Merchants - Agent and other Great House Family

[Akaramu]

Perhaps this is a derailment, but it believe it would be interesting to point out the relative power potential of senior servants and bastard nobility as well. It seems to me they are often underestimated by commoner PCs, and perhaps dont receive as much respect as they should, if the average commoner wants to keep their head attached to their shoulders.

Wizturbo? Opinions?

[wizturbo]

Perhaps this is a derailment, but it believe it would be interesting to point out the relative power potential of senior servants and bastard nobility as well. It seems to me they are often underestimated by commoner PCs, and perhaps dont receive as much respect as they should, if the average commoner wants to keep their head attached to their shoulders.

Wizturbo? Opinions?

Intelligent Senior Servants, bastard nobles, and non-family member merchants can achieve just as much power as a family member merchant in my opinion.  The difference is, it has to be more subtle.  Their alliances can't be out in the open, and their wealth would likely need to be somewhat played down.  But while difficult, these types can be insidiously powerful without a doubt, especially if they can get a family member of the merchant or noble house on a few puppet strings.  I would say a bastard noble starts at about a "3 or 4" power level.  A senior servant doesn't generally "start" that way, so its hard to say.  And for a non-family member merchant of a great merchant house...probably a "3" is accurate at the beginning.

[Vanth]

I actually tend to feel like bastards are given too much sociopolitical power in Nak; a noble's bastard in the south is a common occurrence and should be treated (IMO) as merely more trustable, not necessarily more powerful.

In the north a noble's bastard is an anomaly and likely exterminated early to prevent it reflecting poorly on the House--or, if its mother is a slave, raised as a slave like any other.

Note: this is my opinon as a player, not as an imm.

[wizturbo]

I actually tend to feel like bastards are given too much sociopolitical power in Nak; a noble's bastard in the south is a common occurrence and should be treated (IMO) as merely more trustable, not necessarily more powerful.

In the north a noble's bastard is an anomaly and likely exterminated early to prevent it reflecting poorly on the House--or, if its mother is a slave, raised as a slave like any other.

Note: this is my opinon as a player, not as an imm.

I tend to agree with you, but a bastard noble is often a trusted senior servant so I put them together.  If that is not the case, an unclaimed bastard noble is just a commoner and has no special power.

[Adhira]

A nobles bastard can be claimed and still have no special power.

What they might have (if they're lucky) is a nice upbringing where they always had food and a roof over their head, perhaps some educating and training, and a guaranteed job as a servant in their noble parents House.

They most likely won't have much recognition beyond that, unless they're particularly useful and rise to that position of power by their own merit.  If they're that good, they'll get the recognition due to their status as Captain, Aide, Advisor etc.

[Naiona]

I'm going to break with tradition for a moment and post an example which is in fact based on a real event that happened in game.  At the time, it even confused the PCs involved, because both sides were seeing this issue from one extreme side or the other.  When it was fully explained to them they better understood the relationship between the merchant houses and the nobility.

Noble Houses are hotbeds of interior politics.  Often, one noble's progress up the house ranks over another can be based on profits created or savings generated for the house (even Borsail likes more money).  Another way a powerful senior noble might move up the food chain is to create displays of power through what they wear, what their servants and concubines wear, what type of equipment their slaves and guards have..etc.  And - as in the case I am about to mention - the most powerful nobles of all might throw grand events to promote their own names for yet more powerful positions.

Imagine if you will, that Lord High Patriarch Jal is mumbling about retiring to a quiet life with his six thousand concubines in their two room bungalo in the suburbs. Now, Senior Lord FluffyBottom Jal is one of three contenders for the position of senator.   FluffyBottom is a smooth operator, and he decides to sponsor a massive festival to glorify his house name - and make everyone think of -him- as the most prominent Jal.

Now, imagine it is about an IC year later.  Preparations have been ongoing this whole time.  The entire House Jal is very excited about the event.  The party is only an IC week away and deliveries are due to the house and the party location constantly over the next few days.    But...at just this moment... Junior Agent Snookums Kadius sneezes in the Trader's Inn and accidentally knocks over a huge decanter of wine - right on Lord Biff Jal's new white silk shirt.

Lord Biff is angry.  And worse, Lord Biff's aide Buffy is whispering in his ear that she heard that Snookums did it on purpose in hopes that he'd catch the plague from sniffing ocotillo fumes.  Biff works himself up into a fury and Lord Templar Bozo is called.  (Still with me?)

Bozo is a somewhat savvy templar, and he waits patiently for a moment for the undoubtably huge bribe offer that is about to come his way from Snookums.   Unfortunately, Snookums is playing his first merchant and has utterly forgotten that templars are bribeable.  He just stares helplessly at the angry templar and noble.    Now Bozo is insulted and angry as well, and it is swifly decided that an example will be made by humiliating the Kadian in public and imposing a massive fine.  At this point, it suddenly strikes a junior aide sitting somewhere off to the side that maybe Senior Lord Fluffybottom might want to know what is going on.

Now, Senior Lord Fluffybottom has no idea who Snookums Kadius is, and he doesn't care.  As far as he is concerned, it might be fun to mash the Kadian to bits and serve him as the entree at the dinner.   But Fluffybottom –needs- that dinner to go well if he's going to be the next Lord High Patriarch in Jal.  He gets worried suddenly.  What if the Kadians get pissed off? What if the candles don't arrive, or arrive with Sath colors?   Or what if the wine is all sour?  Or what if the banners his aide ordered are turned the wrong direction by the Kadians that deliver them?  Suddenly, Snookums Kadius has a powerful ally that he has never even met – for that one day, anyway.  Not because Fluffybottom has any great respect or admiration for Kadius or Snookums, but simply because he wants his festival decorations and supplies delivered on time and in one piece.  It is all about looking good to advance his own career.

Needless to say, this is a case where the Kadian has some measure of protection inside the citystate, though temporary.  This type of thing is rare, but demonstrates why it can be dangerous to just assume that no one noble cares what happens to merchant family.  A noble or anyone in the social food chain has to be constantly thinking of their alliances, their house alliances and what might matter to whom at any given moment.  That is what can make playing a noble both fun and really difficult to do.

[Bestatte]

I -so- want Naiona's post to be stickied. In lieu of that, I shall copy and paste to notepad and title it, "IMPORTANT STUFF TO REMEMBER"

[moab]

Agreed. That was an awesome post, Naiona.

[Maybe42or54]

~drool.

[Rhyden]

That was an awesome example, Naiona. It's really given me some good perspective and even a few ideas.

[Red Ranger]

Family members from a Great Merchant House are not nobility.  Nobles are an integral part of the ancient and rigid social structures of the city-states.  Tradition is a powerful force keeping nobles in their elevated status.  After all, it is an unquestioned fact, to the populace in the city-states, that nobles are superior merely because of their birth; they are a superior race.  Within the city-states, tradition doesn't elevate the families controlling the Great Merchant Houses in a likewise fashion.

When it comes to wealth, it is my opinion that any Great Merchant House has much more money than the greatest of the noble houses.  The Great Merchant Houses are enormous.  They likely have one to two orders of magnitude more individuals and materiel than the largest noble houses at any given time.  They process very large amounts of goods.  They span the entire Known World.  Vast amounts of money flow through them on a daily basis.  To quote the website timeline found at http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/timeline.cgi, "...almost all of the economy is in the hands of Merchant Houses."

Still, while a Great Merchant House's net worth would dwarf that of even the greatest noble houses, the Great Merchant Houses don't have the disposable income that the noble houses do.  The assets and wealth of the Great Merchant Houses are invested and used, and wasteful spending is discouraged. However, the assets of the noble houses aren't the only factor keeping those houses afloat, and conspicuous consumption is the rule.  The Great Merchant Houses track their spending very closely, and they use their wealth to generate more wealth.  The noble houses, on the other hand, can devote a -much- larger portion (if not a larger absolute sum) to discretionary spending.  That is, they can spend more money on things that won't necessarily provide a future return, things like buying the latest fashions every week, throwing frivolous parties, putting out a large bounty on someone over a minor disagreement, spending a massive bribe to have someone killed over a petty insult, and so on.

While money and price control are two of the main reasons the Great Merchant Houses are influential, there are others as well.  All the Great Merchant Houses have sizeable guard troops and hired strength of mercenary arms.  All the Great Merchant Houses have operatives across the Known World, and thus have access to information, talents, and natural resources not available to the noble houses or templarates of either city-state.  Lastly, while the Great Merchant Houses aren't exalted inside of the city-states like the noble houses, they're still part of the fossilized urban social order and, in the world of Zalanthas where superstition and fear take the place of education and enlightenment, both urban commoners and nobles should be averse to disrupting the status quo.  Commoners should fear upheaval, because they're always the ones that bear the brunt of all calamities, and because whatever comes after the upheaval in the current order could always be worse.  Nobles should seek to avoid disrupting the status quo because the current order guarantees their place.

With all that in mind, I would think that most merchant house family members would be concerned first and foremost about the bottom line, and thus they would be industrious and ingratiating just about all the time (being snooty generally just doesn't win friends or sales), whereas nobles are first and foremost concerned about social standing, and thus they are frequently supercilious.  Similarly, merchant house family members are subject to the fickle laws of the city-states, whereas the nobility are not, making yet another reason why merchant house family members should act fundamentally different from nobles.

Red Ranger

[Nidhogg]

Actually, it is the power of the God King keeping the nobility in place in some instances.

[EvilRoeSlade]

When it comes to wealth, it is my opinion that any Great Merchant House has much more money than the greatest of the noble houses.  The Great Merchant Houses are enormous.  They likely have one to two orders of magnitude more individuals and materiel than the largest noble houses at any given time.  They process very large amounts of goods.  They span the entire Known World.  Vast amounts of money flow through them on a daily basis.  To quote the website timeline found at http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/timeline.cgi, "...almost all of the economy is in the hands of Merchant Houses."

If it says somewhere in the immortal's secret documentation that merchant houses are richer than noble houses, then it would be true.  But it still wouldn't make any sense.

If it doesn't say so, then it can't be true, because again, it makes no sense.

As Red Ranger has outlined nicely, Zalanthas is a tradition-based society.  Not capitalism by a long shot, tradition-based societies were capitalism's predecessors.

In a tradition based society, controlling the entire economy doesn't mean a whole lot, because an economy as we would know it today does not exist.

Furthermore, take a look at the markets of the respective merchant houses.  Luxury goods, arms/armor, spice/desert gear, and real estate.  These are very SMALL domains of power.  And unlike a capitalist society, there is no hope for their domains to increase because merchant houses are as much bound by tradition as noble houses.

Can House Salarr wake up one morning and say "We need a bigger market.  Let's buy House Kurac."  Nope.

Can House Kurac decide that they want to expand their holdings and buy House Oash's vineyards and take over the wine trade?  HELL NO.

The merchant houses are unable to expand their markets, and therefore unable to increase their wealth.  Furthermore, the two best markets in my estimation (water and slaves) belong solely to noble houses in either city state.  That's my first point.

Today, we have global-spanning super-corporations of immense wealth and power.  However, none of these corporations are as powerful or as wealthy as the United States government.  Make no mistake, if they were more wealthy than my government, they WOULD be more powerful, just as many corporations are more powerful than microstates and third-world countries.

Why is the United States government richer and more powerful than any corporation in existence?  Some of you had to be as awake as I was in Economics class!

The answer is because the United States government can do something that no corporation has ever been able to do in the history of the universe:  Tax a population.

Allanak has that same power.  So does Tuluk.  Taxing a population brings about enormous wealth.  Much more wealth than any merchant house could ever dream of.  Think for a moment about the enormous national debt of the United States government.  Its mere interest rises more daily then you'll ever see in your life.  All this money comes from the citizens of the United States.  That's right.  Whenever Income Tax season rolls around, the wallets of every citizen in the united states combine to form a phenomenal sum of money, and the labyrinthian coffers of the United States are refilled for yet another year.

But let's get back to Allanak.  What does good old Tektolnes do with all that money he gets?  What's that you say?  Yes, you in the back.  You're saying he pours it into his soldiers and templars?

Excuse me for one moment.

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

Okay, I'm better.

HA

Well friends and neighbors, I don't know about Tuluk, but in Allanak you'd be dead wrong.  Tektolnes spends a pittance on his soldiers and templars.  Enough to keep them from starving to death, which is all he needs to do to prevent open revolt, since they are terrified of him to a man.  The rampant corruption that runs through Allanak doesn't come from nowhere.

CORRUPTION, THY MOTHER'S NAME IS INADEQUATE FUNDING

Aside from the incredibly low amount of money good ol' Tek spends on a standing army, figures so low that no modern dictator could ever hope to get away with them due to the conspicuous absence of god-like supernatural powers on their part, Tek puts all of his money into...

The Noble Houses.

Aside from maintaining the standard army, these guys take care of everything.  They have their hands in water, in slaves, in knowledge, in city maintanence, in training the army, you name it, some fat noble has his hand in it.  These people ARE the city.

Compared to even the most wretched noble house, a merchant house would only register as an insignificant nothing.  Flies who buzz around the lion in hopes to get a bite of rotting meat!  The merchants are merely fortunate enough to have slipped themselves into a tiny crack of the awesome Allanaki construct, and have proven themselves able to the point that they are allowed to keep whatever table scraps they manage to salvage from the decadent Allanaki feast.

If we put the forces of tradition aside and looked at the situation from an entirely capitalist viewpoint, a noble house probably could buy the entire holdings of a merchant house.  They are richer than one would think possible, because they are the government.

[Red Ranger]

I must disagree with you, EvilRoeSlade.  In my opinion, the noble houses control only a small portion of the wealth in a city-state.  The vast majority of the wealth is in the hands of the representatives of the God Kings, the templarates, and it is the templarates that collect taxes, not the noble houses.  Furthermore, in Allanak it is the templarate that mines obsidian, not a noble house.  

There's no debate whether the city governments have more in assets than the merchant houses, in my opinion.  The templarates have wealth that is orders of magnitude greater than anyone else.  But just because the God Kings and their direct servants have that wealth, it doesn't necessarily follow that the noble houses control even a significant minority of it, and that, I believe, is where we are in disagreement.

Red Ranger

[Marauder Moe]

Slavery, water, wine, soldiers, food... all of those business are in the hands of noble houses.  All of those are pretty big inustries too.

[Bardex]

Slavery, water, wine, soldiers, food... all of those business are in the hands of noble houses.  All of those are pretty big inustries too.

Waterskins, loincloths, weapons, utensils..all of those businesses are in the hands of the merchant houses. Without them, the water will run through your fingers to the ground, slaves will run around naked, wine will turn to vinegar, soldiers will fight with raw shards of bone and obsidian, and "civilized" folk will be eating the food with their bare hands.

In addition, the wealth of nobility and the templarate ends at the city walls. The wealth of merchant houses spands the entire world.

[Marauder Moe]

Waterskins, loincloths, weapons, utensils..all of those businesses are in the hands of the merchant houses. Without them, the water will run through your fingers to the ground, slaves will run around naked, wine will turn to vinegar, soldiers will fight with raw shards of bone and obsidian, and "civilized" folk will be eating the food with their bare hands.

Necessity does not imply value.  Those things all cost much less than the associated noble-produced product.

[Bardex]

Prime directive of economics:

Supply and Demand

I didn't think I'd need to mention that, but I guess I do. All the water in the world would be useless without some place to store it all. We're starting with the premise that the Noble houses are continually trying to out-do each other and not just merely survive. With that premise in mind, sure anyone can craft "a leather waterskin." But not everyone can craft a "quirri-fur waterskin burnished with the symbol of House Monkeyballs on the front." If House Monkeyballs wants their special waterskin, and they don't make nice with Kurac, then they're gonna be shit outta luck and House Do-Wop is gonna come out ahead with their "bahamet-shell water-gourd etched with the symbol of House Do-Wop around the edge."

It is VERY petty. But then, the entire function of these houses is petty. Nobles in the south wearing the most uncomfortable and ridiculous-looking clothing they possibly can, *intentionally* - means they MUST have a source for those clothes. If they just say "Well Kadius is being mean to me today so I'll wear sandcloth and to hell with fashion," they they LOSE. That is their game. It's what they're good at, it's what they strive for, and they lose the game if they give in and look/dress/behave/drink/sleep like a commoner.

The merchant houses don't necessarily dictate what the noble houses do, but they SUPPORT what those noble houses do. And they are *it* when it comes to support. Without that support, the nobles would not be able to do what they do.

[Marauder Moe]

Sorry Bardex, I just don't follow.

Are you trying to tell me that the loincloth business is bigger than the slave business?  Waterskin business is bigger than water business?

[Bardex]

No, I'm saying that wealth measured in how many sids you have in the bank is completely irrelevent to power and influence. The merchant houses could, in essence, hold an entire city hostage if they ever thought it was necessary and could come to an agreement on the methodology. And their houses would continue to do just fine in the rest of the world while all trade stops completely in the hostage city.

I'd say that puts them at the top of the list of "powerful and influential" entities.

[Marauder Moe]

Ah, I get it now.

Perhaps, but I think if one of the merchant houses stopped doing business with one of the cities they'd simply be executed, their estates seized, and every independant merchant of the same industry in the city would suddenly become VERY wealthy.

[lazycritic]

With all that in mind, I would think that most merchant house family members would be concerned first and foremost about the bottom line, and thus they would be industrious and ingratiating just about all the time (being snooty generally just doesn't win friends or sales)

Damn straight. Some merchant family members could tone down the snootiness.

Why is the United States government richer and more powerful than any corporation in existence? Some of you had to be as awake as I was in Economics class!

Are individual states more wealthy than the largest corporations? For the most part, no. That's a more valid comparison. Of course each of the city-states are more wealthy than each of the Merchant Houses.

The Great Merchant Houses has more goods than the average noble house. That's their business: obtaining goods, and then selling the goods. Those goods have a lot of value in them.

With our limited knowledge, it's hard to say which is more wealthy.

[jmordetsky]

I think Naiona's and Evil Roe Slade's posts paint the most accurate picture.

[Armaddict]

With my brief scan of the posts, I'd have to agree with ERS's post the most.  It doesn't just take wealth to be a noble house, though.

The argument was brought up about how merchant houses provide 'necessities'.   It's true.  But the reason they -can- do it is because they're -willing- to do it.  Otherwise, those noble houses and militia would just find ways to provide their own.  This way, they have a steady supply, always made, generally reliable...and at a low cost.  Why at a low cost?  Because otherwise, they'd do it themselves anyway.

The things noble houses provide, such as wine, or just training...or in the obvious case, slaves...these are things the Sorcerer-King would have the -exact same relationship- with.  Only in their case, it is more quality over quantity, generally, and with something -much- more directly valuable to those in power of the city.

The same way merchants have some amount of sway with negotiations with nobles...the nobles generally have some amount of sway with the sorcerer-king they support.

Merchants are a global market with low-tier, unimportant products in the grand scheme of things, as they generally benefit only one person or a small group.  They don't provide any particular service to the city itself, they help those who do have the resources to do such smoothly, without troubling themselves with small matters.

Nobles are a city-wide market, devoted to the one that keeps them in power, who provide some sort of quality service that a high amount of money, specialization, and education is required for.

The sorcerer-kings are at the top.  They protect their investments, pay out to their strongest supporters...and otherwise have such things taken care of for them, so that they don't have to deal with such every day business when far more important concerns are requiring attention.

Just my ideas on it.