>No, I believe that literacy and numeracy are going to be needed
>for Issaries merchants in 'modern' Sartar or the Lunars are going
>to take them to the cleaners.
Maybe your typical Issaries merchants keeps two sets of books? One is the pre-Sartar knotted string kind designed to boggle your average non-Hero level Lunar Tax Collector and the other is the "real" set of books in Trade Talk for actual business.
Peter Larson weighs in as well:
>Anyway, in a non-literate society, who's going to believe your
>scratching? "It says here you owe me a cow." "Oh yeah, my
>brother and I say we don't. And so does our clan."
Another good reason for an Issaries merchant to hire a Humakti guard to back up your record keeping: "Snori Hagarson, you owe me one cow." "True!" (sez the Humakti) "Oh, *that* cow, erm..."
Gary R Switzer
Aero Hobbies (Two copies of KoDP sold, Dave, and counting.)
"One of the commoner sort of rodents is the Dormouse, from the Western word dormeuse meaning sleepy. Not a mouse at all, the Dormouse hibernates for much of Dark Season, eating voraciously the preceding season to fatten themselves up. They are considered both a nuisance and a boon by orchardists because they customarily nibble on several fruits, rather than just finishing one of them, so they destroy more of the crop than they need. But these tree-dwelling rodents can be a boon since they are easily raised for the pot in special dormouse jugs called 'glilaria', which has a cozy, rounded, nest-like shape and plenty of venilation holes."
"We were served dormice in the following way: Stuff them with chopped pork and dormouse meat pounded with pepper, pine nuts, asafotida and fish sauce. Sew them up, put them on tiles and bake them in a bread oven."
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