It would be a mistake to think of the place where you are as a "city" or even a "village", really. There are no merchants here at all.
But you are correct that they produce wool, which they spin into thread and yarn and so have on spools or skeins. There is a bit of weaving done by the women, mostly, but very little product comes from this. The raw yarn and thread are traded for other goods, along with the leather goods, meat, and some dairy products (from the goats). The wool is all raw, not bleached white nor dyed other colors, although they do separate black wool from white wool from blended (that is, the wool of all-black or all-white animals is kept separate, while the wool from mixed black-and-white animals is used mixed). They also separate goat's wool from sheep's wool, and again separate lamb's and kid's wool from that of adult animals.
The community here functions something similar to that of a medieval castle. There are the landowners and the serfs and the slaves. The serfs are treated more like children of the landowners than like the slaves, but not quite as the landowners' own children. In exchange for your labor, you receive room, board, clothing, and all your basic needs, plus some of the profit that comes from your labor, in the form of material goods above your needs. It thus is something like a commune, something like a village, something like a family, something like a feudal manor, and yet different from all of these as they are from each other.
Where are you going to baptize Qormlach?
I am assuming that your references to your equipment refer to these listings:
- $1445 B Monster Movie value in gold and silver coins, rings, necklaces
- Folding camp shovel
- Portable water filtration system with sealable bottle
- 6" blade sheath knife
- Flashlight, recharging by physical motion
- Tripod for camera
- Photographic developing gear with chemicals (black & white)
- Camera, still photography
- Cell Phone
- Keys of my appartment and my sister's apartement (including one key that doesn't work because it's from a changed lock, I've got the new one though) and a key from my fathers barbershop.
- Laptop (Microsoft)
- 2 memorysticks (1 Gb and 128 Mb) Mac and Pc compatible
- Keys
- A lunchbox (before lunch it will be filled and afterwards it will be empty)
The jewelry is all gold or silver; we did not detail how much you had of each, but I would assume that these also have precious stones mounted in at least some of them. It does not take a lot of gold, silver, and jewelry to reach $1445 in currency in Columbus, Ohio, but you've probably got four to six rings, three to five necklaces, and half a pound to a pound in coinage, depending on how much is gold, how much is silver, and what kinds of stones you included. In any case, you made the purchases, so we should agree concerning what it is you actually purchased now that the details appear to matter.
Incidentally, the trader is not a dwarf; he is a human who travels between the dwarf lands and the elf lands, which border west and east, respectively, of the human lands.
Most of what the trader has is farm implements. The Kuchers trade some of the wool for a hoe, a shovel, a pick, and a new axe; they get the last axe, but the trader is not unhappy about that because elves rarely want axes except near the jungles, and he doesn't like to be that close (nor even this close) to the orc homelands. He's been attacked before.
He has no books, no pigments, no paper, no inks, and no smaller tools, but he says he'll remember that you wanted them for when he comes through next year.
--M. J. Young
