Because the Clanlands are divided up into regions that are very good for
certain things and practically no good at all for others, the Clans have
become specialists in particular sorts of manufacture/services, which they
produce/provide for the other Clans in exchange for other products and
services.  

There is no fixed equivalence or relation between products; these vary with
need and supply.  During good years, the Goldenfield clans need to lower
their prices, since the other clans can provide more food for themselves-- by
the same token, though, they have more produce, so their net profit is
roughly similar.

However, clans like Brightwind and Sweetwater do not have services that can
so easily be bartered.  The Brightwinds are soldiers, fighters, mercenaries.
Often they sell their services as guards in exchange for the promise of food,
room & board, land, titles, or any number of other things.  These trades
often take the form of promises of service, and a system was needed to insure
fair trade.

Thus the office of Observer was begun, roughly equivalent to todays notary
publics.  An Observer is oath-bound to honesty, and a contract signed by an
Observer is legally binding everywhere.  Thus, it has become customary for
owners of fields to have Observer-signed leases which allow them to barter
their lands honestly, where documents represent certain plots of land.
Similarly, the Greystone lands are divided up amongst various Greystone
families, and further divided amongst the members of those families, etc,
etc.  If plots are especially rich or poor, this will often show up on the
leases--for example, a Greystone plot rich in iron ores would be worth more
than one that wasn't, and a developed plot is worth more than an undeveloped
plot.  

****NOTENOTENOTE--This could get REALLY interesting if, say, the Sweetwater
witches are looking for particular plots of land that have ceremonial
properties/are rich in mythril, etc...if the Cat knows of where certain
treasures are buried and needs rights to the land to uncover them, and so on
and so forth.  We could have all sorts of land-service-item trade going on.
(Also people trying to get their ancestral lands back, and gods-only-know-
what-all else.)

The Clasp is contemplating a trade regulation that would make the process of
barter between the 5 clans far more regular (in essence, it would establish
a fixed unit of barter and trade equivalences).  This is a highly
controversial issue.

Commercially, the 5 clans divide up as follows:

Goldenfield:  Breadbasket of the Clanlands.  Mostly farmers and harvesters.
The Goldenfield lands share a border with the Realm, so much of the fighting
has been going on in that area, which has been disrupting their production.
They want the war to stop, soon, and are very much in favor of the trade 
regulation--particularly since the Brightwind, Bluemist and Greystone clans
produce much of the material they need to fight the war).

Brightwind: Wastelands, desert.  The nomadic tribes who live there are not
numerous, nor particularly organized, and are looked down upon by their
fellow Clansmen...the only reason the Brightwind Clan has retained
coheseiveness is that nobody else wants the land.  However, they have
adapted to their environment by becoming tough, strong, and developing a
powerful survival instinct that has made them the Clanlands premiere
fighters and guardsmen.  Now that the war is going on, they have suddenly
become necessary to the Clan's economy and they love it--and now that the
Clansmen need them and have to pay through the nose, many have no desire to
allow trade regulation to occur. 

Greystone: The mountain ranges on the far Eastern side of the Clanlands.
Rich in iron ores, gems, precious metals.  Again, with the war on, they have
become far more popular in Clan barter, and would lose out if barter became
regulated.  In particular, since the Greystone regions are nowhere near the
borders, they don't much consider the war their problem; they want the war
to go on for economic reasons.  On the other hand, if barter was regulated
they might be able to push for the unit of barter to be some sort of
precious metal, in which case they would be reasonably rich.

Bluemist: Nobody knows exactly why, but the Bluemist mountains have
historically been the home of some of the best breeds of animals the
Clanlands have seen. In particular, the Bluemist Clans have become masters of
selective breeding; they have produced farm animals for the Goldenfields, pack
animals and beasts of burden for the Greystones, camel and dromedary breeds
for the Brightwinds, and so forth.  It is said that the race of Jhereg were
originally bred by the orignal family Bluemist, but this has been lost in the
mists of time (so to speak).  In particularly,