Taloon - The Real Merchant

[Dracos]

Preface: I had this to write for a class assignment and, well, I figured I'd cross post it for fun.

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I pondered which of my many favored characters I haven't talked about in
a while and, being in a dragon quest mood, decided upon Taloon.

Taloon was an interesting 'hero' of a character.  He first appeared in
Dragon Quest 4 before being spun off into his own series of games that
never arrived in the states, and coincidently I've never gotten around
to actually hunting down.  He was one of several characters in that game
who were given their own personal 'act' in the telling of the story.  A
rotund joyful and greedy merchant out to make an honest buck and willing
to work as hard as he can to do so, Taloon represented a fairly unique
experience in RPG characters.  As a character design, straight out, he
isn't really that interesting.  He's a merchant, he likes to make money,
and he heads out adventuring.  Roughly the same thing as three billion
other RPG characters, merchant or not.

What really made Taloon as a character interesting was the detailed
thought that went into the interactivity behind his character.  Dragon
Quest, as a series and inclusive of that iteration of it, is a very
combat centric game.  A player fights a lot in it and the vast majority
of the characters are given a sort of push towards being combat
characters.  Their stories are geared towards it and they just walk out
into the wilderness and start killing things.

Taloon does not do that.  Taloon's chapter starts with the player
playing him working for another merchant and selling things in his
store.  The interaction largely stems with bickering over prices with
customers and attempting to get the best deals without alienating them,
a mechanic that was later swiped for the entirety of Gobi's merchant
interactions in Breath of Fire.  This goes on for a few days of game
time, in which Taloon goes back and forth between his loving wife and
the local store.

Taloon though has a dream.  He dreams of one day opening his own shop.
A fantastic store that people would come from far and wide to see and
purchase things.  So he sets off with a loving goodbye to his wife and
prepares to make his fortune on the road.  Here, one might thing that
the interaction would shift to the dragon quest template of regular
battles interleaved with cities and quests, but instead Taloon's chapter
is marked by a particular focus on his unique interactions.  Yes,
monsters exists, but there's significant more emphasis on the random
traveling encounter, the odd merchant, the opportunity, etc.  It is in
this interaction that the character of taloon really comes alive and
plays forth.  He pays for guards, playing out the character of a
merchant and not just a warrior with that title.  His quests are not
saving things, but achieving clever and dangerous sales routes, helping
supply swords, and finding forbidden treasure.  He is a prime example,
I'd think, of the difference between an interactive character and a
non-interactive character, because from a non-interactive perspective,
he's got barely two paragraphs of life in him to work with whereas from
the opposite, he's quite alive.