Trade Routes

[Joshua]

Amber is an island.. sorta. It has an ocean, and it set into a mountain, and is the only inhabited place in its universe. (Out to 500 or so explored miles.) Worse, the land route is fraught with danger and monsters.

In order to import anything, one must travel through shadow. This is difficult, which is a major improvement over the previously impossible methods. Trade routes currently exist in the following forms: (as of the start of year 7... and yes, had the game started in the year 20 as originally planned, it'd be easier.)

• Anyone with pattern can lead a caravan to retrieve goods. Even without "lead others through pattern", you can usually drag a cart with a few people. Anything you can carry (sorta), based on psyche / strength.
• Some members of the city can travel shadow. Basically, they can follow through shadow (regardless of the Amberite's skill), or go along a similar path provided an Amberite has ever lead them there. There are maybe 50 (or so) of these, and they mostly act as messengers to arrange trades. A chunk of them are fae, and that causes a lot of other issues.
• Spellcasters can travel using the equivalent of gate and plane-shift. This process is slow, but mostly reliable. While there are dozens if not hundreds of such mages, many are requisitioned for the support of courts and the larger merchants. Individuals and smaller merchants cannot get reliable access to such a wizard. (they have to rent, while larger merchants have them on retainer.)
• As of now, there are not permanent gates into or out of the city.
• It takes an Amberite almost a day and a half to get far enough away from amber to shift shadow freely. Most places Amber trades with are within several hours, or are a short shift (say, 30 minutes), then a long mundane travel time. This allows people like ruben to spend an hour seeing a caravan off, then an hour seeing them back but ultimately being able to leave them to their own devices. Part of the issue is there's only about a dozen amberites (just the pcs and npcs).

The ultimate result: There's a LOT of trade, but only larger merchants and the courts can take full advantage of it.

People's thoughts?

[misfit]

That makes sense to me. And we do have the established precedent for trade already in the game. Reread the description of the second course of dinner and you'll see those ingredients had to come from somewhere else. And travel by sea is one way to get far enough out to travel the shadows, so that makes sense too. It also freaks the natives of the shadows out less if they think you just sailed in from a faraway land than just appearing out of nowhere.