I'm about to explore the planar sphere, where a thief and another wizard would be of some assistance, but Jan doesn't want to talk to me. Any ideas how to make him speak?
Please don't tell me it's because I refused to take a look at his goods when we first met. I did the whole Umar Hill quest in the meantime (including a rather nasty fight with a certain big shadowlike dude...).

Welcome to the Ironworks forum, Illithid.

It probably is because of that, which message do you get when you click on him?

You could join him forcefully by pressing Ctrl+Q while he is under the cursor. You have to have debug mode turned on, though. I don't think you would get his quest and talks this way.

The second way requires the debug mode on as well. Press Ctrl+Space, the console will open. Type this:
SetGlobal("TalkedToJan","LOCALS",1)
Or, even better, copy this line and paste it in the console with Ctrl+V.

*Ahhhh, it is good to be back on the board...*

How about taking Nalia and a few potions of master thievery with you? But if you have an evil party...well, I do not know.

You turned down Jan?
Wow! You really ARE evil!
Nalia sucks as a thief. You'd need her whole inventory filled with MasterThieveryPotions to get around with her.
As for Jan. He seems to be perfect for your purpose so go and get him.
What exactly is the reply you get from him when you try to talk?
Do you have ToB installed? Could be the infamous "NPC is busy" bug too ... Just a hunch ...

In this case I don't think it's a bug. Jan simply won't talk to you EVER if you tell him to clear off when he tries to sell you his wares. This happened to me before when I accidently chose the wrong dialog option and told him to get bent. After when I tried to talk to him again he simply wouldn't. Luckily I had a save game before I talked to him...

Well, thanks to Vedran, Jan is now a valuable member of my party [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] . Had to force him in by using ctrl+q, but probably I've done something wrong using the debug mode.
Still don't know, why he didn't want to join me voluntarily. I hadn't been too rude during our first encounter and he had offered me to do business later on, but when I talked to him again, he simply had nothing to say, or so it was written in the dialogue box. He was worth the effort though, since he was the best (and only) option I had for my purposes and after being in my party for about ten minutes, he had already opened a few locks and disarmed some traps [img]graemlins/superdude.gif[/img] .
Thanx for your help!

<span style="color: lightblue">Try this quickly:
CLUAConsole:GetGlobal("JanJoined","GLOBAL")
CLUAConsole:GetGlobal("TalkedToJan","GLOBAL")