The Dwarven Hoard, or how much is the Arkenstone worth?

 I'm running a 2nd Yoon-Suin campaign, and my characters are about to get access to a dwarven vault in Upper Druk Yul.  One of the PCs, a dwarven berzerker, is from there.   How much money is there in the fault, assuming it hasn't been breached?

The answer is, of course, however much or little I choose, as the GM.  But wouldn't it be nice to have a rough idea of how much is "reasonable", vaguely plausible?

From "A Mystery of Sixty Centuries..." by SP Widnall

Of course, we can start with my "fantasy GDP/reward generator" post of a few years ago, but the situation here is different.  First, we aren't talking about the annual amount of moneys a city can collect, but the *treasury* - and dwarves, much like dragons, tend to amass large hoards of coins for "reasons".  Second, there is no concept of "reasonable amount to spend" - the entire vault is cracked open, it's all there for the taking.

Here are the assumptions I will be making

- Size:  100 dwarves worked in this hold.  Currently, the Iron Lion clan (a creation of one of my players) has 9 surviving members. 

- Taxes:  Unlike the city I described in my previous post, I'm going to assume that there is only one layer of government, increasing the tax amount to 30%.

- Wealth level:  Dwarves are traditionally depicted as workaholics and thus can be quite productive.  Furthermore, this particular hold had a silver mine, and thus was quite wealthy.  I'm going to estimate these dwarves have three times average health instead of doing a full breakdown as I had done previously.

Speaking of that previous work, I had calculated that in a town/city of average wealth in a "DnD medieval-ish setting", there was 20 gp/citizen available per year to the government to spend - this number is based on the assumed cost of living, which is itself based on the daily expenses table (see the link above for the full breakdown).  

Using this number as a base and modifying it with the assumptions I mentioned above, I can conclude that a dwarven government in this particular hold had 180 gp/dwarf/year available.  That's a fair amount of wealth for a fairly small community.

But how big a treasure has built up over time?  I need 2 more assumptions.

First, I need to know what portion of the yearly monetary value is put away in the vault.  There are expenses to be paid, food to be imported, defenses to be built, it can't *all* go in the giant money pile!  10% sounds like an achievable amount.  Second, I need to know how long have the dwarves been building up wealth.  This is *very* arbitrary, but let's say 100 years - sooner or later something goes wrong that depletes the treasury.

So how much money is this?  

180 gp * 100 dwarves *  10% put away * 100 years = 180 000 gp

And this is a small hold!  I have used the old DnD values of 100-400 dwarves per hold.  If we consider Erebor in Middle earth... we don't know the exact population, I've seen estimates of 10 000, of 49 000... Even if we take the lower estimate, we assume that Erebor is "double" wealthy (not 3 times wealthy like the Iron Lion clan used to be) and that the Erebor leadership only manages to hoard 5% per year...  120gp * 10 000 dwarves * 5% * 100 years = 6 00 000 gp

No wonder dragons are fond of dwarven holds.... 

I'll end this post by noting that since the Arkenstone was worth 1/14th of the total hoard, it can be concluded that it was worth at least *close to* half a million gp, and with more generous assumptions about the size and wealth of Erebor, possibly over 5 million gp.  

I leave to the reader to conclude if Tolkien is smiling upon me or cursing my name.  This wasn't the intent when I started this post, but here we are. 

Seen Servant

 

Seen Servant (Ritual)

Level: 1st

Casting Time: 1 Minute (Ritual)

Range/Area: 60 ft.

Components: V, S, M *

Duration: Until Dispelled

School: Conjuration

Attack/Save: None

Damage/Effect: Control

This spell creates a visible, dim witted, cowardly, misshapen, Medium greyish lump of mediocre peasantry  named Bort (he/it) .  Bort performs simple tasks at your command until the spell ends, with lack of enthusiasm and much complaints.

Bort springs into existence in an unoccupied space on the ground within range. It has AC 10, unlimited Hit Point, 6 in all stats except constitution (which is so high it cannot be measured) and a peculiar odor.  Bort is a pacifist and will not engage in violence directly (although it could be convinced to be a distraction etc).  Bort might be able to intimidate children, small goblins and people who care about property value.

Once on each of your turns as a Bonus Action, you can mentally command Bort to move up to 15 feet and interact with an object. Bort can perform simple tasks that a human could do, such as fetching things, cleaning, mending, folding clothes, lighting fires, inspecting turnips, serving food, and pouring drinks. Once you give the command, Bort performs the task to the best of its ability until it completes the task, then waits for your next command.  Left to his own device, Bort smokes copious amounts of tobacco, drinks modest amount of beer, attempts to smuggle cabbages and *very occasionally* pulls levers and drinks unatended potions. 

Bort is invulnerable and indestructible.  Despite this, he is a vehement coward and will refuse to endanger himself.

If you command the servant to perform a task that would move it more than 60 feet away from you, Bort gets really anxious and will do whatever is needed to get back to your side.  Bort can be dismissed with remove curse, wish, death of the caster or the perfect cabbage pie.  Other methods, such as hurling into a volcano or fed to a purple worm have failed.

* 1 copper a day, every day. He will get it