Okay, there has been some confusion regarding “what is muling”. First of all, let me waste just a bit of time stating the obvious:

“As long as players have 2+ characters in the world, we can NOT state each and every possible interaction, and define which is and which isn’t muling. At some point, interpretation WILL be necessary.”

That said, let’s try to make things clearer, so that more of us understand and interpret things the same way.

One: we are talking about any kind of interaction between you characters. Whether you are using the town chest, a vendor, a house, a container, another person, or your own mind, if one item of piece of information obtained by one character is then usable by the other, we have a situation where muling might have occurred.

Two: we consider it a “free exchange”... in other words, it’s reasonable that your characters could have exchanged this information, under the following conditions.

1: the item or information is generally available for 24 hours at a fair market situation. Making an item and keeping it hidden for 24 hours before your next character picks it up, is not a fair market situation. Neither is putting it up for sale on a vendor that is locked away, hidden, or otherwise inaccessible to most of the local population.

A fair market situation would be: you put up Item X for sale at your vendor. The item remains there for 24 hours, no one bought it. Your other PC can now freely buy it, since if it were an item that you priced unfairly low so your other PC can get it, someone wandering by and checking out your vendor, could have bought it first.

For information, the information must be available to NPCs in general. If your character A overhears a plot, that does not mean that your character B can know it 24 hours later. However, if your character A overhears a plot, and goes to tell other people in a public area, we can assume that some NPCs might have heard it, and then your character B might hear about it. This also means that the location of the rumor should be LOCAL. Just because you find something out in Bear’s Landing, and tell the barkeeper there, doesn’t mean that your character should then know it in Vale.

2: the interaction should either be impersonal, or else there is no reason why your characters would not exchange this. An example would be a character who hates Virdds... but makes an item specifically for a Virdd to buy, like one of their fetish masks. However, if the character normally made and put fetish masks up for sale, then it’s reasonable that your other PC could buy one.

One caveat: if your vendor NORMALLY keeps an item in stock... say that you normally keep a chainmail tunic on your vendor, and every time that you find that your vendor has none in stock, you immediately put some up. In this case, your other PC could reasonably well purchase a chainmail tunic from your vendor, even if it’s the one you just put up, AS LONG AS IT’S THE ITEM YOU NORMALLY STOCK... if you normally stock steel chainmail, and put up an adamantium chainmail, this would not be the item that you normally stock, and your other PC would need to wait 24 hours.

In general, this should give you a good idea of what is muling... any transfer between your characters... of information, of goods, etc.... whatever the medium of exchange is (other PC, vendor, town, container, whatever)... should be done in an “open” situation where others have a chance to get the item/information themselves, and the open situation should be at least 24 hours.

Yes, this does include “borrowing”. If you make a tool for the use of character A, then character B may not use it for 24 hours, even if they are, for whatever reason, housemates at the time, and even if they return it immediately after use.