A guy who gives out loans, so you don't automatically lose when your goods are worth more than taxes.
For now, you can Pawn items to the auction house (for a fraction of their value) at any time.
Was an easy addition, should have thought about it before, and hopefully should be a nice stop-gap prior to proper moneylending.
In other news, for those interested, progress is going pretty well to a new release.
Won't look a great deal different, but the hero behaviours are far more intricate, and I'm quite happy with the way it is working generally.
e.g. I set up a scroll shop in town - filled it full of scrolls - and got quite a lot of business from Necromancers, Summoners and Mages swinging buy [sic. heh nice typo] to see what the fuss is all about.
Contracts seem to be working fairly robustly, get generated independently of the player, and dungeons are a little more interesting (was funny reading a hero's log as he repeatedly expressed frustration at being 'lost' in the dungeon ...). I have added a pretty simple 'fixed' feature to each floor level (generated on discovery by a hero) which needs fattening up a bit, but introduces things like trapdoors, traps, 'puzzles', treasure rooms, evil altars etc.
Some of the features also generate 'Rumours' back in town - nothing done here yet but the intention is to allow the rumours to generate 'Special Missions' for adequately equipped heroes.
Monsters don't work either, and balance is all to-cock, but I'm pretty happy with it so far.
Chug chug chugging along ...