Trader
Trader is a Player Modification, first seen in the Season β21 Elections. Traitor is a Player Modification, first seen on New Megan Ito's Replicas in the Season 22 Latesiesta.
Effects
Players with Trader will periodically attempt to trade Items with players on opposing teams.
Players with Traitor will periodically attempt to trade Items with players on their team.
Mechanics of Trading
While players on the Lineup may trade at any time, players on the Rotation may only attempt to trade during games they are pitching.
Traders and Traitors will only be able to trade items which are an "upgrade" from their current item - Items with more Durability are preferred over damaged or broken items, as are items with more Elements (which affect an Item's maximum Durability), with Legendary Items (possessing infinite Durability) considered the most valuable.
Traitors/Traders will not always target the opposing team's most valuable item immediately. They instead appear to check one player at a time[1], and react with the following messages:
| Target's Item status | Trader | Traitor |
|---|---|---|
| A target's Item is more valuable | Trader <player> traded their <Item> for <target opposing player>'s <Item>. | Traitor <player> traded their <Item> for <target teammate>'s <Item>. |
| A target's Item is less valuable | <player> sought out a trade, but nothing caught their eye. | |
| A target has no Items | <player> tried to trade with <target player> but they had nothing to offer. | |
History
Players automatically being able to trade items was introduced in the Season β21 Elections with the Trader Blessing, which would give the Trader modification to a random player in the winning team's Lineup. Trader blessed the Kansas City Breath Mints, giving Mooney Doctor II the Trader modification. Doctor II conducted four trades over the course of the Season 22 Earlseason and Midseason.
Prehistory...
See the main article on this topic: Pre-History I - Volume Summary
Concurrently with Seasons 21 and 22, Fans were unredacting sections of the Library and revealing how Megan Ito, a Pre-History player with both the Trader and Traitor Modifications, traded a Firewalking, Super Roamin' Parker MacMillan for The Force Field, a Legendary Item designed to Force MacMillan from Roaming and spreading Instability throughout the League.
MacMillan promptly roamed from the Minneapolis Truckers, who became Unstable and were later Incinerated by a Rogue Umpire. Ito, holding the Force Field, was unable to move to the Hall of Flame or the Truckers' replacement team, nor were they able to remain in position. In response, they Echoed themselves, dropped the Force Field, and faded into Static.
In response, Ito's Alternate, New Megan Ito, was called. New Megan Ito later achieved Legendary status and was Preserved in the Vault. In the same Season, MacMillan was also able to leave the League upon becoming Legendary and being Preserved, leaving mass Instability. This Necessitated A Snap Election, a full reset of the league, and re-equipping the Force Field to MacMillan in the Vault.
...and Historical Replicas
To coincide with these revelations, the Coin announced the upcoming Semi-Centennial at the start of Season 22, an exhibition match where one team would be the Legendary players of the Vault, including MacMillan and the Traitor New Megan Ito. The Gift Shop offered Historical Replicas of Legendary Pre-History players, including New Megan Ito, to give Fans a chance to see them in action before the Semi-Centennial.
Four teams opted to acquire a New Megan Ito Replica from the Gift Shop for the Season 22 Latesiesta and Postseason:
- The Baltimore Crabs, acquiring New Megan Ito II
- The Atlantis Georgias, acquiring New Megan Ito III
- The Charleston Shoe Thieves, acquiring New Megan Ito IV
- The Ohio Worms, acquiring New Megan Ito V
The Replica New Megans Ito were responsible for much shuffling of elementally-loaded items throughout the Latesiesta, before they faded to Dust at Season's end (but not without taking the Clutch Wooden Rock Ring, one of its duplicates, a superfluously cool pair of sunglasses, and a Cool Concrete Necklace with them to the Vault).
Season 22 Trading Blessings (or: The Boston Flowers play Fifth Base Hot Potato)
See the main article on this topic:The Fifth Base (Item) - Intermission
Trader and Traitor were also made available as Item modifications in the Season β22 Elections, via the Outsider Trading and Insider Trading Blessings. Both Blessings gave every player on the winning team's roster who had an available Item slot a random Item; Outsider Trading handed out Items with the Trader element; Insider Trading offered Items with the Traitor element.
The Boston Flowers were the highest bidders on both Blessings, though Outsider Trading was ultimately won by the Yellowstone Magic, giving sixteen players items with the Trader modification (for a full list, see here.) The Flower did win Insider Trading, giving twenty-five players on their roster items with the Traitor modification.
While the Magic's new Trader Items ended up (and remained), for the most part, in the hands of their Shadows players, the Flowers managed to have a lineup and rotation full of newly-minted Traitors with ample opportunity to swap Items amongst themselves. As luck would have it, a Super Roamin' Fifth Base-wielding[2] Baldwin Breadwinner Roamed onto the Flowers after the Season 22 Elections.
The Flowers proceeded to trade the Fifth Base and their Traitor-conferring Items amongst themselves thirteen times in the first week of Season 23, until Day 9 when its then-wielder Chorby Short put an end to the nonsense by Roaming to the New York Millennials.
History, Retr(e)aded
See the main article on this topic: Semi-Centennial
Despite Fans' efforts to divert or prevent New Megan Ito from taking Parker MacMillan's Force Field in the Semi-Centennial, Ito traded MacMillan for the Force Field in the eleventh inning of the exhibition match.
While momentous, New Megan Ito's trading of the Force Field was certainly not the final activation of Trader or Traitor in the Expansion Era. The Magic's Trader items continued to circulate throughout the league, finding new owners via Tunnels and Phantom Thieves Guilds. The Flowers, meanwhile, continued to trade items amongst themselves until the Expansion Era's final days, concluding with Jacob Haynes swapping their Traitor Concrete Shoes of Fourtitude for Baldwin Breadwinner's Noise-Cancelling Night Vision Sunglasses of Intelligence on Day 96 of Season 24.
