6 Vhalar 721
People hated rats, and rats feared people; nonetheless, wherever people went, rats appeared at the same time or shortly after. Thus it was in Darbyton. As the vendors and celebrants had flocked into the town for the Festival of Sight, so, too, had the scaly-tailed synanthropes. And when those vendors left…not all the rats did; rather, they stayed behind with the trash that the visitors had left.
Oram’s reputation as a rat-trapper and -trap-builder had apparently followed him to Darbyton. It was not even mid-trial before people started asking him if he could help with the new problem. The traveler had freed induks and saved Scalvoris. He had fought and killed Immortals and saved all of Idalos. Yet many people still thought of him as Rat Guy, and, to be frank, the hunter did not mind that at all, for while his various escapades with powerful and uncanny beings had netted him various blessings and items, and while his activities with the Rangers had earned him status and reputation, and while his various investigations had earned him bounties and gratitude, it was his work making traps and catching unwanted varmints, along with his hunting, that Oram still thought of as his bread and butter.
While supposedly in Darbyton on Ranger business, Oram set aside time to meet with the merchants he knew to be having rat problems. The traveler used the same methods he had when collecting orders from farmers in Scalvoris last Ashan. He had long since perfected the tilong trap design, including the features that made it reusable, and easy for the user to empty and reset if need be. Oram did still offer disposing of the creatures he caught, of course, but after many seasons of haggling with each customer on a case-by-case basis, he tried something different this time: a standard price list, with options.
The simplest thing he offered was selling the traps. The customer gave Oram money, Oram delivered a trap, and then it was done. But not all customers wanted to keep the traps around when they did not need or wish to use them. And many of those customers also did not wish to handle the dead rats or reset and re-bait the traps. For these customers, Oram offered to remove the rats himself. He would put down traps, come back every trial or two to check on them, remove and reset at need. When the customer no longer wished to pay, Oram took the traps with him, which he could then re-use.
Oram did not quibble with his customers about how to dispose of the rats themselves; he let them have what they wanted there. Some wanted to keep the bodies for their own uses, but most wished to be rid of them. There was a modest but real market for dead rats. Oram himself sometimes used them to bait traps for such predators as marten or weasel. For the most part, though, unless times were especially desperate, supply always succeeded demand, and Oram just ended up disposing of the bodies.
Oram set out into the town with a list of services and prices, and returned with orders. Osric had shown his younger brother the basics of how to write an order. Oram was still working out the kinks in his own system here, but what he had would get him by for now. Because he rarely if ever had more than one service at a time per customer, tallying up what Os called an "invoice" should be simple. Being able to read and write now greatly helped with this.
The next step would be to make the actual traps he would need. No, actually, the next step would be to figure out how many traps he would need, and get the materials for them. He did not have a huge stockpile of bamboo lying around for the tubes, but he knew now where to get them. To his surprise, the furniture makers in Scalvoris had apparently started setting aside bamboo stalks for him that they weren’t able to use for whatever reason, actually anticipating his visit now. Of course, they had upped their prices a bit, but not beyond reason, and it was a small price to pay for the convenience of having the materials he wanted when he wanted them.
