Re: Merchant organizations in Wildspace

If the players act chaoticly without care for their reputation, then
one obvious consequence should be that noone will rent them a ship.

Why would a merchant cartel rent out any ships?  Should a merchant
family owns 10 ships.  The family only has 5 active members.  Who
operates the other ships?  Somebody has to, somebody who is very
trusted.

How does _anyone_ earn that much trust?

1)  Most of the accumulated wealth of its hired captains is converted
in real estate in an area dominated by the merchant family.

2)  The hired captain saved a family member's life, or performed some
other major service for the cartel.

3)  The hired captain is promised yet greater rewards if he serves
well and profitably for an agreed upon period.  Perhaps a share
in the whole cartel's profits.

4)  There is a strong kinship tie, religious tie, blood brother oath,
or similar level of trust between the cartel leader and the hired
captain.

5)  Collateral equal to the value of the ship is left behind.  This
isn't quite the same as buying a ship and having an agreement to sell
it back in an agreed upon period.  Partly for tax reasons, as the
sale has to be recorded somewhere, and that place may have the
equivalent of sales tax.

One other point:
Buying and selling a spelljamming ship should involve as much if
not greater hassle than buying a house.  Maybe buying a three hundred
year old house with lots of liens against it to settle and various
little provisos by previous sellers about what can be done with
the property.

If the sale is not properly recorded, the seller could later declare
the ship stolen and the buyers as pirates.

It is a lot easier for a large merchant concern to register all of
its ships in a large number of ports than for an independant
operator to do so, so getting a long term lease on a ship, instead
of buying one, may be a reasonable thing to do.

The sequence would go like this:
You open an account with the Bank of Genoa, depositing 150,000 gp,
or the market value of a modified squidship, as an example.  You
then draw up a contract stating that the Bank of Genoa is entitled
to withdraw 1,000 gp per month until the ship is returned to
a Genoese trading factor.  As with returning rental cars, there
are some penalties for returning the vehicle to more distant
ports.

The contract also acts as a form of bearer bond, or letter of
credit.

The hiring party is entitled to fly a flag showing that the
ship is rented from the merchant cartel, which can be very
useful if stopped by a navy privateer who deals with the
cartel.  The ship may still be seized, but the party could
sue the merchant cartel for its deposit back, and they would
in turn seek recompense from the navy which seized its ships.

If the navy in question has a great need for hulls they may
negotiate a payment schedule with the cartel in question.

Similarly, if a rented cartel ship is used to commit crimes, the
deposit is forfeit once they are proved.



Silly idea:  The PCs hear a rumor about a sphere in which gold
is extremely common place.  The rumor is true, but fails to
mention a very important fact:
(such as)
1)  Any gold from the sphere turns into lead or iron upon leaving
the sphere.  Alternately, _all_ gold is transmuted to a base
metal upon crossing the spherewall.

2)  The gold is cursed in a very nasty way, but that curse only
appears when the gold is taken to another sphere.

3)  The spherewall is not breachable from the inside by helms.
Any ship going there is stuck there.  Only person sized holes
can be made from the inside.

4)  It is very difficult to get the gold out for some reason,
but there are a huge number of eager prospectors/pirates just
at the edge of the danger zone who would attack anyone who
leaves the sphere or the particular gold-rich planet within
the sphere in the belief that they have figured out how to
safely get the gold out.

Most ideas inspired by David Eddings' Belgariad series.

Michael Sandy