I'm running AoW with a new group of players. We have just started and one of them has came up with an unexpected proposal: he wants to buy the plot of land where the mine is located, reasoning that it shouldn't be very expensive as knowledge of the mine is all but forgotten. What price should I charge him? I have thought that this could be a reason for enmity with Smenk who could send Kullen's gang to act as claim jumpers... Of course when Ilthane shows up in AGoW, the new property is going to suffer some minor damage... Any suggestions (preferably evil) welcome...
I had this crop up in my campaign too. I run it in "The World of Greyhawk, according to me", so my solution is at least partly specific to my world view...
I valued the land itself according to the guidelines in the old "Stronghold Builder's Guidebook" - 12,500 gp for 100 acres is what I decided sounded about right, with that 100 acres including the land the mine is on, as well as the old mining office (which my group has now turned into "Iron Manor", at the cost of many more tens of thousands of gp).
Of course, I also made it such that only citizens (of the local area) can actually purchase land... A citizen, for me, is someone of nobility or suchlike, i.e. foreigners and peasants (or rough equivalent) do not qualify. Thus, none of my PC's qualified as citizens, as one was local to Greyhawk city but an outcast, another was a noble but from another city, and the rest were from far away outside of the domain of greyhawk altogether. Hence they ended up having to do a deal with Allustan, who purchased the land title in his name and leased it to the PC's. Given the PC's were "mining" the iron balls from the cairn, they used the profits to pay off the lease and renovate the manor. The end result was a growing asset (the manor), and an alliance with Allustan.
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Our monk is building a monastery there. I've gone ahead and allowed her to do it, figuring the Cairn was by and large unclaimed. It will basically be an offshoot of the Twilight Monastery.
I did have the town fairly hostile to the party post-Ilthane, but a month of game time (and fair amounts of gold and magic) spent rebuilding and improving the town has improved the situation.
It's entirely feasible. I'd let them try and claim the land. It's not exactly balance-breaking to own a dungeon.