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PLUNDER!<ref>Followed by [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1195 ''Loot'', ''Treasure'', ''Money'', ''Riches'', ''Gold'', ''Lucre'', ''Boodle'', ''Booty'', ''Dough'', ''Graft'', ''Goods'', ''Items'', ''Moolah'', ''Pillage'', ''Prizes'', ''Spoils'', ''Swag'', ''Bling'']</ref>
Yes, indeed even our heroes need something to satisfy their sense of mischief and avarice. They need to take joy in depriving their foes. For our heroes make money the old fashioned way: they [[Moral Dissonance|steal]]- wait- ''plunder'' it. When done by soldiers in a war, this is sometimes called "Spoils of War"<ref>
Within games, it is like [[Experience Points]] (and commonly both used, as well) - a reward from defeating your enemies. The difference may be generally more less certainty in what you may get from your enemies where with [[Experience Points]], it is generally clearly aligned by certain parameters.
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* In ''[[Lawrence of Arabia]]'' following the storming of Aqaba the Bedouin turn their attentions to plunder. In another incident later, Lawrence explains that this is part of his men's pay. Which of course it was, as they had no other clear reason to care whether they were ruled by Prince Feisal or the Sultan.
* ''[[The Patriot]]'': one of the principal financial motivations for some of the French-Indian war veterans to join Mel Gibson's protagonist was the ability to sell back every English gun or uniform found or recovered.
* ''[[The Golden Voyage of Sinbad]]''. After defeating Prince Koura, Sinbad has the opportunity to gain a "crown of untold riches". He generously gives it to the facially-disfigured Vizier instead, and the crown restores the Vizier to normal.
* Spoofed in the [[After the End]] [[B-Movie]] ''Battletruck'' (aka ''Warlords of the 21st Century'').
{{quote|[[Big Bad]] (to The Dragon): "Tell the men to Inventory and Requisition."
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* In ''[[Band of Brothers]]'' the soldiers go through the mansion of a Nazi grandee and find a large supply of expensive wine. After which they solemnly enact an Ancient Military Custom...
** Later, Major Winters shows his friend Nixon (who has a major drinking problem) Hermann Goering's wine <s>cellar</s> warehouse. The expression on Nixon's face is priceless.
** Also, Ronald Spiers' collection of silver, and other various characters collecting everything from Hitler's personal photographs to Luger pistols.
* In ''[[The Pacific]]'', a Seabee on Peleliu says he is looking for a Japanese sword to take home. The Marines, who have just been through some very nasty fighting, give him a very dirty look.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Merry Brandybuck: "One thing you have not come by in your travels is brighter wits" (explaining why he and Pippin are feasting amid the ruins of Isengard in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'').
** In [[The Hobbit]] Bilbo is promised this. As it belonged to the Dwarves in the first place, it was kind of ''Re''-
* ''[[Horatio Hornblower]]'', although Hornblower never gets as much of this as he likes because he is too busy fighting the war to turn aside to trifles like prize-money. Almost every time he does get any, something keeps him from profiting.
* Jack Aubrey of the ''[[Aubrey-Maturin]]'' series is more fortunate in the matter of prize money; when he has money problems, they tend to come from unfortunate investments on land.
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** Sharpe actually gets into trouble in one book because some of the items he and his men took technically did not qualify as legitimate military plunder under the conventions of the time. For political reasons the army cannot just tell the lawyers to go to hell so he is sent to an out of the way output till the matter blows over.
* One of Rudyard Kipling's "soldier" poems, ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Loot]]'' deals with this:
{{quote|Now remember when you're 'ackin' round a gilded [[Did Not Do the Research|Burma god]]
That 'is eyes is very often precious stones... }}
* Flashman's attempts to have a chapter on [[Unusual Euphemism|foraging and decorating]] included in the British Army Manual get nowhere.
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* In the ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'' book ''The Crippled God'' a character alarmingly notices that the common soldiers in the Bonehunters army stopped caring about plunder. This signifies that the [[Badass Army]] is turning fanatical in their purpose.
* ''Citadel'' (AKA ''Run Between the Raindrops'') by [[Dale Dye]]. During the battle of Hue the protagonist (a combat reporter) goes to a camera store to find a Marine smashing up a box camera and complaining that the others stole all the good expensive Japanese cameras. The aghast protagonist points out he just smashed up a Hasselblad worth over a thousand dollars. In another scene some high-ranking US and Vietnamese officers complain that the Marines stole money from a bank vault and demand a court martial of those responsible. The Marine CO, who's got more sympathy for his men than these people, retrieves the money and claims they 'found' it. The Vietnamese officers promptly divide up the cash among themselves.
*While in [[Belisarius Series]] the title character always keeps enough discipline to make sure his men leave civilians alone, he tends to end every campaign with enough legitimate loot(from the enemy army camp that is)for every soldier to retire with a good stake-and tell everyone what a great deal signing on with Belisarius is.
**Toward the end of the series evesdroping Malwa fall into despair on overhearing two Roman woman discussing which room in a Malwa prince's captured palace they wish to billet in.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''Source of the Nile'': When an explorer wins a fight with natives he can plunder their village but that costs him victory points, reflecting perhaps that folks back home really don't like to think about that part of it.
* In Chaosium's early ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'' adventures the investigators could almost always find some kind of valuable treasure among the Cthulhu Mythos menace's belongings. It's not clear whether this was unconsciously based on ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' type games or a practical decision due to the investigators' need for money to carry on their work.
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' adventures usually have this trope as well. Even if Mr. Johnson stiffs them on their pay and dead enemies have no money, PCs can at least loot and fence the enemies' equipment.
* Most [[RPG
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Sid Meier's Pirates!]]'': Every time a ship is captured, they show this quite deliciously.
* In a CD-ROM game based on the show ''[[Arthur]]'', if one succeeds in finding a treasure chest in the scuba diving minigame, a newspaper article with a picture of Arthur surrounded by the treasure will appear.
* ''[[Borderlands]]'' allows you to plunder enemy weapons, grenade mods, and cash.
* A game play mechanic in ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Thracia 776''. Since you get very little money on your own, the best way to get items and weapons are to Capture enemy units, strip them of their possessions and then release them.
* The average [[RPG]] has the gameplay mechanic of "When it's dead, loot it.". [[Moral Dissonance|The moral implications of]] [[Grave Robbing|robbing the dead]] [[Moral Dissonance|rarely come up,]] [[Rule of Fun|because getting cool new stuff is always fun.]]
**
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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* ''[[Servants of the Imperium]]''
** [http://www.servantsoftheimperium.com/comic/?comicid=32 "Krin, what is that you're holding" "Standard issue looting sack M'lord" "Of course it is, how silly of me"]
* In ''[[The Zombie Hunters]],'' the eponymous team of [[Disaster Scavengers]] loot and smuggle on the sly while on salvage missions for their [[Island Base]] of [[Zombie Apocalypse]] [[Action Survivor|survivors]]. It's this [[Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb|temptation]] that causes [[The Captain]] to lead them on a misadventure in a zombie-dense "[[Forbidden Zone|red zone]]," and a ''slightly'' less brazen attempt to steal beer from quarantine. [[Victoria's Secret Compartment]] is a favored hiding place for contraband, and one character brazenly sports the slogan "I [[Heart Symbol|<3]] Looting" on a [[Fun T-Shirt]].
* [[Schlock Mercenary]]'s [[Big Book of War|Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Pirates]] addresses this issue in its very first Maxim: Pillage ''then'' burn.
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** Indeed. And a lot of the country estates of [[Jane Austen]] s friends were "unwillingly subsidized " by France.
*** Though it wasn't quite a "reward". The Navy bought captured ships from the ships' crews that captured them, and the ships' crew split the money, according to ancient custom. It was cheaper and quicker for the Navy to get ships that way than to have them built.
* One book described [[Badass Israeli|Israel]] as "The second largest [[Arms Dealer|exporter]] of Soviet arms" because of all the gear it had "acquired" in the course of their [[Arab-Israeli Conflict|relations with surrounding powers]].
* The British attack over the Rhine into Germany in World War II was named "Operation Plunder." While the pilfering was of a rather touristy kind (Cameras, choice wines, nice pictures) the British took the name of the operation as a rather tacit permission to go to town. Officers generally looked the other way.
** The British are generally quite good at this. See any Invasion of any kind by English, Scottish or Welsh troops.
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* British Diplomat Harold Nicholson once grumbled that American soldiers marching through a town was an unusual nuisance-because according to him they had enough well educated people with them to know what was worth stealing.
* The so-called [[wikipedia:Monuments Men|Monuments Men]] in [[World War Two]] were former academics and curators authorised to protect cultural works of art in the path of the Allied armies; they ended up tracking down and preserving many works of art stolen on an organised basis by the Nazi regime.
**Interestingly the reverse decision was made about French collections acquired in a similar manner during the Napoleonic Wars. It was decided to leave them in France both because of the political reason of making a comparatively cheap facesaver and the aesthetic reason of fear of damage during travel.
* The US [[The Big Red One|first infantry division]] actually converted itself into a motorized division this way in France. During the German retreat they captured and hot-wired enough German vehicles-and probably stole some from the civilians too but we won't talk about that-that they could carry the entire force.
* When the Swedish army retreated from Norway after King Charles XII was shot thousands of them froze to death. The local Saami who found the bodies were not late to "re-distribute" the stuff they could find. However, this being the early 1700s and the Saami having little use for the fancy sleds (that some officers rode (and died) in) or cannon one of the most popular items to "aquire" was the soldiers' wigs. Appearantly they were really warm and the Saami used them as insulation under their fur hats.
* When the French Army began the [[Nightmare Fuel|infamous]] [[Napoleon Bonaparte|retreat from Moscow]] they came back with goods from palaces and rich homes around Moscow. They were so confident that they budgeted this into their cargo load [[Tempting Fate|at the expense of combat and survival equipment]]. This decision(or decisions by a large number of individual soldiers) had [[Understatement|somewhat disadvantageous effects.]]
* In sort of a combination of this and [[Creepy Souvenir]] after the [[Napoleonic Wars]] dentures were called,"Waterloo Teeth", because when there was nothing else to strip from a corpse they would take its teeth (hopefully it was dead first). Disgusting as the idea was it was practical as they were real teeth and the teeth of young men, so possibly healthier (especially if the scavenger got to an officer's corpse before it was rescued).
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Steal This Index]]
[[Category:Role Playing Game]]▼
[[Category:Money Tropes]]
[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]
[[Category:Plunder]]
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