All of the cities, and some of the villages, have a number of shops which can be owned by individuals or on behalf of guilds. It is the duty of the government to manage the shops, to ensure they have owners and are selling goods on behalf of the city. Shops owned by guilds and individuals are subject to a 10% tax on items sold, which goes directly to the treasury of the city. Gold earned by the shop is stashed in the storeroom where the stock is kept. All shops have a store-room, usually accessible down below the main shop floor. Members of government may type SHOP LIST to view a list of all city/village shops, and their owners or gain information about a specific shop by typing SHOP INFO followed by a shop. All shops have single word codes (shown in SHOP LIST) - the Mercinaen tobacconist is known as PIPESHOP for instance.
Shops can be allocated to individuals using the SHOP OWNER command - type SHOP OWNER followed by the shopcode (e.g. PIPESHOP), followed by the owner (a guild, a city, or an individual). That will determine where gold earned from the shop ends up and will amend the city's list of shops. To allocate a key to a shop and change the lock so that previous keys do not work, type SHOP KEY followed by the name of the shop. This creates a metal key (using a tin commodity) which you can allocate to the new owner of the shop. You may also protect a shop from having its lock picked, with the SHOP PROTECT command, or withdraw the protection with SHOP UNPROTECT. Ministries can also use the SHOP AUDIT facilities to send auditors into shops (amongst other locales) to review trade activity. See CITY HELP SHOP and CITY HELP SHOP AUDIT for up-to-the-minute information on the shop related commands.
