Help me create a Marvelous Magical Marketplace!

[howandwhy99]

I once ran a Fey Festival with a strange little market. It included odds and ends and just plain weird stuff that fey find interesting. As inspiration I used the concept of the "Floating Market" from Gaiman's Neverwhere book. That helped a lot.

The best encounter was actually with a butcher who specialized in discriminating tastes. Adjacent to the eating area he had set up a strange tent to house his meats. In front he had a large butcher block to hauk his wares from. I think I made the butcher a simple human to make his wares a little more ironic. On the block was a human male with one arm missing; the wound bandaged in butcher paper.

"HUMAN! Get yer ripe fresh human here!"

Brandishing a cleaver and butcher's knife he called out to the party suggesting particularly succulent portions while he pointed (punctuating the point) with his knife. The party was appalled.

The resulting conversation was hilarious. The butcher was sort of meek and didn't understand why they were angered. And the PCs were unsure about the rules of the fey festival, so fortunately for them they didn't resort to violence. It took a while to convince the butcher they wanted to buy the WHOLE human too (the pc's ultimate solution). "Do you want to come back in a few hours while I carve him up for easy storage?" (another blank stare from the pcs)

Eventually they managed to untie their "purchase" and get him covered with a blanket. They started to check him over for other damage etc., while the butcher went into his tent behind him. Classically, as the PCs are starting to walk away and ask me about the other areas the butcher comes back out his tent with an elven maiden (looking about the age of a 7 y.o. human girl) and whistles happlily as he straps her body to the bloody stone block. The looks on my player's faces were priceless.


Needless to say, they quickly decided they needed a new idea on relieving this seller of all his wares.

Aahhh.. That was a fun session. I hope you can put something like that in.

 

[nopantsyet]

Haven't worked one into my current campaign, but it's there in the back of my mind, since the cosmology is significant to the campaign.

I agree that neutral ground is an important trait. This idea has been around for a while, and is core to the Planescape setting. The point I find interesting to explore is why and how? In Planescape it always seemed like "wave of the hand" mechanics. Poof! It's neutral ground for gods and mortals alike. But if you eliminate the presence of a transcendant being who enforces that neutrality, I think it makes it more interesting. How and why would normal mortals (if plane-hopping mortals can be called "normal") maintain a neutral commerce ground?

Obviously profit motive plays in, but what is universal currency on the planar level? There must be a plane of gold somewhere, so it's hard to establish rarity among elements as the basis for exchange. So you're basically down to barter of powerful items, which fits the motif.

Clearly the concept of neutral ground supports open markets, but how is that actually enforced? What's to stop a god (or gods) from swooping in and taking over the place? (At least, without the wave of the hand a la Planescape.) That's where I'm stuck anyway. I've got this mercantile oligarchy that runs the place, but what empowers them to maintain the neutrality? Still unknown....

 

[VirgilCaine]

Obviously profit motive plays in, but what is universal currency on the planar level? There must be a plane of gold somewhere, so it's hard to establish rarity among elements as the basis for exchange. So you're basically down to barter of powerful items, which fits the motif.

Clearly the concept of neutral ground supports open markets, but how is that actually enforced? What's to stop a god (or gods) from swooping in and taking over the place? (At least, without the wave of the hand a la Planescape.) That's where I'm stuck anyway. I've got this mercantile oligarchy that runs the place, but what empowers them to maintain the neutrality? Still unknown....

Powerful magic items as currency is an idea, without a material that is not immediately reproducible via magic. Perhaps alloys of gold and certain metals--mithral, adamantine, etc.?

Or wooden coins made from the tree that was originally in the neutral ground, but was cut down by the Owner?

Perhaps gods have certain ties to planes they watch over? Thus, gods can't really influence the neutral ground except through clerics [of course].

Powerful magic wards and screens would keep things happy--a city-wide Sanctuary effect is one idea. Certainly an Epic level mage could kajigger some way to add caster levels together for the Will save or for other defenses.