Re: The Glorantha Digest V8 #244

From: plarsen_at_mail.utexas.edu
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 17:06:08 -0600 (CST)


Stephen Tempest asks:

> What about the Issaries merchants? How do they keep their accounts,
> remember who owes them money, keep a list of their stock, record a
> contract with the neighbouring clan to supply 5 bushels of grain next
> harvest time in return for 6 newborn lambs handed over in Sea Season?
>
> Is it all done by memory, or do they have a limited system of symbols
> used as mnemonics, or did Issaries do a trade with Lhankor Mhy during
> the Godtime which now allows him to teach his devotees to read and
> write as a cult secret?

If KoDP is to be taken as a model, trading in Heortling society is much more of a cooperative deal. The Issaries merchants deal between clans, not so much between people. If you want fancy cloth from the Goodweavers in the next tribe over, you ask your clan's trader. I suppose there are minor traders, like tinkers, who wander around selling on a very small scale, but there are no contracts there -- you make the deal for what you want, trade goods, and the tinker goes off over the hill.

For larger deals, where contracts are necessary between clans or tribes (or maybe bloodlines), you have witnesses. You make sure you have three (or five or seven) trustworthy people to attest to the deal. Even if you had a writing system, who's going to believe that it says what you claim? If your word and that of your witnesses isn't enough, what good is paper? And in Glorantha there are always Truth magics if the dispute is heated enough ("You ask the Sword." "No, you ask the sword." "Maybe the lawspeaker will help." "Yeah, for a cow.")

I suppose that some merchants might use strings of beads or knotted thongs, or something, to keep track, but I suspect it's nothing too elaborate.

Now, this is for the Heortlings. Dara Happa has a much more literate culture, more "merchant houses," and more elaborate taxation systems. The various merchant cults and the Busarian bureaucrats most likely have more formalized systems. Other cultures, like the Kralori, are even more organized.

> RW example: Sumerian cuneiform writing was developed by merchants as
> a means of recording the deals and contracts they had struck.

I'm reasonably sure that cuneiform was developed by priests and bureaucrats to keep track of taxes. I'm sure someone will correct me if this isn't right.

Peter Larsen


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