Building your own empire!

[Dr Pavo]

Just got the title of duke in my D&D campaing, my party and I got as a reward, the power to control a large town (a crappy one)... that produces like 12k a month, it got a mine that gives iron, some mithral and recently discovered shade metal.. or some stuff like it. it comes form the negative energy plane.. (negative energy Iron like material).. right now it`s a secret.. but obviously it has the capacity to attract some attention to our town, and along some powerful enemies
we are at lvl 9, very powerful character, i am a fighter kensai, with a wyrmling gold dragon, its my duty to protect her (luminia, the gold dragon).
We are having problems with local prison there been some prison breaks and stuff alike.
so im planing to send a request to the king.. and ask for help maybe to send some guards to this new town change the guard of the prison and train the villagers into a good militia to become more powerful
any other ideas in to how to improve my town? thx a lot.

[myancey]

There is a feat in the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook that states that a noble will match funds you put into the stronghold...so if you build your stronghold around the town...

Its called Landlord

http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Landlord

If your party is of neutral or evil alignment, work with an undead-friendly church because that'll cut costs by 30% or so.

As for town construction--it'd depend on how familiar with infrastructure your DM is. Get some good farming techniques, and market your ore well. Hire smiths and bring them to your town. They're dang cheap to hire per day, and a full-plate mithril suit is 10k. Tell your DM you'd like to pump most of that into the town so he's more likely to let you do that.

And crafting DCs for mithril full plate are in the PHB or DMG. Forget which.

[Divide by Zero]

Stronghold Builder's Guide has most of what you want. I used it to make my own island fortress once.

[AsteriskAmp]

Hire farming specialists and mining specialists to train a subsection of the population. Try to use crop-rotation. As for the mines, you want to hire smiths and propose them a good deal for the ore in exchange they also help training at least one apprentice. That way you get your population educated.

Also, pay bards to spread word of the legendary metals of which the armours of your town are made. Also, tell them to tell non-dangerous wizards that there is an interesting emanation in the mines. When the wizards come ask for permission you can either charge them or offer them a place to settle to start a laboratory of sorts, with enough luck you can get a wizard (or adept) college.

If you have troubles with the prison you could actually start sending them to the mines, free labour, you could make so that they pay of their time by mine work, and offer them a permanent post (if they didn't initially commit serious crimes) at the mines after it's paid off.

Additional recommendations come in the way of inviting a church to your town, at least you will have a kind of backup to rely on should things get bad for the town, and a cleric that can heal and produce food is always useful. Also, make the most of your resources, protect your mines or try to focus development of new areas nearby. If rivers are present, both commerce and mills are possible. In the case of agriculture ask your DM what is the soil there good for and what are the expectations per season, if not, hire a Druid or an expert with knowledge (nature) to get that for you, different products have different uses.

Also, an advisory team would be useful, a druid or someone with knowledge (nature/geography/weather), a Diplomat and an Arcanist of sorts (you need someone who knows what is in the mine and understands it and act as the sort of go to person in any emergency or should dubious visitors [adventuring parties or other dangers] come looking for the mine of negative energy he could negotiate with them for the good of the town [while you call someone to deal with them])

[Undercroft]

Hiring magewrights as well (if it's allowed. it's an eberron npc class) is another option (and perhaps may work nicely to meet DCs for some of the harder to craft stuff).

[Maho-Tsukai]

Also, you should try and do research into the properties of this "shade metal." While it seems your not evil aligned, a metal from the negative energy plane could very well come with some powerful abilities and if you find out exactly what those are you could make quite a killing(bad pun intended) by selling the stuff to necromancers, death clerics and other evil spellcasters who would have a use for the stuff. Likewise, if it can be used to animate the dead you could actually slowly make a typpverse by using the stuff to animate large numbers of undead and then force said undead to do all your menial labor. You can control them via low-level clerics with rebuke(who need not be evil, neutral clerics can chose to rebuke too, after all.), which you can get via leadership. Likewise you can then get your cleric followers to make magical traps of create food and drink, cure disease ect... and now give your people free unlimited food and health care. With undead doing all the hard labor and free food, drink and health care for everybody people will flock to your town because your little hamlet now has the best standard of living of anywhere on the planet. Pretty soon you'll be able to spread this way of life around the globe and thus everybody will be utterly dependent on you for this new standard of living....congrats, you just made the Tippyverse WITHOUT BEING A CASTER.(Kensai are melee characters, right?)

[Dr Pavo]

Thanks guys there are some good ideas, i´ll try to put them in to practice.
most appreciated.