Trade and Transport

Trade within Aerdy also has sharply declined. Once, the great rivers of Aerdy and the dirawaen roads provided superb highways for merchants to travel with great wagon convoys and merchant vessels ranging from long, slow barges hauled by horses to smaller sailing vessels (coasters being the most common sort employed).

Metals, woods, silks, salt, spices, and more were ferried around the kingdom in great quantities.

Nowadays, few merchants venture forth in this way. For one thing, importing goods has declined sharply. Also, the risks of doing so are simply too great. Even if a merchant hires a hundred men-at-arms to protect his goods, he may run into a marauding army of thousands of men or orcs only too ready and able to overwhelm such protection—that is, if the men he has hired don't slit his throat and steal what he has for themselves.

Ordinary people don't trade much either. Leaving home with goods to sell makes one a target and leaves one's home undefended. Then again, most people don't raise surplus produce; tithes are too high.

Just about the only people in a position to trade are nobles with tithes and armies large enough to fend off bandits and discourage marauding armies from attacking them. Such trade tends to be arranged in advance. Two landholders agree to terms of trade and a meeting place. And barter is at least as important as buying and selling. Rulers need wood, iron, alloys for weapons; stone for fortifications; and the luxuries they once had in abundance and which are now so difficult to obtain. The surrender of the Lords of the Isles to the Scarlet Brother hood, cutting off imports of spices, silks and the like, make luxuries hard to come by.

Still, some trade continues. It is mostly restricted to the major waterways of the lands, and also to the dirawaen roads, for a special reason in the latter case. When Schan dor framed the Aerdy legal system, part of the code was a duty laid upon landholders along these roads to provide secure accommodations at regular intervals for the travel ing judges of the sessions. As a result, a network of forti fied coaching inns sprang up along these major highways.

Since judges visited them rarely, the innkeepers obviously needed other custom—and the traveling merchants saw the attraction of stopping over at such secure places. Hence, as he intended, Schandor's legal maneuver stimulated trade. Some of these fortified inns still stand, and the few merchants still traveling the lands usually plan their travel routes to be sure of spending the night at them.

In game play, if movement rates and the like need to be computed, the following rules can be used. The naviga bility of rivers is documented in From The Ashes, of course. On roads, the dirawaen roads are still in excellent repair and have a multiplier of 0.4 for movement cost (this does not change with the weather, either).

Other primary roads are in fair repair but no better; the multiplier for movement cost here is 0.5. Secondary roads and trails have a multiplier of 0.6, but if wagons or similar transport is being used, there is a 1 in 6 chance per 10-mile stretch of road of a major obstacle such as large potholes being encountered.

Along most of the dirawaen roads there used to be toll stations at 10-mile intervals, where the following tolls were levied. Merchants conducting a great deal of trade could buy seasonal exemptions from local landholders for a negotiated fee.

For each wagon, 2 sp

For each horse or other beast of burden, 4 cp

For each licensed guildman or merchant with his goods, 1 sp

For each freeman, 2 cp (peasants don't count)

For each "knight or goodman," 1 sp

The last quaint term applies to anyone on horseback who looked like an adventurer, squire, page or the like. This was subject to the discretion of the tollmen. Each toll station was typically manned by one sergeant-at-arms (F3) with 1d4+4 militia (F1, with a 10% chance for each to be a F2), wearing chain mail armor and carrying short bow, halberd, broadsword, net, and shield. The toll stations themselves usually comprised no more than a couple of wooden cabins; 25% had 1d4+1 war dogs in addition to the soldiers.

Nowadays, most toll stations are abandoned or else occupied by bandits and ambushers or desperados who will try to extract whatever they think they can get from anyone passing through. However, in some lands—which have a gazetteer summary entry for "ruler ship" as medium or higher—the toll stations are still manned normally and the charges above apply, plus a surcharge of 10-100% as the DM determines.

In other lands, where control has broken down, the DM may determine as he wishes how toll stations are manned, or else use a simple D6 roll: 1-4, abandoned; 5, occupied by bandits/ambushers; 6, occupied by the original toll collectors.