Saturday, April 4, 2020

D20x5 Barefaced Banks

Cash money ain't nothin' funny



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D20This bank was founded:
1On the order of a monarch to stimulate their nation’s economy.
2By a prospector who chanced upon a huge silver deposit.
3By a criminal syndicate to help launder their funds.
4By a retired adventurer with their amassed wealth.
5By a merchant who swore off travelling the trade routes themself after a disastrous expedition.
6Under mysterious circumstances. It seemed to simply appear one day.
7By an infamous mercenary after they collected several nobles’ ransoms at once.
8By a cult dedicated to a god of greed.
9By some ditch-diggers who discovered an ancient accounting machine.
10By a prelate who pilfered the donations of the pious.
11By a dragon to effortlessly multiply their hoard.
12By an inveterate, unnaturally lucky gambler.
13By the anti-echo of a god of finance to bring itself into existence.
14By a jaded lich who sought amusement in banality.
15By an entrepreneurial dryad entranced by the idea of millennia of compounding returns.
16By triplet-sisters who murdered each other for the controlling share.
17By a crashed alien AI as the first step of its rigourously computed plan to return to the stars.
18In secret, at first lending only to conspiracies.
19By a thieves’ guild going legit.
20By a spidery fairy-creature to expand their web of promises.
D20This bank’s headquarters:
1Is a spiralling tower that goes as far down below the earth as it does above.
2Is a fortress converted from war to commerce, though no less impregnable for it.
3Can only be accessed by a series of enchanted keys. Each further key can take you deeper into their vaults.
4Is said to be haunted by the bound ghosts of those who never fulfilled their contract to the bank.
5Is encased in ice, to better preserve the property they hold.
6Is protected by physical layers of bureaucracy, a paper fortress.
7Is carved into the beached corpse of a dragon-turtle.
8Is an entire town dedicated to the bank, the inhabitants raised from birth as its clerks and accountants.
9Is a dungeon carved down to the roots of a mountain. In its depths lurk things even the bank has forgotten.
10Is a repurposed pyramid complex, its grave goods used for seed capital, its restful dead chopped up and used for firewood.
11Lie in the tangled throats of a petrified hydra.
12Is secreted and ever-expanded by specially-bred molluscs.
13Is built on land dredged up from the seabed, an artificial promontory.
14Is slung beneath a fleet of airships, always on the move.
15Is built with pearly gates, gold-tiled floors, and fountains of rosewater: an imitation of heaven on earth.
16Is built in stacked, mirrored rings, so that a few properly situated guards can see everything that goes on within.
17Is a decoy. The bank’s real executive functions are conducted not-quite-covertly at a beerhall nearby.
18Can in desperate times be animated as a massive golem, though this consumes large quantities of expensive magical fuels.
19Keeps its vaults flooded, accessible (in theory) only by its staff of fish-men.
20Has recently been devastated by a roc seeking to steal some shinies.
D20This bank has a reputation for:
1Using the letter of agreements to drain their spirits.
2Enslaving those debtors who default.
3Being able to purchase anything.
4Funding the construction of monuments for positive publicity.
5Grinding even their own employees down to nubs.
6Taking payment in more gruesome means.
7Pursuing profit no matter the risk, loaning for any endeavour.
8Dealing with the more contract-abiding sort of maleficar.
9Internal corruption, containing many greasable wheels.
10Knowing no discrimination except against lack of liquidity.
11Gathering all the occult knowledge and artifacts they can get their hands on.
12Generous charity.
13Investing in underground fighting rings and other criminal enterprises.
14Incompetence and nepotism.
15Employing spies to gather market intel and sabotage competitors.
16Exploiting the ignorant and desperate.
17Attempting to use their economic power to acquire other sorts of power, bribing priests and princes.
18Ostentatious displays of wealth to prove their success.
19Funding all sides in a war to profit regardless of who wins.
20Collusion with certain noble families for mutual enrichment.
D20This bank wishes to fund:
1An expedition to the lands of the dead, to contact a deceased relative of its founder(s).
2A voyage to the place where the sun rises.
3The construction of an impregnable vault. Experts in security and details of treasure-protection measures will be well compensated by them.
4The construction of an artificial calculator-mind.
5The breeding of dogs able to smell debt.
6Their chairman’s ascension to autocratic domination.
7A monopolistic takeover of all other banks.
8The retrieval of an artifact-ring which spawns yet more rings every night. It’s terrible for inflation.
9The arming of an insurrection to replace the current government with one more amenable to their profit.
10The raising of an island from the sea, beyond the reach of law and taxes.
11Some industrial espionage to steal the craft secrets of the dwarves.
12The construction of a tower that stretches to heaven, to advertise their wealth to all on earth.
13A convocation of the greatest artists of the age, to patronize art that will glorify commerce unto the end of time.
14A heist on the Akashic Records, to steal the Platonic principles of banking.
15The breaking out of a devil that has been bound in a saint’s tomb for centuries, in return for its eternal service as a lawyer.
16The adoption of a fiat system of currency which it will control the supply of.
17The founding of a university unrivalled by any other under heaven, to educate a labour pool of shrewd professionals.
18The discovery of the cure for a plague ravaging the land, so the bank can win profit and influence by metering it out.
19A mass acquisition of letters patent bestowing nobility, to merge the bank’s bourgeoisie into the aristocracy.
20A theological revolution in the Church, to make usury more pleasing to God.
D20This bank collects debts:
1With a gold-skinned, many-mouthed demon. It’s said the founder bound it to the bank’s service, though which serves which in the current day is ambiguous.
2Withs its junior members, recruited from the cream of protection racket-running crops.
3With retriever-golems cast from runed silver.
4With flesh-eating beetles that have evolved to resemble precious coins.
5With government forces in their pocket with bribes.
6With consummately professional and deadly mercenaries.
7Politely and effectively, from fear of the horrific punishments they inflict on those few who do default.
8With doppelgängers of their debtors, bought from the other side of mirrors with the promise that they’ll be able to take over their copy’s life afterwards.
9With their own private secret police force, experts in the breaking of bodies and minds.
10Only sometimes, and they’re failing as a result.
11By requiring its borrowers to imbibe a slow-acting venom, and handing out doses of the antidote with repayment.
12By raising the corpses of debtors to work their debt off if they have to.
13With barbarian sellswords who sneer at the concept of currency (paid in cattle).
14With lobotomized drakes.
15In pounds of flesh if the gold won’t suffice.
16With mobs of other debtors, promised a waiver of repayment if they bring in the target.
17With squads of homunculi that are legally the property of the bank.
18An order of warrior-monks who believe that dying while saddled with debt weighs down one’s souls.
19With loathsome haunting spirits of guilt and shame.
20With brutish orphans raised to view the bank as their parent and master, riding giant magpies.

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