Ah, yeah I remember reading about this part
Felt like a bit of an asspull from the author to just get a random merchant to save the day when merchants basically stopped coming, since there's no way this would've worked in history
But I suppose since this is a Shadow World, it was necessary to have all the players in the right starting places (Cook -> Strategist, Knight -> Captain of the Knights, Patrolling Soldier -> Knight, and Merchant -> Merchant Leader) in order for them to be able to "solve the puzzle", so to speak