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Irwin's Journey 387: Deals and merchandise

🕑 Added 2025-02-21 18:06:08 +0000 UTC

Comments

Antony Claughton

One thing I’ve realised as the series continues is that the world portals are generally not busy enough. Look at how many people and goods move into any real life city every day. For the established worlds the portal should be in almost constant use. At least when there isn’t a time distortion.

Not Me

To be honest, Yuurindi has a whole seem to be a population really vulnerable to exploitation. Not having well-developed social safety nets or many powerful individuals to anchor their community (because of genetic problems from the war) makes it all the more likely they need to enter into exploitive, restrictive, long-term contracts to ensure their own survival. Societal prejudice against them makes it so that they need to take on worse terms to compete for jobs and contracts. And their genetic ouchies make it harder for them as a community to both earn money by doing labor, and for them to accumulate wealth by storing it into productive capital (cards). They have less lifespan to spend time working so they can't grow as much, can slot fewer and worse cards than other people so they can't grow as fast, and thus might never achieve "escape velocity" of having enough capital and time that they gain wealth rather than just tread water every generation. And also, a high birthrate will put them right back into poverty. I'd be really worried that at some point there's a lot of Yuurindi who are going to suddenly abandon various forms of long-term contracts, debt-slavery, serfdom, or indentured servitude to flee to Irwin's world, and we're going to see some actual factual civil war. Something that neither Irwin, the Yuurindi, nor the branch as a whole can afford in the face of a Guildar invasion. Also, there’s nothing quite as suspicious as an entire species (and only that species) packing up its bags and vanishing to parts unknown, just before it becomes public knowledge that a new hostile alien species has appeared out of parts unknown to conquer everyone.

Not Me

I see, it makes sense that regular people probably don't have very exact reading methods. Irwin definitely got very lucky in being able to pick up the eyeball power and even luckier in having a Ganvil partner so he could throw out the identification half of the eyeball power. It's been a while since we've seen really low-level professionals at work, there's been a lot of high-power nobles and merchant lords and Irwin with the premium options. I wonder how regular folk who just have a single soulcard or less go about it? Maybe cards that give the ability to read cards but also inflict nearsightedness on the user, or a description of the card's abilities in a poetic form or verse that you still need to decipher. Potentially some sort of card that requires you place the target card in or on a card-generated receptacle (a cloth bag or bowl of water or sheet of paper or banana leaf or shadow realm darkroom) for it to scan over the course of a couple hours. Or ones only work on cards that share a type, or can only sort large groups of cards into sets with similar attributes (kind of like Uno stacking with color, number, or wilds), but can't actually identify the exact form. A lower-rank specialist might build a whole soulcard out of cards that identify different parts, so that in aggregate, they can identify all parts of a card (except perhaps its smith).

Not Me

That's a good idea about mysterious Guildar-induced issues. I wonder if other hub worlds are suffering from farming world collapse via portal inundation, like what happened to Irwin's homeland, or if that's more of a targeted strike. I would not be surprised if the Guildar were able to temporarily handicap (or even permanently downgrade) worlds by chopping out all of the lower-rank farm worlds connected to them. There's probably also other ways to go about it, like creating a persistent leak in the nearby Portal Gallery barrier. Not enough to let any legendary creatures of the void in, but enough to strain the cities' heating, energy/soulforce generation, crop growing cycles, aerial travel, and just general comfort of the residents. Or perhaps decoupling or elongating the port cities' connections to their portal worlds, making travel time a significant expense requiring days worth of food, or an outright danger to the traveler. The plague is a classic but highly effective siege tool. Even if these things claim no lives, the economic drain steals away resources and political will that could have been used to better resist the Guildar.

Antony Claughton

In this case, some discussion on if the plague makes sense and if it likely was the Guildar. That could lead in later chapters to a quick summary of the suspicious “ills” seen along their route, which would establish that lots of worlds have already suffered some type of destabilisation. That the war has already started.

Antony Claughton

I’m a little surprised he didn’t offer to smith one of the plague healing cards, or it wasn’t requested as part of the deal. He’d given away they had a diamond ranked smith already with the ancestral coperion discussion. Why wouldn’t the merchant ask for him to smith the card they required? Also, I think Irwin wouldn’t trade ALL of the cards of one type. Neither he or we know what Eluthor needs, or what type of races/cards they’ve to farm. I’d expect him to keep a few food and water ones back. Especially as other settlements may not have enough food at all. Fixing the plague would mostly fix this city.

Antony Claughton

Would love to have seen just a little of what the Yurrindi got up to.

Antony Claughton

overlay ==> overly Terlo turned half of his attention to the two excitedly looking young women before him, smiling his most winning smile. The rest, he kept on the group of Yuurindi that were walking into one of the many raw-metal workers Dimwacht was rich. ==> Terlo turned half of his attention to the two excited looking young women before him, smiling his most winning smile. The rest, he kept on the group of Yuurindi that were walking into one of the many raw-metal workers Dimwacht was rich for. one of my mine ==> one of my my

Nicholas Del Rossi

This is a lot, in a good way I think but if the author plans a full response then I wish them luck, this is a lot of world intrigue in the form of fun questions and details from across the story, you got my mind roaring to go, that being said adding my own ideas as they are would be a mess if I can even fit them together into writing, after I few more rereads or if there are more responses that click something in my mind I might decide to sit down for half an hour to write something with some substance down but I don’t have the time to focus for it now, really cool comment.

Carrarn

What is rare are card reading abilities that allow details like who reforged the card. Most card-reading abilities are rough, like types, rank, and sometimes a few details

Not Me

Thanks for the chapter! Since you bring up the idea that card identification abilities are really rare, how do the bulk trade merchants go about it? It's clear that some basics of the card can be identified on sight by uncarded, untrained individuals, like Irwin in chapter 1 - the basic type, the rarity, and general purpose (utility, body enhancement, summon, whatever). And it's probably the case that certain specific cards are common enough from some card farms that experienced individuals (like Bronwyn in chapter 1) can recall their exact effects because there's others in circulation that have been formally identified, or slotted by enough users that their effects are well-known. Do merchants simply have some sort of library or dictionary of common card backs and their known effects? Do good merchants have some number of smiths or card-sensitive people on staff? Like, teenage pre-smith Irwin could sense a card's potential and see the black spots on it in chapter 53, surely an older practiced low-level smith or other card sensitive could do the grunt work of just counting or measuring the black space and roughly sorting them into high-potential and low-potential cards. A card grader could maximize returns - save high-potential cards to sell to smiths, then further sort low-potential cards. Keep the most useful identified tools and enhancements for sale to handcarded, sort the other ones based on type to sell in bulk to soulcarded. Or maybe there's dedicated testers who slot and unslot unknown cards. It's probably mildly destructive to the cards themselves, not to mention the testers, but if you have a lot of the exact same card, getting information about all of them may be worth the cost of damaging one. A good tester might build their soulcard(s) and/or handcard(s) around type compatibility, skill acquisition, self-control, and identification. A less-than-ethical merchant might just acquire serfs and card-poor individuals (perhaps Yuurindi?) and have them slot it and identify it, no matter the consequences.

Not Me

I think it wouldn't hurt to establish that he is developing a routine of sorts, and just get some brief remarks each time about how people reacted. Probably something less committal than approaching the city leadership, and such a routine that he doesn't instantly get roped in against his will. I think Govir's idea of pamphlets is pretty solid, that concept could be expanded to other communications, such as official-looking letters mailed to people in power on the day they leave, and perhaps getting one city in which they've gained trust to relay their message to other trade towns via crystal or other trade ships or whatever.

Albert Benny Oliyakkattil

Tftc!

Eric M

I wouldn’t mind a mention here or in an upcoming chapter about how many yurindi joined them.

Ceasarty

Thanks for the chaper! Believe the "eve" in this sentance should be "even": "Just so you know, you did really well, and none of the others has anything eve half as interesting as Ancestral Coperion. You won't regret this deal!"

Jason Sampson

He said he was going to tell them, and we already know. Unless there is something significant about a recipient's reaction, I don't think it adds anything to read the same explanation at every stop.

Nicholas Del Rossi

In this case, I think more is better. It did feel a bit glossed over.

Leander

Gotta be honest, I didn‘t catch where you implied it.

Govir Drauka

Or you could have Irwin find a card in the stash that is a printing press and make up pamphlets he just throws at people who come to meet him at docks. The end is nigh! Edit: this was supposed to be in reply to your question.

Govir Drauka

I think a small line of somehow Irwin saying “Now let me tell you of the threat the Guidar pose” would be enough. Maybe lead with Irwin mentioning something about bringing news, and book ending it with a line like that.

Shain Oleson

I think you should mention it in the next chapter in passing.

StraylightGrove

The Guidar warning being implied makes sense. At this point Irwin has told several cities and it feels like it could be somewhat repetitive to put in more than a brief mention. That said, this is your story, so take this with a grain of salt. Thanks for the chapter!

Stephen Pearson

Thanks for the chapter! :-)

Pc Cloud

Wrong chapter number.

Carrarn

There will be some follow up to the carded plague, but you will out later. Also, I didn't mention it but implied it that Irwin told them all about everything he needed to with regards to the Guidar. Do you guys think I should mention that in the story or does it make sense? Perhaps I'll highlight it in the next chapter where we skip across a few pitsops a bit faster.