Commerce

Aspects of Business and Commerce

Alliance merchants trade with those of other cities and treaties are sometimes formed to protect those carrying goods from one city to another, with these caravans often protected by government troops. Within a city, merchants often swear association to protect each other within the walls.

Alliance towns hold markets at least once a week in the square, where stalls are set up and local merchants sell their wares. Nearby towns may also send any surplus goods they can to be sold.

In larger cities, fairs are held to coincide with other events that would attract visitors to the city. These can attract foreign merchants from distant lands who bring fine woolens, silks, carpets and other items not available from local shops. These fairs also attract strolling minstrels, performing tumblers and acrobats, and animal acts with trained bears and horses. The fairs can last for several days.

The Alliance business world is dominated by the Guilds. When merchants find they can accomplish more as a group rather than through individual effort, they band together to form guilds. Guilds formed for bakers, butchers, grocers, millers, smiths, carpenters, weavers, mason, shoemakers, in fact, nearly every trade with sufficient numbers of practitioners and sufficient influence has its own guild. Standards such as just weights and measures evolved from the guilds, and guild agents inspect shops to ensure rules are being followed. Guilds help members that are sick, or in trouble, and sometimes take care of families after the member dies. [See the Guilds article earlier in this thread.]

Apprenticeship is how most start in a particular trade, which they follow the rest of their lives. The apprentice is often also the master's domestic servant and helper, and his workday is long indeed. After completing an apprenticeship, the appropriate guild examines his work to see if he can be elevated to journeyman status. This is taken quite literally, as the worker then journeys from town to town to learn more about the trade. Journeymen are required to create a "masterpiece" in the presence of judges to be elevated to master status. At this point, the journeyman is required to swear allegiance to the guild and his craft.