The lifeblood of many remote settlements, of villages
far from the city-states, is the dune trader. Dune
traders are responsible for the transport and sale of
critical goods across the wastes of Athas, placing them
among the most shrewd and independent people on
the harsh desert world. Yet few dune traders are as
eccentric or as dangerous as Mar Juk-Adan, a human
dune trader who travels across the length and breadth
of the Tyr region in a caravan all his own.
Mar Juk-Adan is a gray-haired and bearded human
in his mid-forties, a ripe old age for a dune trader that
has spent as much time crossing Athas’s deserts as he
has. According to those who have traveled with him
for decades, Juk-Adan has always been the head of the
caravan; there was no caravan before Juk-Adan, and
no one has ever known Juk-Adan as anything but the
head of his caravan. He has earned the loyalty of the
men and women in his employ dozens of times over.
Though not the wealthiest or most well-known dune
trader, he does have a reputation for being a man that
knows how to get exactly what you need—for a price.
Mar Juk-Adan’s primary reputation is as a purveyor
of rare goods. Juk-Adan claims to have rarities from
dozens of places and times. Not only does he deal in
rare spices and hand-crafted goods from all of the
city-states, he also buys and sells antiquities from citystates long gone. With such an eclectic collection, it is
no surprise that Juk-Adan rarely has more than one of
any item on hand. Though he coyly refuses to explain
where he obtained his wares to outsiders, the truth is
that he has an uncanny, almost supernatural knack for
finding things. On more than one occasion, Juk-Adan
has sent his guards into the ruins of ancient cities and
outposts to have them return laden with treasures of
ages past. How he finds these ruins when they seem
to hide from every other treasure hunter is a mystery,
though some of his guards and employees suspect
that he has an unrevealed psionic talent for finding
specific objects no matter where they are hidden.
Though his trade in rare loot is lucrative, it is not
Juk-Adan’s ability to find lost treasure that makes him
so valuable—and so dangerous. Mar Juk-Adan can
get anything you need, as he is fond of telling people.
All he asks in return is time and a handsome sum of
money. Once a bargain has been struck, Juk-Adan has
never failed to produce the desired goods. In many
ways, he and his caravan are like bounty hunters of
exotic wares. They take a job, they disappear into the
desert for weeks or months at a time, and when they
return they have in their possession that which the
client sought. No barrier can stand in the way of Mar
Juk-Adan, so they say; not the law, not sorcerer-kings,
not even the Dragon itself. Juk-Adan has defied templars, stolen from the sorcerer-kings, spat in the eye
of dangerous elf clan leaders, and braved the horrors
of the Athasian desert, without ever once failing to
retrieve what was paid for.
Despite his smiling exterior and eagerness to
please, beneath the surface lies unmatched ruthlessness. To clients, Juk-Adan shows only the height of
civility; once on a job, all bets are off. Juk-Adan will
lie, cheat, steal, and kill—or have those in his employ
do those things for him—in order to obtain what
someone else has paid for. In order to ensure that he
always gets what he seeks, Juk-Adan has surrounded
himself with specialists in a variety of fields: psionic
mind-influencers to pry information out of unsuspecting dupes, cutthroat minstrels to poison the drinks
of interlopers, skilled half-giants to slay guards and
scouts, light-footed rogues to sneak undetected into
palaces, and even masters of arcane magic for when
there is no alternative. Though Juk-Adan’s caravan
may look unremarkable at first glance, beneath its
surface, each member of the caravan has a skill that
is essential when taking (by force if necessary) that
which their client seeks.
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