Re: Merchant organizations in Wildspace

On Mon, 12 Apr 1999 TimGross@???.com wrote:
> >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.
>

How many major ports are in a given sphere? I imagine 1-6 or so. If
the merchants aren't visiting them all every few months then they're
not big enough to be loaning out ships. Other merchants and travelers
could help spread the word too, if it is not in their interest to have
renegades roaming the universe. Directly competing merchants might not
do this, of course. The delay to other spheres might be measured in
years, but inter-sphere travel takes months anyway. Who said justice
is always swift?

> 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.
>

The lost-ship problem could be somewhat offset by requiring the crew
to leave a detailed "flight plan" with the harbormaster at each port
they visit. Then if the ship is overdue, a rescue/salvage mission
could be sent out to where the ship was supposed to be.

But, yeah, I'd say without mind control magic (geas, magic contract)
on the crew no merchants would loan out ships. Kind of dull, but
that's life. Actually, it can pose a fun dilemma for players: get a
ship/freedom and lose some control over the PCs, or stay planet-bound
but in control?

Peter.Mikelsons@????????.edu
      http://hep-www.Colorado.EDU/~mikelson/
             Grad. Student, Physics, University of Colorado, USA
                  Snowbound