Traders, supply runs and trust

Nothing on a trader's shelf comes from nowhere. Every trader has one or two supply runs: real trucks with real crews, leaving a real place on a schedule and driving real roads to their counter. When a run gets in, the shelves fill. When it doesn't, they don't, and the price of what's left creeps up over the next few hours.

• Ask a trader about their runs from their counter (the Supply runs tab): where each run comes from, what it brings and when the next one leaves.
• A run can be hit by anyone: the dead thick on the road, raiders, a storm, or other survivors. A hit run leaves a wreck and some of its cargo on the road, and the trader talks about it.
• Storms hold the trucks at the gate for a while, and snow shuts the roads up to the Eye until it clears.
• When a trader is short because a run was hit, Discord's #market-prices says so, along with why.

Riding with a run

Choose Ride with the next run at the counter. The run leaves within a few minutes, and where it leaves from goes on your map. Stay close to the trucks all the way in and never shoot at them, and the trader pays you out of their own takings when it arrives. They remember that, too.

Hitting a run

Kill the crew and the cargo on the lead truck is yours: the actual goods that trader was waiting for, stenciled with their marks. Whether they find out it was you depends on what they could learn: whether any of the crew lived, who else was watching, how dark it was and how far away you were. Some raiders are never found out. Some are found out days later, when a witness talks. Don't try to sell a trader their own stenciled goods.

What they remember

Every trader remembers how you've treated them. Fair trades, riding with their runs, bringing back their stolen goods and telling them who hit a run all build trust. Hitting their runs, killing their people and leaning on them at their counter all cost it, and the people you ride with share a little of your name.

• People they know get better prices, and the things they keep back for regulars.
• People they don't trust pay more, hear about it, and in the end get turned away.
• A trader who knows who hit their run may put a price on that raider's head.

Taking a road over

A trader who trusts you enough will let you take one of their roads on. Hold each stretch of it, on different days, while whatever lives out there comes for you. Once it's yours, their own trucks stop and you supply them yourself: bring what the run used to carry along that road, and they pay you wholesale for it. Miss your loads, or let the road slip, and they'll take it back.

Traders never pay more for goods than it would cost you to buy them somewhere else. The road pays because it's work, not because it's a trick.