Buyer/Seller

Merchants make friends and allegiances throughout their careers like anyone else but when it comes to their profitability they dare not risk their livelihood on something as trivial as ‘friendship’. Merchants frequently set aside commonplace relationships in exchange for less cordial ones that will raise their bottom line and make their money instead of memories. These special relationships are called Buyer/Sellers. A Buyer/Seller is a specialized form of Ally that does not help the character in general ways; rather it focuses on setting up good prices for their associates. Like a shopper who calls their friends when they spot a bargain, the Buyer/Seller helps arrange good deals for the Merchant.
During character creation, anytime a character on a Merchant career gains an Ally they may instead choose to add a Buyer/ Seller. For every Buyer/Seller, a character has (which should be given names and personalities, just like regular Allies) in their stable of contacts and such, the character may tap them for market information once per month. This market information will add a dice modifier to several different skill checks. The types of skill checks that a Buyer/Seller can affect are as follows, as long as they pertain to the purchase or sale of goods:
Trade Diplomacy
Buyers/Sellers are not infallible in their market knowledge however and they sometimes make mistakes. The dice modifier a Buyer/ Seller offers must be rolled randomly to show the accuracy of their information. When a character calls upon the advice of a Buyer/Seller, the Referee secretly rolls 1D6-3 + connection and applies the final result to the skill check needed to sell the cargo. As a note, this means the modifier can be a 0 or even a negative number!