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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack Simth" data-source="post: 5691682" data-attributes="member: 29252">OK.The guy who is nominally the merchant is a front-man.  The magical items on display?  Those are just the items that are so cursed as to be non-saleable - to anybody.How the shop actually works: Ring gates.The front-man takes your order from a catalog, writes it down, puts the order and your payment into a cursed Portable Hole - which spits everything out a minute after it's closed.  He then tosses it through his Ring gate.The other end of the Ring gate is heavily trapped (Symbol spells, mostly, of all varieites, plus several other things.  Mostly one-shot traps, as they aren't going to go off often).  The ring gate on the other end is mounted on a wall, facing away from the guy who actually runs all this.  The guy who actually runs all this casts Analyze Dweomer (possibly from a custom item) on the junk that pops out of the portable hole.  He then has a Greater Stone Golem pick everything up, hand him the order, and fetch the items from stock... which are then put back into the cursed portable hole, and the golem tosses them through the ring gate (note: In the case of Portable Holes, Bags of Holding, and similar, those items are simply tossed through the gate directly).The front man at the visible store then takes the items out of the cursed portable hole, and hands them to you.If you try to mug the front-man, you get... nothing, really.  One half of a ring gate, and a portable hole that can't be used for storage.  Maybe a bit of stuff he purchased with his commission.If you try to bypass the front-man and hop through the Ring Gate, you're blasted in the face by twenty save-or-lose traps going off at once.  And then the Wizard that built them blasts you while he has a Greater Stone Golem beat your face in.</blockquote>

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