Outposts

Merchant houses also maintain trading posts in the wilderness areas and wastelands of Athas. Such outposts can be found wherever there is something to trade and someone to trade with: in the Ringing Mountains, where halfling chiefs exchange hardwoods for obsidian spear heads; in the rocky badlands, where thri-kreen hunters trade sacks of minerals for hand-carved whistles; on the banks of the Sea of Silt, where friendly giants barter blocks of granite for tarp-sized woolen capes. I have found the agents manning these trading posts to be the toughest and most self-reliant men and women employed by the merchant houses. They commonly barter with the most feral and ferocious humans, demihumans and humanoids; they enjoy making long journeys into the wastelands in search of new goods, and they take a great pride in their hard lifestyles. Unfortunately, necessity dictates that outpost agents be the most expendable members of a merchant house. Their facilities consist of little more than a mud-brick warehouse built inside a walled fortification. Usually, the house employs a small band of mercenaries to defend it, and sometimes even a mage and/or a cleric, but the remoteness of the outpost dictates that such forces be kept to a minimum. Trading posts are easy marks for raiding tribes and hungry monsters. By no stretch of the imagination is it uncommon for a supply caravan to find the outpost it has traveled days to reach demolished and the inhabitants slaughtered.