Idea:
Similar to the current caravan from the gates to the Mound, a sending goes out that "Word spreads among some merchants in the market that the Mound is looking to hire guards for a group of slaves to be transported to Fort Mur".
Implementation:
A. Similar to the current caravan, a player puts down security money, but now gives it to a Mound NPC. The amount asked for is significantly more than the current caravan, perhaps 600 gold or 700 gold.
B. A "slave caravan" NPC spawns after the gold is paid. It is a single NPC titled "a group of [race] slaves". What race it is varies. Most are surface races but not all, so orogs, kobolds, deep gnomes and goblins could be mixed in, those are much cheaper to escort. Human slaves cost more.
C. The NPC moves at a glacially slow pace, representing a group of manacled slaves marching. This requires a serious time commitment and guards to move them. This also gives would be attackers time to get a group together to assault it! The NPC cannot be made invisible. A sending goes out that "-A caravan slowly marches away from the Mound-" when it begins. The NPC has poor armor but a fairly beefy amount of HP, the threat comes from players killing the guarding players, not from mobs.
Results:
A. If the caravan is successful, the player who lead it gets an appropriate amount of gold, XP and perhaps favor for a Mound favor-store, though setting one up is additional work. The leading player is given a 5 point alignment shift to evil.
B. The player leading the caravan is given a token. If he is killed (or looted, intimidated etc) a person who loots them gains control of the caravan. We can't change allegiances of summons on the fly so the new owner uses the token to spawn a new one. It can then be lead to...
I. The Ooze Cult Base as sacrafices for an appropriate reward! A 5 point alignment shift to evil.
II. The Sacred Cave, where they become new acolytes and a reward is given.
III. The Church of the Ascension, where they are freed and a reward given. A 2 point alignment shift to good.
IV. A player who does not want to lead them anywhere can set them free, for a single point "good" alignment shift and no other reward.
C. A counter is included. If too many caravans fail, eventually, the Mound gets upset at Sanctuary. That is outside of the scripted system. None of that is automatic and there is no set "fail" threshold, the DMs eyeball it and decide when a response is appropriate.
Purpose:
The intention of the system is to give players something new to fight about and flex their ideological muscles while fostering the cult wars and Upper v Lower tension. Actual rewards help foster the conflict and since the friendliness of the Mound is tied in, it could have long term effects.
One other thought. Instead of one route, the Mount to Mur, perhaps from the Mound or Mur to some freshly spawned NPC randomly placed around the map may be better, but that would require extra work. The caravan is lead to a waiting buyer somewhere, the buyer just spawns for the quest.
I like the idea of non sanctuary caravans. mur-to-mound, or from the mound-to-mound outpost in the shroomstalk Forrest.
Yes. Awesome. I love it!
Instead of a token, it could be set up to follow the Control Companion tool (forgot exact name). Or a similar newly invented player tool. Using a token to summon the mob is easily exploitable (ie run to cult of ooze and use the token there) but this could be one way to circumvent that.
I can see so much awesome happening from this. Paladins attacking the slavers. Watchers and Wardens feeling pressured to make sure people do not interfere in Magnatz business. Huge muscle flexes between groups.
And make it so that it can only be done with enough players online I suppose!
Is there a script to detect population? If so, that would be a must. The rewards could be decent potentially and it would not be good for it to be farmed when the server is empty.
Passing off the slaves is a problem, someone with more knowledge than I of module building and scripting have an idea?
Great idea; totally for it
Just venting some ideas that probably need some fleshing out
1. Mandatory bluff check for those that initiate this quest that have an alternative agenda in mind for the slaves
2. Failure to deliver the slaves to the designated location will incur an additional penalty (can't take the quest again if it's failed)
3. Slave(s) could have a chat option to make it follow the person its speaking to
4. Vials of PC blood could work as a form of currency
Sounds great but I'm against the automatic alignment shift. I think that should be left up to the DMs. Otherwise it's an amazing idea.