Carter
Profession
While travelling can be a great and refreshing experience, travelling for work can sometimes be more than a little exhausting. Not only exhausting but dangerous - especially if your job includes taking goods from one place to another.
The life of a carter is not an easy one, and the job can often be thankless and the career short when the carter ends up either burning out in stress or killed by a sly group of bandits. To be a carter, even in a well-established caravan on a relatively safe road, requires certain bravery or foolishness, as one spends time on the road sometimes for weeks on end for relatively modest pay.
Career
Qualifications
Luckily, the base qualifications for becoming a carter are not as high as in some professions; you need to have a sense of direction, rudimentary skills of reading a map, and you need to know how to handle animals. Realistically, however, you are likely required to own your own animals, as well as a cart or a wagon, it would be good to know how to read and defend yourself and gain some precious reputation to land on a good deal. Physical fitness is often a large part of the task that is not that much talked about, as well as mental stability, both things that many carters pick up on the job.
In certain instances, local law might require carters to have some kind of licence or be a part of certain skills to offer their services. This custom however varies greatly from region to region, and isn't always that heavily inforced, at least not in domestic trade.
Perception
Purpose
Carter's job is to handle a cart or a wagon drawn by animals, and deliver goods from one place to another. This can be very small, local deliveries with smaller carts, or longer, even weeks of travelling in large caravans. This is particularly true in places that are landlocked, and large ships do not work as a transportation method.
Social Status
While more keen-eyed professionals and the commonfolk of hard to reach places understand the worth of a professional carter, way too often a carter is only seen when they are not doing their job properly. This means that work well done is often taken for granted and the carter's efforts may end up unappreciated. This is quite common in large cities where people live rather comfortably, with very little understanding of the dangers and challenges the job makes the carter face.
In remote areas, on other hand, scarcity makes the sight of a carter a welcome one. in small villages brave carters are like village heroes, as they make sure the community gets what they need from hard to reach places.
Comments