Ok, so Nadesh is desirable because it has quite a bit of money to toss around from trading, both legal goods and non.  The library's also drawn a few powerful wizards to the city, who devote part of their time to studying the tomes, and part of their time creating magical items, which the kingdom is willing to buy at a high premium.  Obviously, if control of the city changes hands, control of the wizards' magical items will also change.<br/><br/>Speaking of which, I've come up with a bit of houseruling for creating magic items that I want to run by you.  Rather than create items directly, wizards are able to create magical gems called nethecite.  One large nethecite gem takes 8 hours of work and 500 gold in materials, and is often sold for around 1000 gold; smaller gems taking less time and less materials are also possible.  To make a magic item, a crafter can substitute one large nethecite gem for 500 gold in materials and one day of work on the item, and can use as many gems as he can get his hands on; if he has enough gems to completely negate the cost and time of the item, it only takes about two hours to craft.  A spellcheck roll is still required, and if failed the gems are lost.<br/><br/>Basically, this gives a way for you to "commission" an item without having to worry about how long it would take to actually make it.  Let me know what you think.