What can I do with bad guests?

My stronghold has a guest, yay!. Oh wait it's a bad guest.

I can, from the look of it, pay him off to leave, or send an escort (I can also ignore him).

What are the benefits and downsides of doing any of those things? I know that having him around lowers my reputation and security and that that is a bad thing, are there any other effects?

Having a nasty visitor in your keep is not really a quest. It's a nuisance that has to be dealt with. Basically, you have three options:

• accept hosting them and suffer penalties to the stronghold's stats
• pay them off, which sets you back a silly amount of money and gets rid of the visitor (stats are back to normal)
• give them an escort which saves you the money but binds one of your companions for some time, which means they cannot take part in actual proper quests (the ones that give you experience and coin)

There is a fourth alternative. You can send your party back to the stronghold and murder them with a forced attack (shortcut: 'A'). They seem to always be hanging out in the Great Hall.

I'm not sure if there are long-term consequences for doing this, but there are no immediate ones.

If you have enough lore you can tell him of a safer place to dock if you tell him to keep going up the coast and he’ll leave with no issues