Editing Daily Life Under the Shadow (section)

==The need for a black market in the cities==

In the Last Age, any big occupied city has at least one black market. Why? Because urban citizens cannot produce food, which they trade against goods they are producing (clothes, shoes, etc.) with the farmers. Black market rarely involves selling "forbidden" things like weapons or books, but simply allows people access to restricted or difficult to find items, for a very high price.

With such a heavy demand for items in urban areas, there are lots of people somehow involved in black market. Either resistance groups, people who act out of a selfish desire to make a profit from such an activity (and can then be dubbed "traders"), or simply criminals who smuggle alcohol, prostitutes, etc. into the towns for their own filthy profit.

Some caravan masters working for the Shadow are also doing a little "blackmarket" work. What good that may be traded for are probably small goods to make life easier, such as tools, or more pleasant such as liquor and tobacco. A whole orc “maffia” has developed in the last years, making a huge profit in trading some goods that they manage to steal from their caravans to needy urban citizens.

In the southern plains, there is rumoured to be a whole "ghost market" (ie, a caravan always on the run) standing in the wilderness of the Erenland Horse plains, selling black market wares to any freeriders it meets.