101 Fantasy Government Secrets


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48. The nation's seat of power has relocated to the seaside summer residence of the Royal Family. Publicly, the King has said that the "Fresh Sea Air" and the "Relative solitude" of the location from the Metropolis of the capitol are doing wonders for the young Princess's fragile health.

What is not know is that an Aboleth has mental control of the King (and has since summer), and he plans to both bring political and mercantile ruin to the kingdom before he unleashes his Kuo Toa army on the fractured state.
 

49. The great bandit chief causing so much trouble for the kingdom is actually the long-abandoned, half-fiendish firstborn son of the King, from his first wife, who died long ago and was actually an erinyes trying to infiltrate the kingdom.
 

50. The Kings Wizard and his allies have cornered the magic weapon market in their kingdom and others. What people don't know is that they have the power to control their wielders at the command of the king. Why was this done? Was it to prevent a war or start one?
 

50. The princess the heroes have been sent to rescue from the dragon is actually quite capable of handling things herself--so capable, in fact, that she snuck off to enslave the dragon, faked the kidnapping, and is selling the dragon's eggs on the black market.
 

Well, if you want some serious paranoia, look at some of the "truths" you find circulating the MEA...

The government is trading with Illithids and Aboleths for advanced technology/magic. The trade invariably involves certain unfortunates, miscreants and "undesireables" (read: Halflings/Gnomes)
 

Seriously, there are way too many "the king is a thingy" or "the king is controlled by a thingy" ideas here. We could probably combine them all and prune the list from 50 to 15.

I took a class on conspiracy and paranoia in college; it was great because the final paper I wrote my senior year was about The X-Files. Allow me to adapt some real-world conspiracy theories.

53. To aid in the production of magic items, the royal magical treasury must acquire the life essence of humans. They do this by sending out agents disguised as healers to rural villages, farms, and thorpes. The 'healers' treat the sick by day, but no one ever really gets better. At night, however, the agents sneak into the homes of their patients and extract all their vigour, in the form of fat. The fat is then delivered back to the cities.

Why else would all the people in the cities be so healthy and plump, while the folks in the wilderness are so often sick and malnourished? (From an actual 'vampire' conspiracy in South America.)


54. Recently a powerful demon was summoned inside a once-peaceful city, killing thousands of innocents and destroying prominent religious structures before it was banished. Divinations all point to the demon having been summoned by drow agents who want to destroy the kingdom because of its alliance with the surface elves. The kingdom has now enlisted the aid of other countries, including the surface elves, to strike back at the drow.

In truth, however, the entire event was a sham. The demon was an illusion, the 'high clerics' who performed the divinations were either in on the conspiracy or were deceived themselves, and the drow were not involved at all. In truth, the kingdom had already killed all the innocents due to another project gone awry - a magical machine intended to mind control the populace. When all the test subjects died, the government needed a way to conceal their culpability, and so this hoax was concocted.

A few truth seekers tried to get the message out, by they were silenced, and have not been seen for weeks.


55. A special magical minting press was created, which imbues the coins with a contingent spell. Only one out of every thousand coins has this spell on it, but it is heavily concealed, and utterly secret. Whenever a coin so enchanted passes into the possession of a foreigner, within a day it will teleport back to the royal vault. This allows merchants of this kingdom to trade with merchants from other lands, without the kingdom having to give up any of its own money.


56. Two thousand years ago, the god of healing died. The rulers of every country are descendants of the group of adventurers who killed him, and they have gone out of their way to ensure that their ancestors' sin remains concealed. Even the gods themselves have been fooled, because the coalition of rulers found some other entity to pick up the slack of the fallen god.


57. A few mages from different wizard schools vanish mysteriously every year. Each of them was working on magic somehow related to teleportation. Is it simply a hazard of the field, or is the government trying to stop those who might unseal the nation's borders?
 

WayneLigon said:
19. The Queen has been using an herbal mixture to prevent her becoming pregnant with the King's heir, because her sorceress grandmother told her that a child by his loins will doom the kingdom. However, she is afraid of being put aside for a woman able to fulfill her duty. She has hired several assassins to make sure that the King never lays with another woman.
I think I can be of service to her majesty :)
 

RangerWickett said:
55. A special magical minting press was created, which imbues the coins with a contingent spell. Only one out of every thousand coins has this spell on it, but it is heavily concealed, and utterly secret. Whenever a coin so enchanted passes into the possession of a foreigner, within a day it will teleport back to the royal vault. This allows merchants of this kingdom to trade with merchants from other lands, without the kingdom having to give up any of its own money.

First, nice idea for a thread.

Second, great hook, RW! I really like it. I have an adventure in mind already! I might increase the frequency of coins with the spell and switch it around a bit to get the coins in a foreign vault, but it could be great fun.
 

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