Oh yeah, it was the blurst of times. Not often you get as many as 1000 vNPCs. Thanks to everyone for showing up.

Cue in six months time after this happens Kadius is in charge because it is based in Morins, has no real competition in the monopoly because nobody can displace them from their money market selling silk and no other members of any GMH can get a start because Kadius has bought up literally everything. I think each family should have a slice of the overall pie for this reason. (example scenario)

Also, it has already been proven that a multi  GM House Luirs does not work. Without going into too much detail, I think Kurac holds onto Luirs for a few non-trade reasons.

We all love corruption- I mean, Democracy!

This event is happening in TWO hours! Golly gee!

something something [redacted]

I think they should compete more, and there should be more theft of 'clan crafting' through knowledge and similar tools/common materials/special materials.

I really don't understand why the GMHs don't compete. It's even worse when pissing off a single GMH ends up making them all hate you, which reduces the incentive to do anything interesting or abrasive, kinda just adds to the 'everyone just gets along' vibe that's been going on.

Great Merchant Houses not competing is bad for merchant house play, bad for ArmageddonMUD and simply is unrealistic.

-Non-competition reduces conflict, intrigue, and MCB.
Imagine a world where the Great Merchant Houses are economically battling for control of Luir's. Raiders, thugs or mercenaries being hired to ambush each others' shipments or even rob each others' shops or establishments. Templars being bribed to look the other way. Double-agents getting paid to infiltrate and inform on one another. All while being visibly friendly to one another on the surface. Imagine Great Merchant Houses competing - getting into a bidding war, exortion, violence - for the services of a skilled crafter.

-Non-competition relegates GMH players to wandering vending machines with little political relevance or aims for their own houses.
Instead, they're here to socialize, sell things, and buy stuff from hunters. That's mostly all they do.

-Non-competition reduces the value and impact on money and economy. They will always have more money than they have anything to do with when it could be made competitive instead.
Imagine Merchant Houses all hearing about the same (rare thing) out in (dangerous location) and scrambling to hire conflicting explorers, surveyors, or adventurers to get (rare thing) from (dangerous location). Or hiring somebody to raid the other house's team for (rare thing) on their way back from (dangerous location). Instead, they all handshake and split it because there's no reason not to!

-Non-competition means GMHs have a fairly boring monopoly on almost every field of crafting in the world.
Imagine Kurac making you a cooler (item) than Salarr did. Imagine Salarr paying a thief or a burglar to steal, break, or deface it in retaliation. Instead, the current path is "Well we, Salarr, will not make this, so it cannot be made!" This could be far more interesting... but it's not.

-Tired of Luir's never getting anything done? Same pile of rubble been there for 20 years?
If enough PCs kick Kurac's ass out, ambush their shipments, rob their stores and tear down their holdings, maybe Salarr will get it done instead! Make competition a thing, and this becomes possible.

Maybe, I just wanted to be very clear that when saying that magickers in this setting 'can be anything' and aren't all coughing wasted Raistlin Majeres like in Dragonlance, I wasn't just talking about Templars and Sorcerer kings, when I had 2 different people try to tell me I was.

Styrax is a material, it could potentially be used for any weapon type, although some may make less sense than others.

This is fixed and will now be showing back up on your skills lists.  However, it will not be at it's previous level of proficiency and you will need to get this manually adjusted.  Please wish up when you are in game for an admins help to get this sorted for you.  If you receive no response, please put in a request to arrange a time with an admin.

"- Added sytrax to weapon calculations as its own set of numbers"

Does this mean that a sytrax is somewhere in the piercing list of weapon types?

ex. spears -> sytrax -> longspears

Also if there are any changes to the list available to players on the GDB, could it be kept updated until there's a helpfile?