Merchant Companies

 

The Black Gold Group

In the early days of the reign of King Torbjorn I, as Golanicjan forces painstakingly recaptured various towns, villages and mines from the orcs between 383 and 388, King Torbjorn began creating noble titles for his most loyal and effective leaders. Instead of disenfranchising existing noble families, whose support he needed, he decided to create new ones. With each new town liberated, the King would return the reclaimed lands and titles to the great families who had previously held them (when they had not been eradicated by the orcs) and guaranteed them a place in his new court, ensuring their support and gratitude. At the same time, to his closest military allies he began granting control over trade routes, which had formerly been unregistered. By granting a family exclusive rights to trade specific goods between specific sources and destinations, he effectively doubled the size of the nobility in central Golanicja - with almost all of the new nobles he created being combat hardened dwarves, fiercely loyal to him.

This cunning move had the effect of transforming the entire power structure of Golanicja and forging a dwarven Kingdom out of a continent whose population was barely more than ten-percent dwarvish. It worked it for several hundred years, with a dwarvish nobility ruling over most of Golanicja until, by the end of the 12th century, the Kingdom was so mired in conflicts around the world that it could not longer afford to operate. In 1199 or 1200 the Grain Bank of Bulostioi decided to call in the debts of the Golanicjan crown. Knowing that the Crown would be unable to pay, the Grain Bank sought to secure its investments by making deals with a Golanicjan merchant nobles.

The Grain Bank secretly proposed supporting the merchant nobles in forming a private company that would retain monopoly control over trade routes in Golanicja in exchange for turning a blind eye to the Kingdom financially and militarily. Under the agreement, the merchant nobles would be given positions within the newly formed Black Gold Group, and would service the Kingdom's debt to the Grain Bank of Bulostioi, while the Grain Bank would use their power and influence to force the charter cities that would emerge following the collapse of the Kingdom to support the trade rights of the Black Gold Group. The few nobles who didn't agree to this proposal were assassinated by those who did before the Grain Bank even had to weigh the option. The deal was done.

The Black Gold Group is a merchant company that has exclusive rights to trade certain specific goods along certain specific trade routes throughout most of central Golanicja. While there are many (ie: thousands) of exceptions, they hold critical monopolies on the trade and distrubution of many key materials and goods on many key trade routes. Mostly these rights apply on raw materials such as ore, coal, lumber and foodstuffs, and on processed goods such as tools, clothing, and equipment. The largest exception to these rights are for the Salt House which trades in specialized raw and refined materials, such as raw chemicals, salts and other distillates and refined alloys and specialized items made from them.

The Black Sand Union

The Black Sand Union is a merchant organization from Jumira that provides sectile drones to work as manual labourers. They position themselves as a trade union that supports the rights of sectile drones to access employment around the world, but in reality their business is grossly exploitative and enormously profitable. The Black Sand Union actively recruits sectile drones to enter into indentured servitude contracts - usually for the legal minimum of $1200 silver for a three year contract (that's one silver per day). They then sell the labour of the sectile to a third party for ten to twenty times that much. For centuries the Silk League has sought to have legislation enacted that would require they act as mediators in any contract involving a sectile seeking to enter into indentured service, but the Black Sand Union has used their considerable wealth and influence to prevent this from happening.

The Five Points Trading Company

(Azeuloste)

House of Atwansar

(auction house)

The Povidovija Trade Alliance

The Povidovija Trade Alliance is an organization of shipping and transport companies that operates primarily in the King's Sea. Headquartered in Povidovija, Golanicja, the Alliance first formed in the Middle Imperial Era as a response to the increasing threat of Senecian-backed piracy when dozens of independent vessels and small shipping companies sought both to protect themselves and also increase efficieny.

Largely the Alliance did not offer much direct value to their members, but collectively they were able to raise the attention of the Golanicja and Tuloszian Kingdom's who responded by forming the Imperial Merchant Marine, whose initial fleets were mostly formed of Alliance vessels purchased by the crowns.

The Povidovija Trade Alliance operates principally between Kovstepovi and Desdiima in the north, to Brinjit in the south, and between Miga (via the Passage of Miga from Povidovija) in the west and the southwestern most peninisula of Tulosz in the east. Since the end of the Imperial Era, trade was extended to the Senecian island of Povescia and the southwest coast of the Senecian Main Island, though competition with the Widow’s Sea Merchant Company on these routes is fierce.

Qashdesh Caravaniers

(transport company length of ayodesh)

The Salt House

The Salt House is one of the oldest merchant organizations on all of Tear. Clay accounting tablets written in Old Gnolnic suggest the group existed in some form prior to the year -400. The Salt House is headquartered in the northern city of Saltspire, high in the Iron Ridge Mountains, where mineral rich thermal springs run out of the mountain glacier water into many lakes and rivers and eventually to the Red Brine Sea. Evaporation pools carved into the rocks, stepping down the mountainsides, are carefully tended to separate different salts and minerals which are then traded along ancient roadways that run the entire length of the mountain range, as far south as Stonehall. For centuries, salt used as a preservative has been critical to supporting mining communities high in the mountains or deep underground, and many say the red salts that come from the mountains are the blood of the land itself.

By the time of the Orcish Conquests, the Salt House was officially formed into a cartel of sorts, and their understanding of techniques for distilling minerals and their knowledge of trade routes across, around, through, over and under the Iron Ridge Mountains made them too valuable for the Orcs to attempt to seize. Instead, Golga was forced to bargain with the Salt House and hundreds or even thousands of orcs were integrated into the organization as workers. This intermingling of orcish culture which had such strong knowledge of mining and forging, and the institutional knowledge of the Salt House which understood concepts of distillation, precipitation, and many alchemical techniques led to an explosion of knowledge. Over only a few decades many new chemical elements were dsicovered and isolated and many new alloys and materials were created, some of which had only been known to exist in a few extremely rare Ancient Gnomic artifacts from the First Epoch.

By the end of the orcish conquests, orcish families were fully accepted and integrated into the region surrounding the Red Brine Sea, and so largely escaped the recriminations and persecutions that followed. As the Imperial Era bloomed, the Salt House re-established their hold on salt, mineral and alloy trade with the emerging monarchies and imperial states. For several centuries, the Salt House continued to quitely increase their wealth and influence, remaining effectively untouchable by imperial power and able to chart their own course beyond the end of the Imperial Era without much concern for the collapse of Kingdoms and Empires. By the Enlightenment, the Salt House was among the wealthiest and most powerful organizatons on Tear - rivaling the powers of the largest banks, but remaining much less susceptible to destablizing social and political factors. With no need to maintain physical offices in any but the largest cities, and without needing to do business directly with the population the Salt House far less visible than any bank, acting as a powerful background force largely not thought about much by the general public.

The Southwestern Jumira Bargee Company

The Southwestern Jumira Bargee Company - or just the Bargee Company for short - is a not as much a company in its own right as it is a trade alliance agreed to by thousands of independent traders operating out of the countless towns and villages in the Jade River Valley of Jumira. The company was founded in 607 by agreement between merchant families in Mudinak, Ivory Road, Jade River, Jhakara and Windbreak, as well as lesser families and companies operating throughout the region.

The formation of the Bargee Company was intended to provide a solution to the problem illustrated by the so-called Mango of Mudinak dilemma. The Mango of Mudinak dilemma imagines a princess in Mudinak who desires to eat a mango, and a prince who seeks to seduce her by having a mango brought up the Jade River Valley for her, from the city of Mango. This process would involve a fruiter in Mango trading a mango to someone at the river port of Mango. That trader would then paddle up the Jade River a few days and trade the mango to someone in some village there in exchange for something he wanted himself, or something he wanted to return to Mango with to sell. Perhaps the person who received the mango would then continue up river with it, or perhaps they would trade it again to someone else who would proceed up river with it - or perhaps they traded for the mango because they, themselves wanted to eat it, in which case they would. Now, because this individual-to-individual trade network was the only kind of trade network in the Jade River Valley, these trades would need to repeat every couple of days for perhaps three of four months - each time with a fair chance that someone along the way would just eat the mango. Thus, the Mango of Mudinak dilemma illustrated the problems of the trade networks of the Jade River Valley by demonstrating that it was effectively impossible to get a mango in Mudinak - even for a prince.

The Mango of Mudinak dilemma exposed two challenges that the Bargee Company was created to solve. The first problem was that the Jade River and its many tributaries were not reliably navigable from one end to the other, and even eight hundred years later in the Enlightenment, this remained the case. The river system is too treacherous and complicated for vessels to reliably and repeatedly traverse its entire length. Any trade up and down the valley therefore ultimately needed to be carried out as a series of many independent transactions. On top of this, the second problem was that there was also no 'top down' trade organization in the Jade River Valley. There was no way to place an order for a mango in Mudinak, and have a fruiter in Mango send so mangoes to the person who ordered them - they could only 'send them up river' with whoever might be interested in taking mangos that way for some unspecified distance.

Thus, the Southwestern Jumira Bargee Company set about establishing small trading posts in significant cities up and down the valley, and putting in places mechanism by which orders for specific goods could be placed, and those orders could be sent up and down river. Interested sellers and merchants could go to these trading posts where the Bargee Company would broker agreements and ensure that transport gaps would get filled.

It took almost 200 years to get this network and its systems in place, and many great families across southwestern Jumira staked their futures on the success of the endeavour. In the year 797, the famed alchemist Ayasara Putangal from Mudinak, whose family had invested heavily in the Bargee Company proved the success of the endeavour by ordering a mango from Mango and having it brought to her in Mudinak. The mango arrived some months later, quite rotten and inedible, but she was able to nourish the seed of the fruit and planted it in land that would become the 500-acre Putangal Allotment; a massive botanical garden outside the city of Mudinak, where mango trees were still flourishing in the middle of the 15th century.

The Spiral Sea Trading Company

details

The Werngesser Cartel

The Werngesser Cartel is a martime merchant organization formed in the beginning of the 8th century by order of the Ursan Matriarchy of Obersch as a way to maintain Oberschi shipping and trade interests in the Queen's Sea. By creating a merchant organization that was ostensibly autonomous from the Oberschi crown, trade between southern Obersch, Golanicja and Tulosz remained possible even as the kingdoms that governed these respective lands went to war.

The Werngesser Cartel is headquartered Nofenvinger, but operates out of dozens of small ports in the Fjords of Werngesser between Weymedac and Cingesse, as well as all major ports surrounding the Oberschi continent. They trade all along the northern coast of Tulosz from Resounding to Oveszb, and all the way across the Sea of Obersch to Blowhole Bay in northern Kashdush, and Tuga beneath the Kashdushan Shield. In Golanicja, they trade with the Westerlands, the ports of the Red Brine Sea region, and the Shaded Coast,and as far south as Kovstepovi.

Mostly, the cartel exports exotic good that can only be found in Obersch. They provide precious hardwoods and rare metal and mineral ores, as well as furs, exotic honeys, syrups, wines and liquers, and prized alchemical ingredients such as giant's toes and yeti's paws. To acquire such unusual ingredients the Werngesser Cartel maintains strong relations with the Frost Wardens to fulfill special requests; only the Frost Wardens could reliably fulfill a request for an ice dragon beak). Imports are most conventional goods - grain, fruits and vegetables, cheese, salt, and processed goods that are harder to come by and much more expensive to produce locally.

Widow’s Sea Merchant Company

details