Mammon

The Elder God **Mammon** is a manifestation of the effects of wealth on human civilization. From his legendary mountain of treasures, he spreads his influence along trade routes to the world. Under the influence, the prosperous grow decadent and the poor become greedy.

Mammon's maximum power and rate of power gain depend on the size and prosperity of the population within his influence. Thus he might avoid sowing death and destruction at least within his immediate vicinity. But unlike other Elder Gods, Mammon must break his own seals by summoning the influenced population to make pilgrimages to his mountain, to be devoured by him.

He starts with his Supplicant agent and 2 recruitment points. He initially has 2 agent slots (one taken up by Supplicant) and has 6 agent slots by the time he fully awakes.

Mammon is held back by 7 seals. <missing info on minimum world panic relating to seals> His maximum power starts at 2, and fluctuates during the game as his influence grows wider but sometimes population or prosperity are lost within the influence.

In addition to the listed effects, each seal that breaks seems to give 1 power if not already at maximum.

## Mammon's Influence

The Mammon's Influence modifier can be spread via trade routes using the Grow Influence power. Locations under Mammon's Influence will move toward Decadence if they have greater than 100% prosperity, and move toward Greed if they have less than 100% prosperity. Decadence has no effect on its own, but Greedy locations have an increased motivation to attack a Decadent nation (or declare civil war against their Decadent capital). Decadence and Greed increase or decrease in intensity over time based on the location's prosperity, such that any location with less than 100% prosperity will move toward 100% Greed and any location with more than 100% prosperity will move toward 100% Decadence.

## The Mountain

Mammon has the Mountain instead of an Elder Tomb, and the Mountain starts with a The Mountain's Wealth modifier. The Mountain's Wealth starts at 50%, 0 profile and 0 menace, and its profile and menace decrease by 0.3 every turn when above 0. Whenever you gain seal progress through Call of the Mountain or Devour Sin (but not All is Mine), the Mountain's Wealth's charge increases by 1/3 of the seal progress gained.

As the Mountain's profile and menace increase (mainly from Call of the Mountain), heroes may be motivated to raid the Mountain to steal its wealth:

Raid Mountain:

Might quest

Complexity: 15

Profile: 3

Menace: 0

Danger (default): 3

Reduces The Mountain's Wealth's charge and menace by 10, and gains 100 gold.

The Mountain's Wealth cannot go above 100%. If The Mountain's Wealth ever reaches 0, you lose.

## Mammon's Powers

#### Grow Influence

Cost: 0 Power

Available at the start

Add a location to your influence. Must be on a trade route, must be adjacent to a location under your influence, and you must have sufficient expansion steps remaining. Increases the profile of The Mountain by 7, raising risk of heroes raiding it (profile reduces over time).

You gain 1 Grow Influence step for every 10 population eaten by the Mountain, modified by difficulty.

#### Devour Sin

Cost: 0 Power

Available at the start

Exploits a location in a society which has declared on offensive war (including rebels who declared a civil war) and is under the effects of Greed, gaining 100 seal progress. The power does not harm the location in any way, acting as a pure source of seal progress. Unlike Call of the Mountain, this power does not increase the Mountain's profile or menace.

Devour Sin can only be used once on a single location, but you can use Devour Sin on multiple locations for a single war.

#### Call of the Mountain

Cost: 1 Power

Available at the start

Transforms 25% of the target location's population into a Lured Crowd that will move one step toward the Mountain every other turn. When they walk into another populated settlement under or next to Mammon's Influence with at least 5 population, they will draw people from that settlement into their crowd as they travel (a random amount between 0 people and 25% of the location's population). The turn after arriving at the Mountain they will all be devoured, increasing your seal progress by its previous population. The Mountain's profile will increase by 0.6 per population, and its menace will increase by 2 per population.

Heroes can reduce the crowd's size using the Save Crowd challenge, which also stops the crowd from moving (or being devoured) while the challenge is underway.

Save Crowd:

Command Quest

Complexity: 10

Profile: 10

Menace: 0

Causes 2 population per point of Lore and Command to leave the crowd and return to their home settlements.

Must be cast on a human settlement under or adjacent to Mammon's Influence with population at least 10.

#### Create Shadow Market

Cost: 1 Power

Available at the start

Creates a Shadow Market modifier at a Town or City with nonzero infiltration and no existing Shadow Market. The Shadow Market starts at 10% charge, and reduces the location's prosperity by its charge. The Shadow Market's profile increases by 0.02 for every 1% charge every turn, and its menace increases by 0.05%. Your agents can perform the Expand Shadow Market challenge to increase its charge, and heroes can perform the Raid Shadow Market quest to reduce its charge.

Expand Shadow Market:

Intrigue+Command challenge

Complexity: 40

Profile: 1

Menace: 5

Increases the Shadow Market's charge by 25%, to a maximum of 200%.

Raid Shadow Market:

Might quest

Complexity: 25

Profile: 3

Menace: 0

Reduces the Shadow Market's charge by 75% of its current amount and sets its profile and menace to 0.

#### Smuggling

Cost: 1 Power

Available at the start

Creates a Smuggling modifier in a fully infiltrated Town or City within 5 steps of an unlinked Shadow Market, that has no current Smuggling or Shadow Market. The Smuggling modifier gives its location all the prosperity that its linked Shadow Market is draining, as well as granting the location Mammon's Influence if it doesn't currently have it.

#### Distraction

Cost: 1 Power and 40 gold

Requires 1 broken seal

Targets an agent with at least 40 gold, causing all heroes, acolytes, or non-controllable agents to cancel their current task and be disrupted for 3 turns. Can target the Chosen One.

Must target a location under or adjacent to Mammon's Influence.

#### Call of Wealth

Cost: 2 Power

Requires 3 broken seals

Instantly moves up to 33% population from a nearby settlement to the target settlement, to a maximum of the target's max population. The settlement chosen is based on its distance, its prosperity (lower is more likely) and its population size.

Must be cast on a populated settlement at less than 75% of its maximum population, and with the decadence modifier.

#### Gift from The Mountain

Cost: 0 Power, 10% The Mountain's Wealth

Requires 3 broken seals

Gives one of your agents 150 gold in exchange for reducing the Mountain's Wealth by 10%.

#### Plutomania

Cost: 3 Power

Requires 4 broken seals

Gives a Decadent settlement's ruler an obsessive liking for Gold, regardless of their previous opinion toward Gold. The target location must have 100% Decadence.

#### Danger in the Mountain

Cost: 3 Power

Requires 5 broken seals

Increases the danger of raiding The Mountain by 5. Danger will inflict damage on heroes who perform the quest, randomly chosen between 0 and the danger level. Danger is reduced when this damage is inflicted, and reduces heroes' motivation to perform dangerous quests.

#### Embrace of Metal

Cost: 5 Power

Requires 5 broken seals

Creates an Armoured Populace modifier at the target settlement, starting at 1% charge and increasing by 2% charge per turn. This does nothing until it reaches 100%, at which point the armour melds with its wearers and turns them into mindless golden automata, turning half the settlement's population into an Armoured Populace army (hp equal to the population killed) that will attempt to raze its location. The Armoured populace grants 1 point of seal progress every turn it is in battle or razing. If it successfully razes its home location, it will sit around doing nothing indefinitely. Heroes can remove the Armoured Populace modifier before it finishes its work by performing the Investigate Population quest:

Investigate Population:

Lore quest

Complexity: 60

Profile: 5

Menace: 0

Removes the Armoured Populace at this location (despite the description, this does not appear to increase the Mountain's profile or menace).

Must be cast on a populated settlement with no Armored Populace.

#### All is Mine

Cost: 5 Power

Requires 6 broken seals

Once cast, everyone under Mammon's Influence will feel the desire to throw themselves into the Mountain. Every populated settlement under Mammon's Influence has a 30% chance per turn of losing one of its population, increasing your seal progress by one. While All is Mine is active, the Mountain's profile and menace will increase by 1 per turn.

## Awakening

Breaking Mammon's final seal results in instant victory as Mammon's hunger is sated, and he returns to slumber until the next era.

## Strategy

When played normally, Mammon is relatively linear. In the early game, target large nearby cities with Call of the Mountain to break your seals, spreading Mammon's Influence along trade routes toward large population centers to increase your power generation and allow for more Call of the Mountain. During this time, your agents attempt to manipulate nations into declaring wars or falling into civil war for the much higher Devour Sin progress.

At first glance, your goal with Mammon would be to link Shadow Markets to Smugglers to move wealth from one nation to another (or from one nation's subordinate Towns and Cities to its capital), thus motivating them to declare war. However, it's typically easier and more effective to drive nations to war through other means such as targeting the capital with Plutomania or using the Courtier's Cause Scandal or the Dissident's Separatism challenges to provoke a civil war. As long as the invader's locations are under the effect of Greed, it doesn't matter whether their target is Decadent or whether the Greed was what motivated the war. Devour Sin's value is high enough that a couple civil wars can be enough to win the game on the spot.

It's important to keep track of the Mountain's Wealth, as it cannot go above 100%. If you notice it's about to go over 100%, you can use Gift from The Mountain to give your agents a huge windfall at functionally no cost. This gold can then be used to defend the Mountain from invaders.

The main cause of losses with Mammon is going overboard with Call of the Mountain and having heroes strip the Mountain bare of gold. Patient players might choose to let the Mountain's menace decay naturally before luring more crowds to the Mountain (the time limit is rarely an issue for Mammon, and minimum world panic increases through seal progress instead of time), but the Mountain can also be defended through a dedicated combat agent or through the Distraction power (funded by robbing minor settlements). Only one hero can attempt to raid the Mountain at the time, and keeping that hero under control can give the Mountain's menace time to decrease naturally, or give you time to win outright. It's typically safe to let the Mountain's menace get high enough that heroes will raid it a couple times, since raiding the Mountain reduces menace.

## Victory Text

The art and text displayed upon winning a game depends on which source of victory points is biggest, in line with the various achievements for winning the game in certain ways.

### Shadow:

The golden light of the sun has gone out. Humanity's sins have overtaken them, and drowned them in a sea of darkness, as they gave into greed and avarice and payed [sic] for it with their souls.

### Madness:

Driven insane by greed, envy and petty jealousies, humanity has lost its sanity, descending into a frenzy of irrationality. They destroy themselves in their constant schemes, paranoias and fears as they feel nothing any more but the allure of gold, and a greed they can never satisfy.

### Dark Empire:

Mammon's forces have prevailed. The Dark Empire of greed, avarice and decadence now dominates the world, and imposes its will on humanity. Ultimately, this was the truth of the human soul, and unprofitable excesses such as empathy, compassion and honor will be lost to time.

### Dead Population:

Consumed by the hunger for more, for gold, jewels, silks, spices and marble, humanity is left with nothing. All their greed, all their ambition, has left them with fallen rubble and burnt crops.

### Ice Age (dead population with a low enough world temperature):

Cold. Like gold. The world glitters like a diamond, the sea is like a trillion saphires [sic].

### Deep Ones:

Humanity's hunger for endless wealth has cost them their world. Entranced by the prospect of what they could have, they lost what they once had. Now this world belongs to new beings, blasphemous worshippers of the Elder Beings, who will rise from beneath to take what is now theirs.

### All Seals Broken:

Mammon has finally eaten his terrible fill, and is sated, for the time being, his hunger for souls abates, and he returns to sleep, awaiting the next age, when he will awake to feast yet again...