Machodor Domain Report (March 2022)

March saw Machodor project force well beyond its borders, while adventurers helped secure the south east. 

These were the results for the March period of encounters on the "Inhabited" table;

• Week 1
• Assassin Bug
• Merchants (50k gp in goods)
• Dervish (270 base)
• Week 2
• Pilgrims (90)
• Berserkers (90)
• Nomads (240)
• Week 3
• Wolves
• Goblins (300)
• Bandits (80)
• Week 4
• Pilgrims (100)
• Goblins (400)
• Pilgrims (90)

Suitable Encounters

Merchants

Just one group of Merchants this month. At least it was a pretty well stocked group with 50,000gp in goods which breaks down to;

• Duty at 2% = 1000
• 10% Luxury Goods Tariff at 5% = 250
• Sales tax of 10% = 5000

For a total of 6250 gp. 

Dervish; Joined their brethren in the ranks of Machodor's defenders as the 7th Dervish Brigade. Almost immediately they were called on to deploy to Hobgobiton in the far west to take on Hobgoblins and Tharks in the wake of their previous Mr Wargaming battle. With them went a variety of of units including Dragoognomes.

Pilgrims; All 3 groups turned out to be Lawful Good. As planned, Minas Mandalf is now a beacon for the forces of law and goodness in this land.

Nomads; because nomads are of neutral alignment I make a reaction roll to see how the negotiations work out. I also generate the personality traits (DMG pg237) of the leader to help me work out what happens. In this case the Nomad leader, Mustafa Bighorse, had a personality that suggested to me he would leave the bulk of his tribe, including his beautiful wife, some safe distance from Minas Mandalf and proceed to the negotiation with his warriors and treasure in excess of 60,000gp. I noted down the location where he left his tribe at this point.

The Citizen ship fees for the above totalled about 10,000gp (though some later had to be refunded, see below)

Unsuitable Encounters

The berserkers, assassin bug, and wolves lost out to the double helping of goblins.

Goblins; the vast number of goblins in two waves turned out to be in the same area as the nomads, arriving just a week afterwards. This combination lead me to come up with the mission below to resolve the monthly encounter.

This mission turned out to be somewhat controversial and reduced by some commentators to 'A Patron offering 20,000gp for taking on Goblins'. However, recalling that Mustafa had a lot of money and obsessively loves his wife and his people (although the latter to a lesser extent) I figured this amount was quite reasonable since it was not even half of his fortune, plus there was not much for the party to go on. From a game point of view, it takes a significant prize to get a party of players to set out for a reward several sessions in the making. 

The party chose to travel part way along the road up to the tower sited on the former location of the goblin city of Nilbog. This tower is now home to a huge & ancient Copper dragon called Nummi along with some forces from Machodor that can withstand his dragon fear aura. The party travelled south from there and after a few encounters found a fissure in the hills within which was a goblin settlement.

In the end part of successfully returning Mustafa's wife required the party to deal with two ancient & huge white Dragons, so it was by no means a walk in the park. Alas, the remainder of the tribe was apparently sacrificed to Nurgal, part of a continuing shadowy mystery in the campaign. Now Mustafa is staying in Minas Mandalf with the remnants of his tribe and has taken on the head Fighter Trainer role at the Adventurer's Aid Society.

I hope you enjoyed this month's domain report, in the next post I intend to explain the background behind the "Puglins of Machodor" before returning to the April domain report.