A Political Campaign in the Kingdom of Ghouls

Not so long ago, one of the player characters from my current campaign died of ghoul fever and rose from the dead.  Not wanting to waste such an interesting development, I started digging through old issues of Dungeon magazine for inspiration and came across an adventure called “Kingdom of Ghouls” in issue #70.

The story, at least as written, involves the adventurers being called to provide aid to a group of subterranean communities that are besieged by the undead.  The party has to defeat a ghoul army and restore order.  But, since I have a PC who is a ghoul now, I started thinking about putting him in charge of the undead army and having him set out to conquer the region.  I made my changes and am just about ready to launch the adventure.

And then, last night, as I was looking over my map of the area I started to wonder…What if the ghouls win?  In theory, they would have killed or driven off their potential food sources during their conquest.  There would be no people left for them to eat, or at least not many people.  And then I thought, “How much does a ghoul eat?  If one average-sized adult human lasts one ghoul two weeks, then a 1,000 troop ghoul army would require roughly 2,000 people per month as a food source.  That’s twice the number of people who lived in my hometown when I was growing up. 

Where would they get that many people from?  Do the ghouls keep prisoners as breeding stock?  That would take a long time and those people have to be fed enough to keep them alive and healthy enough to bear children so that isn’t very practical in the long-term. 

Do the ghouls raid the surface?  That’s going to attract the attention of the powers-that-be and before long, adventurers are going to come knocking on the doors of the Ghouls’ Kingdom. 

What if the ghouls’ Underdark neighbors are targeted instead?  The closest city to the prospective ghoul territory is Erelhei-Cinlu, a city with a population of over 27,000 dark elves.  The clerics of Lloth aren’t going to tolerate the predations of the ghouls and will take steps to put an end to it. 

The ghouls could purchase slaves but how much would that many people cost?  Plus, unless the ghouls are willing to settle for goblins and kobolds, they are once again going to attract the attention of surface dwellers. 

HOW LONG would it take before the ghouls start to turn on each other out of hunger?  This is a “race” of selfish and violent creatures.  The strongest ghouls rule over the weak through bullying and intimidation.  During the gas crisis of 1979 fuel rationing was enacted and emergency services had first dibs on fuel – so the police, fire department, ambulance services, and doctors had gas but everyone else had to wait.  In Melbourne, Australia, a city that was renowned for tolerance and patience lasted something like 10 days before gunshots rang out (and was the partial inspiration for the “Mad Max” franchise).  People nowadays will beat an elderly grandmother half to death to get the last “Tickle Me Elmo” or whatever the fad toy of the year is on Black Friday so what would inhuman, flesh-eating monsters be willing to do to each other?

I think the political maneuvering and logistics involved in feeding the citizens of the Ghoul Kingdom could be just as great of an adventure as the military campaign to establish the kingdom itself.