Ideas for putting an establishment run by an evil wizard out of business?

[MonkeySage]

The business is a popular stop for travelers on the same road I'm building my settlement on. Since my character is chaotic good, he understands the particular needs this business appeals to, but he sees it as a stain that must be removed. Since the mage has a right to run his business there, my character is unwilling to just go in and kill him. But the mage employs succubi in addition to mortals, and clients often have their souls sucked out as a result.

In addition to the Temple of Sharess I'm building in my settlement, I was thinking of setting up a similar business just, without the demons. My hope is to out compete with the wizard, both by having the establishment built in a convenient location within city walls, nearby to said Temple of Sharess, and by providing much better service. What else can I do to make this establishment more appealing than that of the wizard?

[Koo Rehtorb]

What sort of wimpy chaotic good character shies away from a little justified murder? You are aggressively justified in stabbing a demon summoner in the throat repeatedly.

If you really want alternatives though you should probably clarify exactly what sort of business this is. I'm assuming it's a brothel, but you keep hinting around it.

[MonkeySage]

It is a brothel. Well, the reason I'm against murdering the wizard is that it could cause more trouble than its worth, resulting in the loss of innocent lives.

[Poiuytrewq]

You could expose the fact your rival's establishment literally murders anyone who has sex with some of his escorts, that's a bad busniss desision, I'm suprissed people stilll go there.

[MonkeySage]

So my gm seems convinced that if I tried to murder or ruin this wizard, that would be an evil act. That the wizard's worst crime is assisted suicide. I'm trying to explain that that doesn't really matter. I'm trying to persuade him that I would be morally justified to do either, in a setting where morality is objective.

The biggest problem is that, well, everyone knows he employs demons. His business was apparently approved by the King, and the local lords.

[Koo Rehtorb]

So it sounds like people know about the whole soul sucking thing and the people who go there looking for a succubus are intentionally committing suicide. It's still evil. You are still entirely justified in killing this guy because he's building a business off empowering the lower planes for profit.

Demon summoning is bad bad bad and ruining an evil business that's been approved by local officials is the definition of chaotic good.

[JoeJ]

So it sounds like people know about the whole soul sucking thing and the people who go there looking for a succubus are intentionally committing suicide. It's still evil. You are still entirely justified in killing this guy because he's building a business off empowering the lower planes for profit.

Demon summoning is bad bad bad and ruining an evil business that's been approved by local officials is the definition of chaotic good.

Yeah, but arguing with the GM about the what alignment terms really mean is pretty much always going to be a losing proposition.

[MonkeySage]

I already have an idea for dealing with the wizard's mortal employees: my own settlement is run by the guilds, and each year the guilds elect the Lord Mayor. My character is the current Lord Mayor, by virtue of being the founder. Once the settlement is built, there will be a Guild for almost everyone, and that includes the workers at the brothel.

The mortal employees, by switching to my service, are directly improving their lives over what the wizard offers.

[Xuc Xac]

The mortal employees, by switching to my service, are directly improving their lives over what the wizard offers.

How so? What will you do if they make their own guild, get their own vote, and convince enough of the other guilds to join them in electing the evil wizard as the next Lord Mayor?

[comk59]

Infitrate the local home owners association, and get an ordinance passed that levies huge taxes on brothels. Strongly imply that the only people who would vote against it need to frequently visit the brothel. Meanwhile, your business will be a gentlemans club that allows for private shows on the second floor, which is totally different and thus completely exempt from said taxes.

Alternatively, secretly hallow the brothel without their knowledge.

[Haldir]

Love the idea or installing a fascist HOA. Rhymes so well with reality.

My suggestion is in a similar vein of letting someone else do your dirty work for you: get the churches involved. Support and grow a religious organization that is willing to co opt divine powers to take the fight to the populous directly via the word of Gods. Bypass everything the lords and the markets do by appealing directlyto spiritual currency

[MonkeySage]

Only guild members can be elected, and the wizard would be rejected, based on the fact he's not a citizen of the city and has claim on it.

[Perch]

How is owning a brothel not evil?

[MonkeySage]

More a question of who owns it, and who's empowered by that ownership. My idea is that the brothel, if established, should serve the interests of the ones doing the work, should be owned by them. If I established it, I wouldn't "own" it, it would be owned by the escorts themselves like a smithy is owned by the blacksmith, or a farm by the farmer.

[JoeJ]

How is owning a brothel not evil?

ISTR that there is a mention in Planes of Chaos of a "festhall' (the 2e term for brothel) in Ishtar's realm in Arborea, which would mean that it's not inherently incompatible with chaotic good.

[Xuc Xac]

How is owning a brothel not evil?

As a mutually beneficial exchange of money for services rendered, it's neutral at worst. There are often many evil acts associated with brothels, but they aren't an intrinsic part of the business model. You might as well ask how owning a farm is not evil because slaves have been used as farm labor.

[WindStruck]

I would say that if your character is chaotic good, that doesn't automatically mean you have to kill an evil wizard that summons succubi at a brothel for clients. A chaotic good character should also place a high value on freedom and the value of freedoms of others, and their consequences (your freedom is still worth way more than others' though!). ...so if everyone knows full well what this wizard is doing, and clients willingly get intimate with a succubus, that's their own faults.

If you still really wanted to run this guy out of business, I may have some ideas... buy or start your own publishing company, and continually run bad publicity on the wizard. Stories of families and hearts broken by the debauchery that goes on in the brothel, of lives destroyed and children left fatherless to fend for themselves...

Maybe hook the wizard up with a gold digger wife somehow...

Or if all else fails, any of the standard murder hobo tactics probably work. But your DM is probably right that murdering him would be an evil act. Sometimes you can't save people that don't want to be saved after all....

[MonkeySage]

They know, a lot of the clients go there to die. And of course, their souls are destroyed so they don't even get an afterlife.

[hamishspence]

RAW, "death by energy drain" doesn't actually destroy souls. Generally, it takes archfiend-level power for a fiend to be able to destroy a soul completely.

[MonkeySage]

In this particular setting anyway, when a succubus devours someone's soul, that soul is destroyed. Within my own party, there've been time when we defeated an enemy, and then isolated the larva. My character has always refused to kill the larva, but that didn't stop a couple other members of the party. Apparently destroying the soul of an evil creature isn't an evil act. Souls are pretty fragile things in this setting.

That's not the case in my own setting: When someone is killed by a succubus's energy drain, their soul is devoured by the demon, sometimes transforming the demon. At least a couple of demon lords in my setting were succubi or incubi at one time. It remains there until the demon is killed. Occasionally, angelic raids will kill scores of demons and liberate the souls trapped within. Very few things can destroy a soul in my setting, such as shinigami set out to punish that soul for a serious crime, and as you said, archfiends.

[Mastikator]

Is there any particular reason you can't just banish/kill the demons in his employ? Is this a society where extradimensional beings of pure evil illicit sex are given human rights and protected under the law?

Does the fact that they kill people not make them fair game for murder?

[MonkeySage]

Banishing the demons would be a very temporary fix, because the wizard would just summon more of them.

[Nifft]

Banishing the demons would be a very temporary fix, because the wizard would just summon more of them.

Do it, then catch him summoning demons.

I'd wager that demon summoning is very illegal.

[Haldir]

Do it, then catch him summoning demons.

I'd wager that demon summoning is very illegal.

damn good idea for an encounter, I must say.

[icefractal]

They know, a lot of the clients go there to die. And of course, their souls are destroyed so they don't even get an afterlife.

In that case, I'd say your biggest priority should be finding out why you have so many suicidal citizens, and dealing with the problems that cause such a situation. As a side benefit, the Wizard may go out of business or at least need to change his practices once the demand for suicide brothels is gone.

Incidentally, binding succubi for such a purpose is like renting a heavy-duty cargo truck to carry your groceries in. Have you considered that he may actually be using them to covertly gain control of the kingdom? Or maybe has already done so; it would explain why his known demon summoning is tolerated.

[Anymage]

This sounds like table drama just waiting to happen.

First you have the question of monsters being irredeemable baddies vs. them being generally free willed with some tendencies and maybe social pressure. Then you have prostitution and assisted suicide, which are contentious topics in real life. When they're presented as an ambiguous evil at worst, it's not hard to read the DM's personal political stance into things.

If the DM is saying that the wizard isn't evil evil because he isn't causing harm to someone not consenting, I wonder what other players think on the topic. I expect there to be an argument the moment someone takes an alignment ding, and other players to pile up with their takes shortly thereafter.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Kill the wizard. If the DM gets mad and/or makes a big alignment thing out of it then you'll know you're better off not playing with him any more anyway.

[TeChameleon]

Honestly? If you have, or can get, the resources, the earlier suggestion about casting consecration on the brothel would probably be the simplest and most effective way to deal with this. Sure, the evil wizard can just cast desecration, but if you get one of the big temples behind you, most likely you'll be able to keep up the consecration a lot more effectively than he'll be able to get rid of it, and he won't be summoning any succubi while it's up, that's for sure. If you really want to grind it in, follow said evil wizard every time he tries to relocate, consecrating his lair constantly. If you get one of the temples of one of the more justice/retribution oriented lawful good deities involved, the odds of them being vindictive enough to keep after this guy until he gives up or snaps and commits suicide-by-angry-priest/avenger/paladin are pretty good.

All that being said, a suicide brothel is a terrible business model; what, exactly, is this evil wizard getting out of this? Does he just hate everyone and want to kill them in pointlessly elaborate fashions, or does he have a longer game plan? Why are there so many people in the area who want death by snoo-snoo? A lot of this doesn't really add up

[Wraith]

Even if the wizard is only "evil-with-a-little-e", Demons such as Succubi absolutely are "Evil-With-A-Capitalised-E" - it's in the book, and everything!

It's a Knowledge roll of something like DC10 to realise that Succubi are evil, soul-sucking demons who literally come from Hell. You don't even need to know more than that, if anything claiming that it's superstitious common knowledge works in your favour.

Make that roll, then go find a troupe of Paladin and tell them that you know where there's a demon to Detect Evil at. Tell them who summoned the demon. If they don't kill the succubus and at least banish the wizard into exile (they probably ought to kill him outright too for consorting with demons, but maybe they're feeling generous today) then they're not proper Paladin.

[MonkeySage]

I am in luck, some what. My cohort is a level 10 Cleric of Desna, and a city which is home to a Temple of Sarenrae is 2 days away.