Behind every village raid, every disease, every lich uprising, ever dragon master plan, there is the Banking Conglomerate. They owe no allegiance to any government, deem all life expendable (if profit magins drop too much) and have even most of gods somehow indebted. They keep a firm grip on all relevant heroes and even employ highest INT creatures to to debate with LG characters up to a point that paladins of LG religions are forced to join the might of the banks.
All the while they reamain anonymous and entertain the masses with zombie infestations, orc invasions, goblin migrations and an occasional "corrupt noble".
How is that for a BBEG?
>>43820615
So basicaly your BBEG is Israel? Also why would gods need a bank?
>>43820615
The idea of the vast pan-dimensional conspiracy being a bank or some other mundane but resented organization scaled to an appropriate size is amusing, but I don't know that it would work that well outside of a joke.
>>43820646
Because some fucker is liable to steal your shit if you hide it in your home.
>>43820646
Them donations bro. Someone has to maintain and pay for the temple/shrine/cathedral/monument and all the manual labor.
Too realistic. I want to play a fantasy game.
It's kinda sorta been done before actually. The baking firm of Valint and Balk in the First Law series of books by Joe Abercrombie.
It's technically not the BBEG itself but it's run by the BBEG as a tool to control a lot of shady shit behind wars and kingdoms past and present.
>>43820615
#OccupyTheIronBank
OP here.
This
>>43820709
and this
>>43820763
was my inspiration.
Was just wondering what /tg/ thinks of it.
>>43820646
Gods don't have free reign in the world, their servants are mortals. Mortals need money to do shit. The entire upper ruling class of society needs loads of money to do things. Rotschilds financed Britain during Napoleonic wars. And Britain was the biggest and richest nation in the world.
>>43820615
Not gonna lie, a BBEG this big just kinda seems beyond any forms of reproach.
This just sounds unimaginably tedious
>>43820799
That's because it is. Banks like that aren't going to fall with individuals, not even with gods and countries. Capital is international.
>>43820615
>Behind every village raid, every disease, every lich uprising, ever dragon master plan, there is the Banking Conglomerate
Great. I want to be them. So, gentlemen, how exactly do we profit from plagues and dragons? (As a bank, that is, not a storeholder or quack doctor)
>>43820646
More like Switzerland. Or some of the Italian city-states, if we go further back in time.
>>43820615
Sounds like a great premise for an all-rogue party
>>43820771
Oh! Well, that's a surprise. In that case if done well I think it'd be pretty cool. Problem is it's hard to establish a bank itself as the BBEG as it's just a building. The people who run it are doing the bad stuff so you'll have to introduce a ruler eventually.
>>43820709
That was still traceable to one man though. Bayaz was a cunt. Magic was doomed. He should have just let it die, but instead he decides to fuck its corpse for a bit with the seed. Until that dies, too.
>>43820646
Back to /pol/ m8. A small nation of 8 million people can't rule the world.
>>43820823
The building is sapient. It loves being a bank. Much nicer than being a sub dovided warehouse.
>>43820831
True.
I hope he gets messed up. We need a book about what the fuck Ferro's been up to for all these years. With her powers and her making a beeline for Khalul, i'm surprised she's been completely forgotten.
Encono-fantasy thread?
>Be adventurer, about to delve into a dungeon full of danger and treasure in equal measure.
>Contact local farmers
>Tell them "I'm thinking about starting a food wholesaling business with the spoils. I'd like a deal that, if I come back alive, gives me first dibs on paying [slightly over what they're normally worth] your crops."
>Seems to have no downsides, farmers agree.
>...
>Come back alive, with a fuck-tonne of gold.
>Buy crops as promised, for more than they're worth.
>Rest of party, newly rich farmers (and you with the rest of your money) spend like crazy.
>Huge injection of cash.
>Massive inflation, gold worth bugger all.
>But you own all the food.
>Sell it back, for what it's now worth. Accept property if people don't have the cash.
>Now you have more gold than you started with *and* half the village.
>43820900
Eh. She's probably the equivalent of an eater now. Mostly. She's basically a baby demon before, ket alone now.
I hope Bayaz dies, ironically, balance is restored, magic comes back, the mystery of the Bloody nine is finally resolved, logen grows wings and skips happily throughout a meadow for eternity. or whatever.
>>43820915
And to think I just got out of synagogue to find one opened on TG
>>43820978
Bloody nine got mostly resolved in Red Country, I thought?
>>43820997
Nope, still nothing as to its origins. It's like a split-personality/berserker state but it's implied to be magical in nature. Logen did magical stuff in the first book, like holding fire underneath his tongue for later and communicating with forest spirits. It's been ignored ever since.
>>43821016
The spirits and bloody nine are different. He's a descendent of the third son, the one with the power to speak to spirits. The fire was a fire spirit, etc.
It's also likely he is the last. It is the reason Bayaz brought him tobthe island. Spirits are gone from the world now, Bayaz's necrophilia aside.
Maybe he's part demon blood.
>>43820615
Your BBEG is HSBC?
>>43821053
It's not confirmed, just a comment by Bayaz that the third son Bedesh had the same ability.
Speaking of which, Angry Tolomei fucking shit up when? That'd be a sight to see.
>>43821146
And each son was the progenitor of that 'line' of ability. The first gave off sorcery. The maker's children and tolly could handle dangerous materials safely. It's not a stretch to assume that the man who speaks with spirits, spirits that know and obey him, might have the ability described in history by one of the sons.
>>43820844
>>43820823
There is no one BBEG ruling the whole establishment. There isn't even a "shadowy committee of shareholders". There's DOZENS of committees, one for each relevant region. Delegating and outsourcing to smaller and smaller teams the various evil tasks of the realm, with each link kept obfuscated.
And almost none of the people in them are really, truly evil. Their morals have become so eroded and ignored that they might as well be evil, but they still do have morals to ignore. And while they know they're not doing as much good as they ought to be, they're each quite certain that they're not a 'Bad Person'.
A depraved and evil person probably set up this whole organization, but they're long, long dead. So no moonlit bossfight on the top of the HQ. No gloating aristocrats to bring down one by one. Just one big, complex, unkillable thing.
>>43820615
So how is this working in their favour? Are they buying/selling stuff that's value will go up/down due to these events? Are they setting this stuff up *and* the "heroes" who'll come in to fix it (for a price, of course)?
One can't just passively make money off bad shit happening.
>>43821263
Maybe there should be a handful of banks like that, and every goblin raid is a mere hostile asset takeover.
>>43820615
the problem with this kind of situation is that it would long since have massed enough power to easily be able to fix every issue without any risk.
anyone dumb enough to not do that wouldn't be clever enough to keep the conspiracy working. past a point it's simply not efficient to act selfish.
>>43821402
How can you be alive in the world and think this is true?
>>43820615
>>43820812
>>43820799
Thats it?
Thats the big bad guy?
Desk jockies?
Saying that the Grand Bank is too big to fail denotes a lack of understanding on the part of the Grand Bank.
We're PCs.
Yes the Bank will continue to exist if you kill off a few clerks and administrators. The loss of one strong room won't even be felt.
But these are PC's we are talking about.
If every staff member of the bank is killed starting at the top and working down, every one of those big leather bound accounting books burned, every strong room opened and its contents scattered to the 4 windsthe 4 winds are whores, drinking establishment owners, armorers and novelty shops, the sponsors of the bank dead or terrified then yes you can kill the bank and the loot is going to break the economy.
How much EXP is that? Who cares we just broke the world and that is priceless.
>>43821564
Go back making soap, Tyler.
>>43821620
Who the fuck is Tyler?
Ignoring the fact that shareholder capitalism as we know it wasnt really a thing in the middle ages, a financial cabal engineering a crisis for personal gain is solid, but you'll need good explanations for how they expect to profit from each. For example, "employing bandits to stop a carriage so that a trading partner can't make fulfill a contract, goes into default and we can snatch up his company for pennies on the dollar" could be a villain. "One bank somehow employs all criminals in the empire" is harder to justify.
Oh, and get ready for a bunch of lazy antisemitic jokes, I guess.
>>43821634
Being this new
That's like the Orzhob guild with their boob window Tesya.
>>43821451
I don't believe in intelligent people. it makes everything incredibly consistent.
>>43821634
Some dude.
He mainly makes soap and stuff.
>>43821564
>big leather bound accounting books burned
That probably might be enough. Organisations don't need flesh and blood to survive. They are created out of information. People can be replaced, lost information can't. Destroy the information and you kill the institution.
>>43821740
It's an all Clown party. We'll be killing the people just in case.
>>43820615
Joe Abercrombie's already done it senpai.
>>43822723
He's also probably better at reading threads then you, cockmonger-sama.
>>43821564
Fucking this. My DM tried the same shit on us a couple of years ago (except it was a church rather than a bank precisely) and we just up and slaughtered the lot of them. Completely derailed the plot by doing so.DM salvaged the plot not with retcons but by having the Lawful Neutral deity of commerce get really, really angry with us. Was a great game desu.
>>43821146
Isn't she still locked in daddy's impenetrable fortress?
Still, I would like to see what >>43820900 mentioned, what Ferro's up to now.
We know as of Best Served Cold the Gurkish were still about - there were Eaters with powder still making deals - but a fair bit of time has passed since then, which we know because Cosca in Red Country.
Also I think it's a minor plot hole that Logen never remembers that he is in fact really good friends with the king of the Union.
I know he's not a huge fan of the union, and I know Jezal was Bayaz's bitch (mostly), but still, dude would still be welcome in Adua at any time.
>>43820615
Don't have many thoughts on the matter, but maybe include how the bank will respond if one of their major investments says no (think Bethod telling Bayaz to fuck off) and also how internal struggles might work - they could be opening for PCs, or be a reason for certain branches to have unreasonable amounts of guards, for example
>>43820615
>Trade Unions demanding higher wages and social securities make goods prohibitively expensive for export, forcing wealthy kingdoms to import all their consumer goods, thus allowing a few rival companies and guilds to oligarchize international trade to themselves
>none of the profits are reaching the banks
>cue zombie infestation, wipes out the trade unions and creates cheap zombie labor and along with their bank conglomerate certified Necromancer contractors produce enormous surpluses of goods
>the banks subsidize these surpluses even farther until the price of these goods can't be competed against by rival living labor forces
>allowing the banks and their subsidiary firms to out compete foreign competitors and monopolize the international trading markets.
>A massive orc and goblin invasion is imminent and war is declared
>the banks knowing that the wealthy kingdoms can beat off such an invasion, sells off all their stocks until the wealthy kingdom's stock is worth pennies
>the wealthy kingdom to fuel its war economy burrows enormous amounts of money from these banks
>the wealthy kingdom eventually was triumphant
>the bank buys back the worthless kingdom's stock with the interest they make from the kingdom repaying their enormous war debt, thus controlling all the kingdom's finances.
>>43824713
>fantasy kingdom
>stock
>>43821263
Going the Grapes of Wrath route, I like it.
>>43825759
Anon its a FANTASY kingdom.
The GM can handwave whatever he wants as long as he can justify it.
>>43826720
>Kingdom of Aureth releases stocks
>evil banker purchases a majority share through a series of shell corporations, brokers and agents
>uses his voting stock to oust the king and appoint himself CEO of the kingdom
Fuck it, he doesn't even need to be evil, he can just think he's a better leader than the king who was dumb enough to not retain a majority share.
>try to find leads, get work on the way to bringing down the Banking Conglomerate
>every single person who could possibly help works, in some way, for the fucking Banking Conglomerate
>either be politely misled or follow solid-sounding information into an ambush orchestrated by the Banking Conglomerate
>give up, find a decent village where everyone pays their taxes, settle down with a wife and run a tavern with here where we feed information from drunken travellers to the Banking Conglomerate
>>43826840
A banking conglomerate isn't ran by one person.
Someone needs to make sure the economy stays running, with all the damage adventurers do to it. Do you have any idea what a financial disaster it is when they kill a single dragon and come back out with the gold? Not to mention all the low-level magic items flooding the market. And completely demolishing a town's economy by arriving with more gold than every single occupant combined has or would have seen in twenty generations? And wizards conjuring infinite iron daggers to prove the DM is an idiot?
Someone needs to put a stop to shittery like this. We're not the heroes the people want, we're the heroes they're too illiterate to even know they need.
>>43827510
>When the last living member of the conspiracy of financially savvy gnomes who have been running the economy is mysteriously murdered, the PCs need to find the leads, apprehend those responsible and find a replacement before hyperinflation and debt run the entire kingdom to the ground
>>43826840
That's not how selling/buying shares work
>Kingdom of Aureth releases stocks
>majority of the stock is own by the merchant guilds, the royal family and nobility
>the rest is bought by neighboring kingdoms
>Kingdom of Aureth falls under siege, all shareholders are scared that their invest capital will be destroyed and won't get any of they're dividends back, banking conglomerate loans the kingdom money while the royal family, nobility and the neighboring kingdoms dump their stock somewhere else as the royal family, nobility and whoever has money escapes the danger until the war is over.
>banking conglomerate through its various branches across all stratified sectors of the social hierarchy charges interest on their debt, the kingdom is forced to issue more stocks for foreign investors to buy in order to generate that interest back, Royal family and nobility buys back all their stock and then some because the market is flooded with their kingdom's stock share, forcing prices of each stock to drop.
>kingdom now has its finances indirectly controlled by the banks, as long as they pay their interests and everyone pays their taxes, nothing changes.
>>43827553
Well, it's not like there's no historical precedent for that. Economics were a bitch in the Middle Ages. Kingdoms literally fell because of them.
Generally speaking, blame went to the Jews when that happened. Life ain't fair and nobody likes their accountant.
>>43827626
That's why every smart accountant know from where wind blows. Or at least he can predict.
Also, became the bane of all accountants - the auditor and tax inspector.
>>43827725
See, that's the problem. They were also Jews. Basically everyone who handled money was a Jew back then. That required knowing how to read and do maths, and the only people who could do that were Jews and the church, and the church's a lot harder to pogrom when paying off your debts to it gets hard.
>>43827725
>the auditor and tax inspector.
Truly the most despicable beings in the multiverse.
In fact I'm pretty sure the only beings that can be auditors and tax inspectors in the higher planes of existence without getting erased from existence from one or two angry gods would be neutronium golems.
>>43827764
Which is to say, the church did handle an awful lot of money back then, but due to its position of both financial and political power over most rulers, it tended to be the second option after the Jews. The ability to just order all members of the race one of whose members you owe a debt to and justify it without anyone so much as batting an eyelash was just far too tempting.
>>43827764
Once again, you must predict when gouym gonna try to get you and bite them when it hurt a most.
>>43827934
Hey, they got the last laugh, didn't they? All those kings who used to pogrom them for debts are figureheads less rich than child singers these days, while Jews run the planet AND those same child singers.
They were just playing the long game.
>>43820615
A game I was in had something like that then a legendary thief happened.
It turned out we were indirectly hired by the bad guys(the bank) to catch the thief who was robbing them blind.
It was an interesting game thinking we were the good guy(the cops) trying to catch the robbers(bad guys), but in truth we were working for the bad guys all along. We were just some schmuks who were in it for the pay, because it was 'right', and simply due to it being our job.
So we chased a legendary thief even as all these seemingly unconnected robberies and events happened. We never could catch that slippery son of a bitch(fucking cowardly enemies man).
The game finally ended when the killed the thief(again you wouldn't believe how hard it was to kill him once you finally caught up with him) but this time when he died he was laughing because he managed to pull off 'the greatest robbery of all time!'
During the chase we charged through invasions, dealt with plagues, fought angry dragons, dueled liches, and more.
His final robbery was robbing time by wiping out all of thee bank records(battle took place in a grand archives which held ALL the bank info). Previously his best robbery was robbing death(hence why we resorted to soul sealing him this time around).
It turned out that it was all for a distraction for his greatest heist of all time...because he robbed time itself after all what is the most valuable currency in the world if not time?
His going after the bank was simply a distraction because it turned out the Bank was trying to bank time itself and he stopped it.
It took us forever to realize we were the bad guys and even when we did know we both hated the thief yet at the same time also had a morbid curiosity to see how it was going to go.
>>43823880
>>43820900
Ferro is dead mates. It's that kind of world. She probably took down a few eaters, maybe even the emprar, but Khalul? Naw.
It's for the best too. Ferro was never a sympathetic character. As much as I like prince of thorns, Ferro is no Jorg, and while I would enjoy a book filled with mad rambling and revenge, it wouldn't sell, and would probably be a bitch to write too.
Plus BSC did it already, and I'm happy with that.
>Logen Plot Hole
Maybe, it's a fair point, but I think it's all in how you look at 9fingers. Do you see him as an antihero/hero or a villain?
He's a villain to me, the best fucking kind. I loved the whole back and forth between him and Bethod, and I can tell you from where I'm sitting on the issue I could never see him going back to beg Jezzy's help. He saw Bayaz teaching Jezal. He has his pride. Before the end of Last Argument he pretty much decided he liked being feared.
Logen would never dream of showing his face in Audua, if only to keep Jezal's opinion of him as a good man intact. That's ignoring the secondary facts that he'd likely be walking into something that would end with him hanging. You have to be realistic after all.
At the start of Red Country Logen is living a life he's pretty happy with. No reason to ever go looking for trouble until it inevitably finds him, and is he really the kind of man to go off and reveal he's still alive in the middle of helping Shy, on the off chance he might get some actual support from Jezal?
>>43828519
Without any additional information, from my perspective it looks like the Thief is a dick for attempting to steal time and death and the Bank is a asshole for trying to monetize time and death.
There doesn't appear to be good or bad guys, just dicks and assholes.
>>43820615
>Evil Organization C
Nothing special.
>>43829515
>Bank is a asshole for trying to monetize time and death.
What do you have against hourly pay and assassination?
The idea of a banking group as an active evil is unrealistic and somewhat childish.
A group that vast and organised must be run by highly intelligent people. And highly intelligent people do not need to cause change to profit from change.
Money comes when things are stable, and money flows when things change. He who reacts first profits most. This will be the most intelligent or informed person, each time. The only way to bypass this is to cheat and force change, so that you know what will happen.
A banking group this big must think for the long term, because it took a very long term to get this big. That means they are too smart to go for short-term profits via cheating at risk of drawing attention and hate, when they can make the same profits simply reacting to world events.
It also means actively interfering in events is their major trump card, to be played as needed. Nobody expects the inert, passive organisation whose spies are tolerated because they don't do anything to suddenly go rogue.
>>43829632
Trying to monetize time and death is like trying to monetize breathing and walking with a large fine added for trying to do both.
