Hi,

It's a shame I can't remember what it was called, but towards the end of my last game, I was penalized 20,000 in money. Unhappy people? All my towns were at 80-100% (red) stability.

What was that all about? Actually, this was the second game where this happened. Whatever this 20K penalty was, how was it created/how to avoid it?

Thanks. 

Only thing coming to my mind is modern pirates event, if you don't pay upfront and decide to storm the ship instead, there's a possible follow-up that the operation failed, your soldiers died and you have to pay anyway.

Agreed, it's almost certainly the pirates event:  You can choose to Pay 20,000 up front, or Assault and risk* having to pay it anyways.  Delegate seems to be the safe choice?

*Do we know what the odds are of the assault failing vs. nothing happening at all?  If it's 100% (which I think "A Mournful Song" is as well?) then there's not much gambling going on.

I've tried Assault twice and it failed twice. It's one of those events that could make for a cool mini-quest, like in your idea thread, even if it was something as basic as 'have armies with at least X combined CS in Y territory before Z turns'.