Dragons, Mummies, Liches, Sorcerers - all need a hoard of gold and jewels.
Otherwise where's the point?
That's Mammon's thought, anyway. He needed somewhere to store his corporeal
wealth, the monsters weren't doing anything, and he was able to persuade
Baal that it would encourage Heaven's Soldiers to get themselves killed
fighting monsters.
Whenever a monster becomes sufficiently powerful, the Sharks encourage it to
obsess over a specific precious or semi-precious substance. The sharks have
already bought up most of the substance at low prices; the monster rapidly
acquires the rest by raiding human settlements, creating an artificial
shortage. Their greatest success has been getting Western Dragons to obsess
over gems and jewels, turning common carbon crystals into items worth dying,
or killing for.
The monster is a mercenary in the service of Greed; whenever the Sharks need
something done they pay freely from their hoards. They might as well - they
know the location of the hoard, and intend to plunder it the moment the
monster dies; the items aren't so much given as loaned, and the monster is
basically working for the right to serve as a security guard for the
Mammonites wealth.
Of course, every now and again some wretched hero manages to slay the
monster and loot the hoard. At that point the Sharks move in, and help the
hero squander his hoard. It's no mistake that heroes end up poor quickly -
Greed's finest salesmen can easily fleece a hero of everything in a day or
two. In addition to selling shoddy goods, vast quantities of alcohol and the
company of attractive women, the Sharks locate every beggar or urchin for
miles and set them to work on the poor hero. Of course, the beggars don't
get to keep the wealth, but at least they get to hold it for a little while
before handing it over to the demons. And of course, a bard or three will be
on hand to sing the praises of the hero - for a substantial fee.
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