Re: Merchant organizations in Wildspace

>How about this? The victimized merchant company in Greyspace >makes up a
bunch up "Reward: Wanted Dead or Alive for >Wildspace Piracy" posters with
descriptions of the criminals.

The sheer vastness of space make this practically impossible.  How often do
ships of a single merchant company make runs to every port in their own
sphere, much less a neighboring one?  The delay wouldn't be a few months but
_years_ if ever -- a risk a shrewd merchant wouldn't take.

The original question was to invent a way (role-playing related, campain
related, or even maybe magically related) to prevent the needless
disappearance of NPCs ships at the hands of occassionally frustrating PCs.
Its hard enough to be a merchant with reavers, monsters, and the natural
dangers of wildspace, w/o worrying about hijacking from your own captains.
Besides, how would a merchant ever know whether his ship was stolen by its
own crew or was a drifting lifeless hulk somewhere in the Flow, its treasure
still intact, but with a grave danger lurking aboard...etc, etc.

In any event, I'd forgotten about the Contract of Nepthus (sp?)... I guess
that happens when there's enough different magic items.  Even if they're not
as common as Paul proposes, an item like this could be the basis of a short
adventure or two.  Thanks, Paul!