Mount & Blade Editorial

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has done a kind of Let's Play for Mount & Blade to explain what the game is all about.
Mission complete, I head back to the Lord who gave me the quest. He's moved on, so I talk to another Lord in his castle who tells me where he was last seen. There, I discover this quest doesn't actually pay I get a reputation boost. He likes me, yeah, but not enough to give me some money. Fucko. Luckily, the other Lord he's hanging with has a little tax-collecting duties he needs someone to perform. If I do, I get to keep a considerable fraction of the money gathered.

This strikes me as a good idea, so I march off, dodging bandits, to the unfortunate town and spend a week of in-game time collecting money. They grumble and I lose reputation and I think their settlement falls a economic level but I've got the money, which clearly I plan on using for my own gains and never going anywhere near that Lord again. I was going to drive south to hang with the pseudo-Mongol Horde guys, but it doesn't quite turn that way.