Editing Mercane (section)

==Society==
Very little is known about mercane society beyond the portion that is dedicated to actually interacting with other races. There are some slight differences between the versions seen in different sourcebooks, but the fundamentals remain the same.

Mercane are a race of merchants... as you probably already figured out. They wander [[wildspace]] and the [[plane]]s buying, selling and trading, though they tend to prefer to operate through middlemen and subordinates; they're not idiots, and they know that being known as willing to do business with anybody, regardless of race or creed, means opening themselves up to a lot of danger, whether at the hands of evil bastards who will try to take the sword discount or do-gooders who want them dead for working with evil bastards.

Seriously, that's the defining attribute of mercane society: they will trade with ''anybody'', as they '''do not give a shit''' for factions. Or lives, for that matter; it's well documented that [[wildspace]] mercanes have engaged in massive acts of war-profiteering, selling weapons to both sides until the conflict escalated to the point that it ended in mutual annihilation - as far as the mercane are concerned, no biggie, there's plenty more suckers out there to deal with. Similarly, planar mercanes are notorious for dealing in the [[Blood War]].

Aside from weapons, spacer mercanes are best known as ''the'' dealers in spelljamming technology, to the point that they will refuse to travel to worlds that are too xenophobic or primitive. If you want to buy a control helm to make your ship fly, or a pre-built ship, or anything spacefaring related, you talk to a mercane. They may not necessarily get it back to you ''quickly'', but they'll get you what you want in the end.

As an aside, in the [[Forgotten Realms]], there's a pair of nobles in Raven's Bluff who found their grandfather had struck a deal with a mercane to buy his own spelljammer, but he died before it arrived. Still, the mercane ultimately showed up and presented them with the ''Ravenstar''; a fine spelljammer equipped with a ''customized major helm'', one of the most powerful "engines" imaginable. Yet the best these chuckleheads could think to do with it is haul a circus across a '''small''' portion of Faerun, and occasionally go for moonlight cruises with pretty ladies. Idiots.

Anyway, getting back on topic, planar mercanes prefer to deal in magic and high-value low-bulk items, such as gems, rare spices, and fine wines. Some believe they actually require a rare, expensive spice to sustain their own existence.

Regardless of environment, mercanes operate in "companies" of 1-4 mercanes, with 4-10 bodyguards and other servants per mercane. If multiple mercanes are present, they will never be seen to publicly contradict each other or quarrel. They don't stay in any one place long, but instead rent or borrow opulent holdings wherever they happen to be before ultimately abandoning those and moving on in pursuit of fresh markets.

Other races widely regard mercanes with irritated tolerance, categlorizing them as a "necessary evil", especially in [[wildspace]]. Whilst nobody actually ''likes'' them, mercanes '''are''' useful, so it's worth tolerating them... so long as you remember they are cold-blooded profit-hungry backstabbers who have no sense of customer loyalty. There are two notable exceptions to this attitude, though. [[Neogi]] hate the arcanes, who refuse to do business with them and frankly probably infuriate the eel-spider bastards on religious grounds anyway. [[Dohwar]] resent and envy the mercanes, but it's anybody's guess if the mercanes even recognize that the penguin-folk exist.

In [[wildspace]], a popular legend is that the mercanes lost their homeworld by trading it to an elder god for the original [[spelljammer]], which subsequently proved impossible for them to control. Nobody's ever ''proved'' this, of course, but the fact that the mercane never correct or even comment on the legend means it's spread quite far.

In 3rd edition, mercanes are stated as regarding the [[Greyhawk]] deity [[Boccob]] as their patron god, and even producing clerics.

Some sourcebooks (don't ask which ones!) claim that the mercanes were involved in building the [[World Serpent Inn]] as an alternative to [[Sigil]] due to the latter being... well, ''Sigil''. 3rd edition ran with this, with the Epic Level Handbook introducing the City of Union, a multiversial hub city built by a mercane cartel as a superior alternative to Sigil for their needs.