Draft:Village merchant

Omega 0.90.4

A village merchant is the red @ who offers horses in four villages. This is a stationary horse seller, distinct from the travelling itinerant merchant.

Locations and trade

One merchant is placed in each of Star View, Woodmere, Stormwatch and Skorch. Thaumaris and Whorfen have none in their fixed layouts. Re-entering a village from the countryside recreates its fixed population.

A peaceful merchant asks 250 Au for a horse. Accepting without enough money changes nothing; paying removes the money and makes the merchant vanish. The seller tells you to choose a horse and warns that its food is not included. Outside a village, this merchant's conversation only directs you to the stables.

The payment does not tame a horse or create a riding permission checked later. Give a horse grain, then talk to the peaceful, fed horse to mount it; the horse interaction does not test whether you paid.

Hostility

HP	Hit rating	Armor rating	Damage rating	Experience
16	6	6	1	6

The merchant starts without hostility or a fixed carried item. The template has normal melee, no ordinary movement routine, no ranged strike and no innate immunities. These ratings do not make attacking him safe.

A hostile merchant refuses conversation and, when his special action runs in a village, awakens and turns hostile every creature in the village's monster list, not just its guards. This alarm runs once for that merchant. The ordinary monster scheduler controls when that action is attempted; it is not a guaranteed immediate response on the same input as an attack.

Strategy

The seller's low HP hides the cost of provoking the entire settlement. Feeding and speaking to a horse is the interaction that actually secures a mount. Ordinary food buckets do not replace grain, and giving money to the seller does not remove the horse's hunger.