Encounters in a wretched hive of scum and villainy?

Ambrus · Aug 1, 2007

The PCs in my Planescape campaign are planning a foray to the Gatehouse Night Market in Sigil's Hive ward. The Market is in operation during the hours of darkness, is located at the heart of the multiverse's worst slum between the madhouse and chaos districts and is reputed to be the best place to purchase stolen and contraband goods well away from the prying eyes of the law.

Sigil has another larger better-known marketplace, the Great Bazaar, which itself is already reputed to provide every imaginable commodity imaginable, so I'm looking to stock the Night Market with merchants, patrons and commodities which aren't appropriate for the larger and more mainstream Market Ward shops. I'd like to be able to do the place justice when I present it to my players.

I imagine the place is populated with the worst scum of the multiverse, including possibly fiendish shoppers and buyers trading in larvae, slaves and other nasty things. What I'd like would be your ideas for some memorable encounters in the Night Market and possibly the kinds of items that'd be for sale in such crazy and wicked place. How's about it? Any ideas?

Aholibamah · Aug 3, 2007

I imagine it would be like any other place of scum and villainy with a touch of the weird added. So you'd have beggars, charlatans, whores, cutpurses, busybodies, helpful people, perhaps narcs of some kind. However they'd be odd and have bizarre rumors. For instance a charlatan peddler might offer to sell information on how to get Wisdom Juice, while a whore might be a tiefling and a cutpurse might be a miserable ex-paladin.

demiurge1138 · Aug 5, 2007

The first thing that comes to mind when combining "black market" and "Sigil" is the soul trade. Night hags haggling with fiends over the price of barrels full of larvae, shadow demons selling souls trapped in gems, yugoloth drug dealers pushing liquid agony, the works.

In addition, madmen, charlatans and members of the Revolutionary League might sell items with a claimed connection to the Far Realm, the deepest pits of Pandemonium, and other intensely dangerous planes. Fake portal keys abound, as well as rituals for busting out of Carceri, charms to be used to escape the Lady's mazes, cursed items, etc.

The "narcs" in this case could be entities as weird as the keepers, determined to stop anything truly dangerous to the fabric of the multiverse from changing hands. Through violence if need be (and it probably will).

Demiurge out.

Gold Roger · Aug 5, 2007

There's a NPC in some Sigil book which creates maps of the ladies mazes. Such maps and more importantly, fakes of such could be found on such a bazaar.

Also, information is one of the most important resources in planescape. On such a market knowledge as dangerous as truenames, the weaknesses of demon lords, the position of portals and the darkest secrets of factols, highpriests and archmages could be bought.

Lord Zardoz · Aug 6, 2007

Given that Sigil is essentially a large horizontal torus that is oriented sideways on the top of a large spire somewhere in the Outlands, is there even really night and day? The sort of deals you describe probably would be in the Hive district, and happening at all hours of the day.

As for encounters, I think you can probably run any sort of encounter that does not involve a direct contact with a Diety other than the lady of pain.

I think that the following kind of questional deals are likely to be encountered.

- Soul trading, as previously mentioned
- Press gangs looking for soldiers in the blood war
- Recruiters for the various planar factions (Doom guard, Xaositects, etc)
- Mundane slave trading

Now, my own suggestion is to run the most blatant "WTF" kind of encounters.

- A young, pre-adolescent halfling girl with a voice like James Earl Jones asking the party cleric if it may lick their holy symbol.
- A blind half fiendish gnome asking any player if they are willing to sign their name into "The Book", but unwiling to explain why he would want them to do so.
- A starving half mad Githyanki begger who is begging the players to take some money from him.
- A talking pig selling pork chops to passers by that the pig is cutting off it himself and cooking on the spot. They are very tasty.
- A Seraphim offering to buy teeth from the players, holding a small hammer with which to remove them.
- A shady man in a trench coat who gestures the players into a dark alley, and asks them if they would like to purchase a foot. In his coat are a half dozen feet of all sorts.

The one thing that all these ideas have in common is that they probably have nothing to do with anything, and you can be sure that only the most adventurous of your players will actually go for any of these deals.

END COMMUNICATION

Slapzilla · Aug 9, 2007

I like the idea of turning things around on the players and keeping them on edge. As a hive of S&V in the crossroads of the multiverse everything and everyone is broken somehow and needs something. True, information is a key to success but these folks may not have anything of value and if so, who would believe them anyway. Here is the place where hope is dead. Here and the Abyss, I guess. If this is the bottom of the barrel of all the multiverse, how low can you go? How does one find the will to try to survive? A touch of the Bleakers for sure. What has real value here? Food? A safe place to sleep? 5 minutes of privacy? Who knows. It doesn't seem that there would be a market for anything but false hope and empty promises. I imagine that encounters here would run from the truly wretched and desperate beggar type to a Farplane level of freakiness. Atmosphere would be more important here.