Wrecking a TL2 City

[Gedrin]

IMC, I have a city state that has suffered a total societal collapse and is attempting to recover. This recovery is hindered and helped by the competing/waring power bases; two warlord, one merchant. Demonic forces wish to keep the city in slow, cancerous, corrupting, decay.

The plot of the current adventure series is, "We've secretly replaced the regular merchant leader with doppleganger, let's see if the PC's can tell the difference."

The dopple's mission is to create long term festering problems. Essentially, it's goal is "anti-recovery". While the dopple has ego and doesn't particularly want to be "PC'd", discovery is secondary to preventing the city from climbing out of chaos and corruption.

Given that the current state of the city there's not a lot of infrastructure or civil institution to attack. I'd like to come up with chaos caused by levers that are merchant oriented. The dopple's knowledge of finance and economics is limited, but it could come up with a way to make a mess (but not likely cover it well). However, it is very well informed about the goings on in town.

I'm asking for brainstorming help. My two best ideas currently are:

1: Over extended loans with "sugar crops" serving as the missing collateral.
I'd tie this with.
2: Stir trouble and a cripple the burgeoning sugar industry, perhaps provoking the warlords into attacking the merchant owned properties. (Granulated sugar was discovered recently, and everyone knows it's a gold mine, but no one's developed it large scale.)

[Humabout]

If everything is thT broken, the first thing I'd do is try to start an epidemic. Its not there will be any organized response to the spreading disease. As a merchant, he can import diseased corpses or even immigrant workers or slaves. Use them to trigger an outbreak and just do everything possible to promote its spread (fight infrastructure development, sanitation, "medical knowledge is the devil's work", etc.) But thats me. Even a simple flu could wipe out the city. You dont even need magic or exotic diseases like hemmhorgic fever, malaria, pneumonic plague, etc.

[mr beer]

Merchants bring food and other vital supplies in, by feeding information to bandits and/or the warlords, only a trickle make it to the city. Starvation, disease and corruption abounds.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Humabout

If everything is thT broken, the first thing I'd do is try to start an epidemic.

Mr. Beer has the right of it. The place is already going to be suffering some disease outbreaks* (likely from dead bodies), but slowing relief food and other supplies into the city (even temporarily stopping them) the disease will take off by itself.

If the city is fed water from an outside source (say via aqueducts like Rome) sabotaging them will intensify this.


* If there is no naturally occurring disease outbreaks from tainted water, decaying corpses under rubble, injured people going gangrenous, etc, then yes, he'll have to import it.

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Mr. Beer has the right of it. The place is already going to be suffering some disease outbreaks* (likely from dead bodies), but slowing relief food and other supplies into the city (even temporarily stopping them) the disease will take off by itself.

If the city is fed water from an outside source (say via aqueducts like Rome) sabotaging them will intensify this.


* If there is no naturally occurring disease outbreaks from tainted water, decaying corpses under rubble, injured people going gangrenous, etc, then yes, he'll have to import it.

And importing it will only hasten the inevitable.

[johndallman]

If there's a fire service, make sure it only helps people who pay for its services.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Humabout

And importing it will only hasten the inevitable.

Importing is riskier than just letting it fester up on it's own. After all there is the risk the smugglers might get sick and talk out of 'horror over what they've done" or spite if they blame their employer for their sickness.

Bandits of course will talk if captured, but that's a "they are out there normally" risk so the PCs's are less likely to go hunting for collaborators after they wipe them all out.


It's a balance of 'risk'.

On the disease side... if the doppelganger can freely change shape, he can speed it up by tossing some bits of dead, diseased corpses down a few wells. Cholera is nasty. (I mention shape change as then if spotted it would be blamed on someone else, otherwise he'll need to hire some vile individuals to this)

[thrash]

If possible, locate a fringe group with an agenda (anti-tax, anti-warlord, anti-foreigner, pro-merchant, pro-religious, etc.) among the lower classes. Whip them into a violent frenzy by telling them whatever they want to hear and feeding them the resources to act on their basest impulses. Extra points for provoking a repressive crack-down from the warlords in retaliation.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If there's a fire service, make sure it only helps people who pay for its services.

And if they don't want to pay for the service, another classic is offering to buy the building, or nearby ones threatened by the fire, at a substantial discount. Lucrative, if crass.

Stoke anti-merchant class warfare.

Within the merchant class, create "two households, both alike in dignity", to help keep the merchants from working together, all the way down to sparking riots in the streets.

Remove any competent members of the nobility to ensure they remain corrupt, weak, and ineffective.

Merchants from a different city-state undercut a mainstay of trade by finding a better / cheaper source, or breaking a previously-held monopoly.

[acrosome]

Engineer a tulip bubble, to impoverish all of the city's elite? Without capital, no recovery.

Heck, knowing PCs they might get involved and suffer as well...