It’s no secret that a lot of the trading companies have dark secrets or ambitions. The Gold hoarders love gold so much, it is consuming them, The Order of souls looks like a cult, Athena’s Fortune is at war constantly, The Bilge rats are drunkards, Hunters calls leader is dead and Reapers bones…well I don’t need to explain that one.
But one company prides themselves on image and reputation:The Merchant Alliance. Such a sophisticated group of business people couldn’t be hiding anything…right? No. In fact, if you’re one of them “efficient” guys, you probably stared the dark “secret” right in the face multiple times…you just didn’t think about it too much…that’s right, I’m talking about all those lost shipments.
The fact that these voyages are available as much as any other voyage is concerning. This means that merchant ships sink a lot on a daily basis. This means that the merchant alliance probably has the highest non-hostile NPC death toll, as hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of merchant captains (and maybe their crews) have died just for the purpose of “loot”. And it means thousands of shipments either sunk to the bottom of the sea or was “borrowed” by some pirates, because that’s what pirates do. And we never see any merchant npc ships on the sea, meaning they must sink quickly enough for us not to encounter them. But why are there so many merchant shipwrecks? Is it because of inefficiency, a disloyal crew, or the disastrous sea…or a mix of all of these?
And worst of all, the Merchants don’t tell you about this till you’re reputation 25, meaning that the amount of ships that sink or go missing is known by the representatives, and they only tell you that once they know you can be trusted and then they ask you to find the ship. Why? So you can find the manifest, mainly. But…why do they want the manifest and why do they pay so much for it? It could very much be for closure…or, I wonder, does it sometimes contain something that is bad for the merchants, and do they want it to get rid of evidence of the ship sinking? Either way, it’s pretty obvious to me that the merchants are hiding these shipwrecks from outsiders, so they won’t tell anyone about it…
But at the end of the day, what was the point of saying this? Pirates don’t exactly care about people dying, especially if it means there’s loot involved…heck, most people are disappointed when they just find a floating book and not a shipwreck and a dead guy. Nothing will stop pirates from taking from the shipwreck, if it means money (even I ain’t gonna stop doing it.)
But the point isn’t to stop people, it’s to knock these merchants down a peg. It’s to make people realise the merchants aren’t the efficient sailing pros they make themselves out to be, because they are in fact, the opposite. So merchants, get off your moral high horse, and come down here with the rest of the dubious trading companies.
