thats starting to get to Monty Python levels of silliness.

...

Roaming gangs of old women who have forced their ways into positions of power and rule by intimidation. All the male guards and government officials are afraid of them while some of the younger women have joined up and act as their thugs.

Vaecae
2010-11-16, 04:52 PM
How has no one thought of this yet? Slaves, they change hands in war, they're either made or freed in it, and they are often put on the front lines when willing soldiers run low. There are so many plot lines to run with them as a factor alone you could do a whole thing about how they're being accomidated into the new society norm.

On the note of undead, they are people controlling them if they're fighting for you. What happens when you can't pay that caster? They can easily drop off your radar with a small personal army and go to collect their coin from your people, or plot revenge on you while gathering bodies. A Nec with a bone to pick and be a pain for everyone who even remotely gets in his way, and there would be a lot of them.

On the flipside of that Necromancy may have proved so common and strangely popular that now you have Necs hiring out their minions to fill the slots of the work force that has been killed. You may have wholly good aligned kids growning up in a setting where using undead like we use machines is just the way of things. Imagine that impact on politics both in the micro within the kingdom and the macro outside.

Not to mention what happens when a Nec dies and all his minions become uncontrolled, which applies to both settings there.

The political unrest of it all is immence, and what if you just threw those two ideas together, because you feel compelled, and one of the problems is that when a slave or former slave dies it's standard practice that you hand over the corpse to be raised and put back to work. The horror for those families to have to potentially stand working beside the corpse of their loved one, tending the same fields or working the same mine, and know that it moves it responds but it's been defiled, and there is nothing they can do about it.

The superstitions that would arise around such as thing would be terrorizing in themselves. "Don't let them know Pa's hurt, if he dies they'll make him into one of THEM and he'll never move on, he'll work these fields till he crumbles to nothing, and then they'll use him for fertilizer/feed him to the pigs." Oh just imagine the unrest if you took that path, it's staggering. In that you have slave rebellions and other problems they cause for fear of becoming "one of those THINGS" or worse their own cultural taboos on such.

It's not just slaves either. In a devistated economy some people will just about sell themselves to be able to get food or shelter. You have indebted people acting as servents sometimes treated worse then slaves because at least a slave you can resell where as these people are just paying you off and have no where else to go.

If there is a sexual imbalance then you have alot of potential for bastard children that come up and shake the political world with claims to positions and rights they can neither prove nor can be disproved by anyone. These's types of things happen all the time. They can result in all sorts of messiness, and there are surely nobels who are not above paying someone to take care of their supposed sons and daughters of ill consequence.

It's a whole whirl pool of society changes you can really go anywhere!

fireinakasha
2010-11-16, 05:02 PM
So, a lot of people have brought up broken defenses and the resulting bandit raids and such. But I say, this is D&D, people! Bandits? Really?? Psh. A whole nation left with a skeleton crew on guard? I hear Illithid Inquisition.

JonRG
2010-11-16, 05:03 PM
14. Likewise, Eladrin are teleporting into peoples houses and stealing their stuff. Especially bread and whiskey.

They're poppin' in your houses, snatchin' yo people up? :smallamused:

Seriously, there's not much Randel *didn't* say. I bow to your superior research skills. (Though slavery could be a big problem since there are so few laborers, they could demand a small fortune with no competition for jobs.)

Frenchy147
2010-11-16, 05:14 PM
But they only rise up at night, and can only travel a certain distance away, which is why they haven't laid waste to the country side, just been a bit of a problem, especially for anyone who was, say, farming near that land or wants to reopen some profitable mines that are blocked off by this necrotic blight.

Could even crib something from frank and k's tome of necromancy (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=34248) for adjudicating it, like the forsaken graveyard.

Some more thoughts on that similar vein, there could be a group of corpse crabs that moved into the area, but after a decade the corpses have decayed to the point where they're starting to migrate away and killing all those they come across to add to their collection.

Kobolds could be claim jumping on mines that are trying to be reopened after the militia finally put down some remnant from the war or bandits in the area were preventing the mineowners from getting to them to reopen them, requiring either attention from higher up or at least someone with the authority to deal with them from a trade standpoint.

Corrupt individuals/civic officials/landed gentry unlawfully seized lands in the chaos of the war and are trying to cover this up so that they don't have to return or pay for the land.

Yeah, and what he said.

Tvtyrant
2010-11-16, 05:26 PM
Also, think of China under the Qin Emperor. He won a war that had lasted roughly 400 years, and immediately set about making sure there wouldn't be anymore. He burned the books of philosophy that didn't match his Legalist one, he built the Great Wall to prevent horsemen from attacking, he standardized weights, writing, and customs. He trained all soldiers in a centralized training facility and spread them out amongst groups from other ethnicitys. He also got rid of feudalism and created the first true bureaucracy.
So:
1. The ruler is centralizing power in his own hands and mixing the cultures in the domain. This leads to groups disagreeing strenuously.
2. Huge amounts of people are being drafted to build new fortification and roads, causing famine because no one can farm.
3. The new laws are extremely harsh, and the size of the police force is increasing exponentially to meet out the punishments.
4. Taxes are freakishly high, and people have to take out loans to pay them.
5. Religions are abolished as not being in keeping with the regime, and everyone is outraged by it.
6. Goblinoids are being brought in to farm while the men are drafted to defeat orcs on the borders. Racist backlash.