Quote Originally Posted by Kraggenmor
My point really being that there's really no effective method to actually 'back up' a merchant.
Point well taken. I guess the best way is to train higher level ones to start with. But the ones I took there were trained before I had much in the way of merchants guild improvements. Seeing that it is so far away and yet so lucrative, an extra merchant or two might not be a bad idea. They could always handle less lucrative trade nearby until the need arises to come back to Timbuktu, i.e., one of the primary merchants is bought out or dies.