Melvos Hammerstars

Upcountry Sembia

Melvos Hammerstars is a typical Sembian merchant of the sort known in the realm as successful. He owns a tallhouse in a fashionable darth (neighborhood) of Saerloon, a down (rich compound) in the countryside, and several rental properties. His array of businesses, investments, and trade deals astonishes most non-Sembians, but it is entirely typical of many moderately successful folk in his country -- so a look at Melvos is a useful illustration of what folk are like in the prosperous realm known to many in the Realms as "the Land of Rich Fat Merchants."
First, let's learn more about the landscape of upcountry (rural) Sembia. Most country-dwelling Sembians live in small roadside compounds consisting of a wall enclosing a dwelling, an outhouse, stables and sometimes a paddock, a coach-shed (which often serves to keep the worst wet weather off an extensive woodpile), a garden, and sometimes a guesthouse.
These compounds vary from tiny, poorly built steads (with dirt-floor cottages and yards crowded with salvage from elsewhere, firewood, tripods for growing beans, snares to catch rabbits, and drying frames for furs and scraped hides) to palatial downs that enclose mansions and have large for-crop-sales vegetable gardens (complete with servants' huts, extensive root-cellars, and perhaps a barn) and bowers (pleasure gardens) dominated by tended trees, floral beds, little pools, statuary, benches, small (gazebo) pavilions known as evenspires, and turf paths known as greenwalks.
Strings and clusters of such walled dwellings line most Sembian roads, with farms lying behind and between them. They are occasionally separated by back lanes leading to woodlots studded with small arndels (cabins), the preferred abodes of half-elves and all others desiring rustic privacy, or to the walled and gated country estates of the very wealthy (which are often referred to as hunts because of what most often happens therein, but always have individual, grandiose names, such as Blackeagles, Dragontowers, or Greatturrets).
Along major roads, inns with paddocks stand about a day's travel apart. Where nature also provides enough water to serve a horsepond or run a mill, a wayhamlet usually develops. Sembia holds scores of such; they're rarely more than a cluster of cottages with perhaps a smithy, allgoods shop (general store), and tavern.
Rolling hills and many trees meet the eye everywhere in upcountry Sembia; the only changes wrought by extensive human settlement are the disappearance of really tall timber (felled for mast spars and roofbeams) and the appearance of far more open space (the "many small linked fields" of the typical Sembian farm) than in the days when most local "open land" was the result of lightning- or red-dragon-breath-caused fires.
Wolves, bears, and owlbears are becoming scarce in the increasingly populated Sembian countryside, but foxes, packs of wild dogs, and the more cunning prowling monsters are all too energetic. The still-extensive forests provide concealment and cross-country travel routes -- and the settlement provides predators with such ready food as chickens, goats, sheep, and young horses and cattle.
Upcountry Sembia is a well-watered country, with many small streams and natural ponds. Large marshes are rare, but small bogs and thickets (known locally as tangles) are not. Signposts are few and poor, except on major roads; wandering dirt cart-lanes are the norm.
Streams and their valleys are often the only ready ways through farm boundaries. Stiles are few, and farm fences tend to be nigh-impenetrable hedgerows of gathered, heaped stones and stumps, over which thornbushes and vines are encouraged to grow, and bird-deposited seeds are left undisturbed to sprout into thick tangles of greenery and interwoven vines.
The walls of downs and country estates are usually just taller versions of field-barrier hedgerows, usually made of earth and stone rubble heaped together to have a near-vertical outer face (intended to be too steep to climb) but a more comfortable inner slope (up which successive barrows of earth and stone have been pushed and then dumped). Raspberry canes and thorny wild shrubs are typically planted on the upper slopes and tops of such walls to discourage passage.
Only the walls of the hunts have dressed stone or smooth stucco outer facings (usually in a treacherously crumbling and falling-off state thanks to hard winter frosts), and only the largest such walls are broad enough to have guard paths along their tops. In the more dangerous days when walls were first being erected around upcountry Sembian landholdings, it was the fashion to liberally equip walltop paths with pit-full-of-sharp-spikes traps.

Hall and House

The down owned by Melvos Hammerstars stands on the north side of a dirt lane called the Thelnwalk, about half-a-day's ride (when the lane is free of both snow and mud) east of its moot with the road joining Mulhessen and Saerb (a route known locally as "the Rattlebones Ride" because of its bumpy surface, caused by the well-buried logs that formed its original cross-all-bogs roadbed). The Thelnwalk runs east off the Mulhessen-Saerb road at about its halfway mark, near the not-on-most-maps wayhamlet of Olturret.
The Hammerstars down is of middling size and consists of a shade-garden-with-many-tended-trees bower, a stables with a rear gate opening onto a wild forest crisscrossed with trails Hammerstars uses to take guests riding or to hunt boar and deer (and his servants use regularly to enrich their tables with snared rabbits and grouse taken with slung stones), and a house large enough to offer seven bedchamber suites, with a servants' wing and a large central hall for dining and dancing. In any Sembian city, a house of such size would be considered a mansion -- though its architecture would undoubtedly feature more haughty ornamentation.
Melvos uses this country retreat for the same things most successful Sembian merchants do: entertaining trade partners (or merchants he's courting to become trade partners) with feasts and revelry (primarily drinking, hunting, and dallying with hired local "professional" companions; these three activities are often undertaken at once, the hunting of companions -- for amorous activities, not slaying and eating -- being known as "lacerunning" relaxing (which usually really means hunting, drinking, plotting, and lots of sleeping and various illicit or frowned-upon activities (such as trading or repackaging smuggled or stolen goods for resale, torturing or holding kidnapped-for-ransom trade rivals, and negotiations concerning unlawful goods or trade practices -- such as slavery involving kidnapped Sembian citizens, organized thieving within Sembia, and so on).
It should be noted that Sembian law holds Sembians accountable for honoring trade agreements and contracts between Sembians anywhere in the Realms, but is entirely silent -- and even actively disinterested -- in the activities of Sembians outside the borders of Sembia (plus Sembian harbors and coastal waters). In other words, Sembians can openly trade in slaves, hire brigands and even private armies, and break all manner of laws outside Sembia, and Sembian courts and society care nothing about it -- unless or until such activities spread to harming other Sembians anywhere, or take place (even partially) inside Sembia.
Imaginatively enough, Melvos calls his down Hammerstars Hall -- as opposed to Hammerstars House, his tallhouse in Saerloon.
Most city-dwelling Sembians of the middle classes dwell in tallhouses, which are built in rows or terraces with their windowless side walls touching the side walls of neighboring tallhouses. Such structures are named for their tall (three to as many as six aboveground floors, the average being four), narrow (usually only one-room-and-a-passage wide) proportions. Most streets in Sembian cities are crowded with them.
In the poorest areas, crumbling tallhouses are entirely given over to rental accommodations. Each room is usually let to a single person, who (if lacking a family) often subleases to up to six other roommates. Cooking-hearths are shared (or braziers are used on balconies also hosting clothes hung to dry), and sanitation consists of water buckets lugged from the harbor or common well-pumps, and "nightsoil" buckets casually dumped off the balcony into the street, or lowered to a passing nightsoil wagon.
In better areas, tallhouses have cesspools and indoor jakes, and are rented out by the floor, usually to shopkeepers who both dwell and keep their shops in the uppermost cellar and at street level, and to families who dwell on the floors above. Sometimes tenants living on the upper floors run quiet businesses therefrom, such as scribe-work, longtongue work (what we would call either referral services or private investigators), warmshoulders services (what we might call hostess-offered prostitution), and readykettle establishments (offering one or two persons a hot meal, a ready bed without intimacy, and small-items storage with utter discretion -- which affords paying guests, particularly visitors with shady business connections, a place to run to and hole up for a day or two).
As income and social levels increase, shops and upper-floor businesses grow fewer; more and more tallhouses are occupied entirely by their owner or a single renter, or are split between the owner and a single tenant. The wealthiest Sembians, of course, can afford mansions or even walled compounds within cities, but Melvos Hammerstars is far from being one of those.

Taxes, Fees, and Avoiding Them

In addition to business license fees, per-animal-stall stabling license fees, and "gate passage" or "docking" goods taxes, most Sembian cities collect an annual "head tax" from residents regardless of whether or not they provide any desired services in return for it.
Such taxes typically range from 1 sp for the rent of a single tallhouse room or ownership of the tiniest of hovels, up through 1 gp for the tenant of a tallhouse floor, to 3 to 5 gp levied against the owner of a tallhouse. Taxes for mansions of any sort start at more than triple these amounts (18 gp annually is about the cheapest such tax levied; most are 25 gp and up for a grand house, and 45 gp or more for anything with extensive grounds and outbuildings).
So although Melvos Hammerstars could certainly afford a large mansion, he neither wants to advertise his success so boldly (to thieves and trade cabals who might want to "squeeze" or "pluck" him, by acting in concert against his mercantile activities until losses force him to sell things to them) nor to pay such "ruinous" taxes. So he keeps to his tallhouse, and lives quietly -- but very actively -- therein, visiting his down in the countryside every tenday or so, for up to six nights at a time, in the warmest four months only (unless diseases, unrest in the city, or the hostility of personal trade rivals makes longer absences advisable).
Hammerstars House stands on the east side of Sundultarm Street, in one of the better darths in northwestern Saerloon -- a neighborhood known as Windhowl. This neighborhood gets its name due to the noises created when anything stronger than a breeze blows through the many spires, rooftop statues, and ornamentations of its tallest and grandest structures.
Sembia charges fees for land deed transfers, registering ships, and for nigh on a hundred other little things, but there's no general income tax, or anything levied on private business transactions. Like most Sembians, Melvos Hammerstars is aware of all applicable taxes and details of the regulations regarding their enforcement, and he adroitly arranges his affairs to escape most of them. A good way to instantly enrage a Sembian is to try to expand interpretations of when a particular tax applies or becomes payable.
Profits are highest, of course, on goods imported or exported without paying gate passage or docking fees (particularly for the sorts of goods, such as weaponry or magic, for which the highest fees are levied). Almost every Sembian old enough to walk and talk has been guilty of avoiding handing over some coins by under-reporting amounts of goods (paying the rightful fee for two hundred and forty-two pots but actually shipping two hundred and forty-eight), but fewer risk false claims (covering weapons with a deep layer of pots and claiming the entire wagon or ship hold is full of pots) or omit reporting entire vessels. This probably isn't due to any lack of boldness or surfeit of honesty, but merely to the fact that fewer Sembians own or can afford to rent more than one merchant ship, or move enough pots (or weapons) to make the boldest deceptions worthwhile.
Most Sembians, Melvos Hammerstars very much among them, have no interest at all in paying the government more than the unavoidable minimum of fees and taxes, and they operate in a mercantile environment where privacy about one's own affairs (except when boasting about triumphs and chortling over pratfalls seasons after they become mere history) is both good practice and everyday habit.
Most "good traders" (the Sembian term for anyone with a head for business, which is at least nine out of every ten Sembians) have quite a few secrets they're anxious to keep hidden from the authorities, trade rivals, neighbors looking to make a few silver by selling information about what they've seen and heard, and family members.
In this respect, Melvos Hammerstars is very much a good trader. He doesn't bother to conceal his wine-blending business (of rough Dales vintages, into kegs for export around many Inner Sea ports as cheap but refreshing "throatslake") or his sideline tile-roof-fixing business in Saerloon, his investment in the cobbler's shop run by the son of a friend (Olanthiir's Fine Feet, on Scorneel Street), or his part ownership, via a coinring of nine investors (we might say syndicate or holding company) called the Sundul Full Palm, of two rental tallhouses on Pranthar's Street.
However, he keeps very quiet about his other interests -- the "few little forgotten things" that bring in five-sixths of his income.

There's Nothing so Useful to a Sembian as a Secret

Melvos Hammerstars is more level-headed than most Sembian city-dwellers (who soon grow paranoid that "everyone's out to get them" or they "missed top coin" on a hot new scheme or opportunity, and mustn't fall behind on the next one), but the cutthroat nature of Sembian life has made him wary enough to take out backers surety and post healing bonds.
Backers are folk sworn to conduct or wind up your affairs in accordance with your written instructions (or, failing that, best business practices) in the event of your death, sudden mysterious absence, or known kidnapping or illness. A surety is a written contract (we might say insurance) binding the backers to act. Sureties are filed (for a 4-sp fee) with Sembian authorities, who diligently watch the backers to ensure they perform.
Healing bonds (commonly known as "healshields") are prepayments with local temples for the casting of spells on the bond purchaser or designate for healing, poison- and disease-quelling, or raising from the dead. Most Sembians pay the entire sum for lesser spells, and post deed-claims with the temples for the more expensive magics.
A deed-claim is a written agreement to pay a set sum within so many days after a service is rendered, or the service renderer is entitled to take possession of a property (often a second city tallhouse, rented out to sitting tenants) in lieu of monetary payment. Sembian authorities take a very dim view of persons who try to refuse or become unavailable to receive payment, so as to instead seize a property they want.
Moneylenders in Sembia are colloquially known as grudgecoins (though this characterization could more fairly be applied to most Sembians asked to lend money, even by family and close friends), and much of the art of clawing one's way up the social ladder in Sembia, a land where wealth is social standing, is getting other persons to lend their coins to your profit through various subterfuges.
Most of these covert swindles are worked via subtle inequalities in contracts within coinrings, the small, secretive investment cabals whereby Sembian smallholders pool the coins they can spare to purchase cargoes or properties they can't afford individually . One of the most strictly enforced tenets of Sembian law is that the precise terms of all coinring-member investments in coinring activities be written out in a formal contract or scrip (Part Seven details more about scrips) which must be filed with a Sembian tax official (officially known as a scrutaar, commonly called a watcher, and less politely referred to as a pursespy). This filing must be done by means of two identical copies (the scrutaar must make certain they're identical), one of which is eventually sent to a central records office in Ordulin, the House of Ravens (referred to by most Sembians as Castle Parchment). Bribing scrutaars a few silver coins to delay sending on the second copy (to delay government scrutiny of the coinring's activities) is a practice so common as to be almost accepted by the government, but the official cost of filing coinring scrips is whatever it costs to prepare the two copies plus a copper piece. However, scrutaars are under standing orders to post on the outside walls of their office for a tenday a list of summaries of all scrips filed with the office, and the government officially offers scrip-filers the right to keep their scrips off this list (for a 2 gp fee) so neighbors and trade rivals won't get wind of their activities.
For some years Melvos Hammerstars was guilty of a quite common swindle: He worked in concert with a friendly local scrutaar to collect the 2 gp privacy fee from coinrings he was a part of, without officially filing for off-list status. The scrutaar kept the scrips off the list, and split the fee half and half with Melvos for doing so.
Penalties for removing, defacing, or altering a posted scrutaar list are 25 gp for the first offense, 50 for the second, 75 for the third, and so on, and in all cases of indebtedness to the Sembian government, authorities have the legal right to seize goods and property if payment in coin is not made by highsun of the day following the demand.
Down the years, this "until the morrow" delay has resulted in many Sembians fleeing, or "running from the Claws," the "Claws" being the affectionate name by which Sembians refer to government tax officials (we might call them bailiffs). In Sembian plays, the Claws are often portrayed by disembodied, oversized skeletal human hands (moved by actors wearing black veils, gloves, and robes) moving of their own accord, very like the widely-feared-in-folklore undead known as "crawling claws."

The Silent Landlord

With some of the terms and daily environment surrounding Melvos Hammerstars covered, we can begin to examine just a few of his thousands of business ventures. It should be remembered that nearly every Sembian possessing wits and physical fitness enough to be in business for themselves has a similar array of such interests.
As mentioned earlier, Hammerstars openly engages in the following Saerloonian business interests: wine-blending, running a crew that fixes tile roofs, what we would call a "silent partner" investment in a cobbler's shop, and through the Sundul Full Palm coinring, part ownership of two tallhouses on Pranthar's Street that return rental income. These "public" (that is, revealed to government agents, not to anyone asking him questions in a tavern or on the street) activities bring in only a sixth of his income.
Hammerstars earns the majority of his coins by many means. One such is being a landlord.
In the name of a deceased former business partner, Darmeer Horath, Hammerstars collects the rents on three Saerloonian tallhouses. One is a very seedy "by-the-room" building near the docks, and (using names not his own) Hammerstars rents three rooms in it as various unseen boots (absent) tenants, and subleases each of these rooms to up to six lodgers. These coins cover his daily living costs (mainly food). Long ago, Horath made an arrangement with Tarmrose & Sons, a certain Westgate-based importing firm (actually engaged in smuggling drugs and spirits), that this decaying tallhouse would be their official city offices, so they could pretend to be a Sembian firm and avoid heavy import duties on their "cover" cargoes. Tarmrose pays the annual ownership head taxes for the building through a traveling factor (third-party trade agent from Westgate), and in return Hammerstars gives him the entirely anonymous use of a suite in one of the other two tallhouses as a hidey-hole when he has need of it. So Tarmrose need never come within half the city of his offices -- if the authorities ever become suspicious of his cargoes.
Horath died "on caravan" outside Sembia, and the authorities aren't yet aware of his demise. They're looking for him, for unpaid taxes -- but then, they're looking for a lot of people for unpaid taxes. Hammerstars pretends to be Horath's hired rent collector, but to be himself waiting for Horath to pay him for this service. He has (forged) deed-claims ready for the day when the government tries to seize the buildings (which they can do for Sembians who die without heirs, despite creditors -- but not despite deed-claimants).
Thus the rents from this Manynets Lane tallhouse are untaxed profit for Hammerstars, who does no maintenance on the place. He can't get windstorm or tumbledown (building collapse) surety (insurance), but does have a fire bond -- and a covert standing arrangement with a nearby street gang (whom he pays watch-money to, every tenday, for spying on the doings of his tenants and the neighbors) to set fires in the ruins should the tallhouse ever collapse.
The second and third rental properties stand on the far more respectable Bellmaur Street. One is entirely given over to nicely furnished half-floor suites that command monthly rents of as much as 12 gp. The only Hammerstars "funny business" here is a single suite out of its four floors stands empty for either his use as a hidey-hole or meeting place for shady negotiations, or as a place he can rent to business acquaintances (for very steep fees) if they ever need a hidey-hole in a hurry.
The other tallhouse has a seamstress on the ground floor, and three stories of expensive full-floor rental living suites above. The trick here is that the seamstress, Lharal of the Needles, is not just a seamstress: she's the madam of her own high-coin brothel, located on the floor immediately above hers. Lharal pays taxes as a seamstress, but the bedwarmers upstairs pay none, and she "forgets" to notice her share of their takings -- just as Hammerstars splits that share with her in return for paying the head tax for an entirely fictitious renter of that floor, and overlooking what's really going on. Should he or a business friend he wants to cozen show up to share beds, they pay no warming fees.
Melvos is careful to pay his full taxes promptly on all properties he openly and personally owns, and he does what most struggling-up-from-lowcoin Sembian merchants do: buy buildings adjacent to his own whenever they become available, in hopes of someday selling a large block of land at a handsome profit to someone who wants to put up large tallhouses or a mansion.

The Likable Lender

In all of his shady business ventures, Melvos Hammerstars makes modest coin regularly. He knows that the greedy get caught. The authorities are so overwhelmed by business deceptions going on all around them that (unless ordered to make an example of a particular individual) they tend to let the small and subtle pass, in return for pouncing on the "big ones" (which earns them the most approval from superiors).
We've seen his activities as a landlord. Hammerstars also indulges in what most Sembian merchants except the very wealthy practice on a daily basis: cointossing.
Cointossing is the practice of making short-term loans (entirely informal, with no paperwork and high interest fees). Small shopkeepers with cash-flow troubles have no choice but to try to find someone to lend them a few coins for a few days, to get in goods (particularly perishables such as food) they couldn't otherwise afford, that they must buy right now. (A Sembian who suspects he's being watched will often ask for a cointoss to pay off a debt he's being pressured to pay, purely to avoid revealing his own sources of income to spies.)
Cointoss loan amounts are small, but the interest is typically as high as one-quarter of the principal. Borrowers are willing to accept such terms for two reasons: They can largely conceal how desperate their personal finances are, and such interest rates are as little as half what licensed moneylenders charge for short-term, high-risk loans.
While there's no such thing as a Sembian moneylender free from greed, the extremely stiff rates they charge aren't all profit: moneylending is one of the activities that the government does tax. (They also regulate it through exhaustive contracts composed of clauses drawn up by government officials that licensed moneylenders are legally required to use; a contract is typically assembled by picking and choosing clauses, but the clauses themselves can't be altered by borrower or lender without hiring an expensive government agent to approve such "variances.")
Sembia holds many moneylenders and countless investors, but very few private bankers now exist. During the last three decades, the government has been busily winnowing their ranks by granting no new banking licenses and revoking licenses held by individuals when they die (rather than allowing heirs and creditors to take over the licenses). Although the average Sembian views this as one more "robbery by government" (all deposits carry a flat 10-sp fee, regardless of amount, and withdrawals are likewise subject to a 20-sp fee), this change was actually instituted to cut down on slaughter-thefts (and the hiring of wizards at ever-higher fees for personal protection, or to attack protected persons). Such slayings were escalating to fearsome levels thanks to almost every city-dwelling Sembian's need to carry and store large sums of coinage at all times, just to engage in everyday life. The creation of hard-to-counterfeit magical seals government officials could affix to officially issued, redeemable tallies (we might call them government-issued checks or IOUs; most take the form of small, palm-sized electrum plaques) made possible transfers of large sums of money without chests of coinage being involved. Tallies can be redeemed only by the person they were issued to, in the presence of any government banker, anywhere in Sembia, and so are worthless if stolen. When large debts are to be paid (particularly if the debtor wants witnesses to the payment being made), debtors often take a tally for the correct amount to a government banker with the creditor, and the banker cancels the first tally and issues a second one to the creditor. (Government fees for tally transactions are the same as for coin deposits and withdrawals.)
Hammerstars has built up enough money to do as many of the self-styled nobles in the land and other very wealthy Sembians do: engage in cointossing for amounts large enough that he could be said to be the equivalent of a private banker -- only without the license, contracts, and government scrutiny (of both the transactions and his fees, which for bankers are government-controlled). This sort of cointossing is backed by documents, but not government contracts: Instead, the borrower writes up a claim stating that the rents for a property, or the proceeds from the market sale of a particular cargo, or (if desperate) the deed to a property, are to be transferred to the lender, and gives it to the borrower. When the loan is repaid, the document is returned (or borrower and lender burn it together).

The Tireless Trader

With his personal wealth quietly established in Saerloonian trading circles through his discreet performances in the larger sort of cointossing, Melvos Hammerstars has enough "street credit" (Sembians say "metal enough," from a line in an old, largely forgotten play, Morlos the Mad Merchant: "There's metal enough in his bottom for him to hold down that throne") to engage in scrip trading.
Scrip trading is where real money can be made in Sembian society. It's the daily grease that keeps Sembian commerce running. Unlike market-stall buying and selling of real goods, scrip trading is buying and selling paper documents (a very limited form of what we might call futures trading), and it works like this:
If a "smallmerchant" by the name of Tharvos has invested, say, a 50-gp share in a cargo of lanterns coming by ship from Tsurlagol, but can no longer comfortably get along without that money (or no longer wants to buy those lanterns for his shop), he can go to certain dockside clubs (this practice began in taverns, but the Sembian love of privacy and safety soon caused traders' clubs to be established, with doorguards and entry rules) and offer to sell his share.
Someone like Melvos Hammerstars, if interested, will offer 45 gp or so. Tharvos loses 5 gp, but gets paid the balance on the spot. Melvos now owns the share and can resell it for a higher amount (the scrip provided to Tharvos by the ship's captain, fleet owner, or trading coster says "50 gp" nowhere on it, but instead gives an amount of lanterns, some specifics as to their origin, construction, and quality, and a season or even a month for their arrival), or gather it with other scrips in hopes of cornering that year's market in such lanterns and perhaps driving up the price of each lantern by arranging temporary shortages of supply.
Most scrips are for small amounts of goods and aren't hoarded for price-rigging, but merely bought and resold. Desperate sellers may end up with two-thirds or even less of what they originally paid, and some Sembian traders make a living just on the difference between what they pay for a scrip and what they sell it for, without ever actually handling any goods. As more than one ruler or senior courtier has commented (again employing an old quotation): "This is a leap into madness, but we see no lack of leapers!"
Some wealthy Sembians have begun to buy and sell property deeds in this manner, and forgers have set to work -- forcing the Sembian government to establish both detailed neighborhood deed registries and license-triads of license-carrying local officials to oversee such sales.
License-triads are trios of government officials chosen to represent different professions and levels of wealth, and for their personal dislike of each other. Their existence is intended to make bribing or blackmailing an official too difficult and expensive for most Sembians to contemplate.
Sembian licenses are metal (usually tin, but sometimes zinc or even electrum) plates, pierced to be hung on wrist- or more often neck-chains, and stamped with the "Raven and Silver" device of Sembia and the official's name, title, and personal registry number. (Lawkeepers are given registry lists with "secret" questions entered for each name, so they can challenge anyone carrying a license for the correct answer, to have some means of exposing impostors).
Melvos Hammerstars trades mainly in scrip for wines, spirits, and small sundries cargoes. Sundries are relatively nonperishable everyday items and supplies, such as lanterns, blank ledger books, inks, decorative locks and latches, windowpanes (small rectangles of glass mounted in metal frames that have fluted edges with rings attached, so panels can be slid-fastened together, and rods passed through the rings like window-bars to give an assembly of panes some stability, the ends of the rods being attached to larger frames), and weatherpouches (leather satchels made with toggle-thong-fastening overflaps to keep carried items -- usually documents -- as dry as possible).
Melvos always tries to buy and then sell, making a modest profit on the difference, so as never to end up actually owning any goods when ships dock. He has a fear of getting caught with worthless, or hardtar, items, which are difficult to sell or, by their nature, to store. So he avoids more risky and high-profit cargoes such as ale, foodstuffs, fashion garments, and herbs (herb cargoes are notorious in Sembia for often providing a hiding-home for drugs and poisons, and the authorities keep watch over those dealing in them).

Secrets, Shady and Otherwise

Like any trader, Melvos has trade secrets. Most are business contacts and sources of advance or insider information (about demands for goods, events that will cause shortages, fads and fashions, and new goods or when new supplies will become available). Some involve knowing who to bribe (or hire for shadywork such as forgery, intimidation, arranged delays to befall rivals, and even thieves, vandals, sea pirates, and arsonists) -- as well as how much to pay and how such hires can be controlled.
Other, more benign types of trading secrets exist (usually the only sorts a Sembian merchant will admit to having, except when speaking very obliquely): sources of quality goods and knowing the market. The latter really means building up experience in knowing local politics and local shortages, wants, and needs, so buying and selling hunches will be correct or profitable far more often than mere random decisions, which often bring little profit or even financial disaster.)
Down the years, one Hammerstars secret to making trading profits has been to buy up footwear of all sorts, whenever possible. Melvos knows well that almost all civilized Faerûnians are constantly seeking better-fitting and more durable shoes, boots, and clogs. A scrip for such wares can make a handsome profit if resold before the goods arrive (so another merchant is stuck with the risk of possibly shoddy or unattractive goods). Melvos has learned the following reliable sources of footwear:
Durable and cheap but ugly or everyday looks boots: Ravaerigo Reland Cobbling of Milvarune; Ravaerigo is the jovial, rotund, and very shrewd head of the large and hard-working Reland ("RELL-and") gnome family of tanners, bootmakers, and repairers.
High-fashion style boots for female humans, elves, and half-elves: Shastra Iluarel of Manytrails House, in Yhaunn; Shastra is the beautiful, soft-spoken, and very shrewd trade envoy for Manytrails, run by the Iluarel (Il-OO-ah-rel) half-elven family for many Yhauntan half-elves, gnomes, and halflings.
High-fashion, superbly made shoes and boots for males (when only the very best will do; most sales are to nobles and rising wannabe nobles, but Sembian guild awards and gifts are often of superb footwear): Marlus Evenndren Designs of Daerlun; the haughty, fiery-tempered and effeminate Marlus Evenndren is brilliant but widely disliked for his sneering condescension and "thinking himself to be royalty, or even better."
Cheap, plentiful, all-sizes (but not so durable, seldom lasting more than one season) clogs, slippers, sandals, and shoes of everyday design: Ilbrelm Nasker of Alaghôn; Nasker is a patient, stolid, hard-working man who takes in deformed, maimed, outcast, orphaned, and penniless folk of Turmish and gives them warm shelter, food, and a large family of fellow workers in return for hard daily work. "Work fast, do much in a day, keep prices low" is Nasker's motto. His work has (temporarily) shod many a Faerûnian who can afford no better.
Footwear is only one of many goods Melvos Hammerstars trades in. His head is filled with scores of sources and hundreds of contacts for all sorts of things, from candles of specific hues and scents to wagons of particular designs, and he usually trades at The Six Coins traders' club on westfront The Dolphinrun (the street that runs southwest from the Dolphin Market onto the largest, double-armed wharf of Saerloon), or at the haughty and exclusive maroon-tapestry-shrouded traders' club and fine dining lounge Maskynel's, on westfront Sevilandar Stride. ("The Stride" is the street that links Dolphin Market and North Market, and the most glittering shops of the city line it.)
Every trader develops allies and friendly favorites with which he trades in relative trust; for Melvos, his still-small circle of such fellow traders consists of Haeriburt Tanvelro (a fat, stone-faced, jowly and jet-haired textiles and sundries trader) and Storn Reskilar (a tall, nervous-seeming consummate actor who looks as craggy and impressive as many a high priest, and trades primarily in goods containers: jugs, casks, coffers, chests, and bottles).
The favorite Hammerstars shady business practice is to use fictitious rival companies (actually just warehouses and a few former minstrels too aged to travel) to buy up stores of goods and so artificially drive up prices. Like the majority of Sembian merchants, Melvos considers this price-fixing practice to be "just sensible business if you can get away with it," and not unethical at all. No laws prohibit it except when a state of war or "need of Saerloon" (official shortage) is declared, and Melvos Hammerstars would consider himself stupid not to use it whenever it brings him financial advantage.