Merchants of the Wizard's Market

[MortalPlague]

For tomorrow's session in my Thieves' Guild game, a Wizard's Market will be coming to town and setting up shop. There will be a wide variety of merchants of all shape and color selling all manner of fantastic items, strange reagents, and dangerous items. I have plans for a few magical challenges, riddles, things of that sort; I really want to give this a 'carnival' atmosphere.

There's going to be dozens upon dozens of NPC merchants they encounter, and the stranger, the better. So I'd like to call upon the great resource of ENworld... does anyone have a memorable, interesting, or just plain quirky merchant who would be at home in a travelling Wizard's Market?

 

[Whisper72]

Hmm... some thoughts off the top of my head:

- a 'normal human' who somehow (fate, some magical process, chance?) is completely immune to all magical spells. This way, mages wanting to 'play' this merchant have themselves a real problem...
- a disguised demon secretly selling powerful magics in return for souls
- a 'second hand' magic item seller, a reseller with the scruples and methods of a car salesperson...
- a fraud selling normals items with a glamour that only functions once or twice, enough for the merchant to be far away by the time the buyer is aware he or she was duped
- an efreet selling off magic useless to them on the plane of fire, lost by adventurers who didn't make it or had to trade it in in order to survive the plane of fire... maybe you recognize something?
- a merchant selling magical foodstuffs and beverages. Not necessarily endowing magical effects, but merely a 'magical dining experience'
- a ghost selling ghostly wares...

Maybe I'll post more if I get more inspiration...

 

[Whisper72]

Now for the carnivalesque atmosphere:

- someone (preferably some alien / weird species) proclaiming gloom and doom (the advent of a massive invasion, a meteor strike, a magical disease, whatever) which may or may not be true...
- mage duels (sanctioned / organized or maybe not...) which will be bet upon...
- a runaway disenchanter on the loose
- a group of etherial filchers trying to steal stuff
- magician's shows with real magic / illusions
- fortune tellers of all types
- scry for money services
- someone selling 'dream vacations' where the holidays will be on some other plane / world
- recruiters for faction wars across the planes / in sigil
- recruiters for mage corps of some vast empire
- booths where mage guilds promote themselves (and their vast membership fee's...)
- a sphinx on the lookout for the perfect riddle
- a senior devil selling contracts for your souls...
- adventuring bands from across the worlds, some may have deep seeded rivalries, a fight can occur on any moment

 

[Gilladian]

Here's an old man and his mule, who in my campaign are wanderers on their own, showing up in the town where the PCs are at random.

Ofergenga is the old man's name (means "wanderer" in old english, I think). He's nothing more than he seems, an old man of some cleverness, a tinker and trader and sometimes a panhandler, who sells trinkets, charms, minor magical bits and bobs (potions and scrolls, mostly). He's a 3rd level expert in my E6 campaign. However, he seems never to age, never to fall ill, and never to face real danger on the (bandit laden) roads.

His mule is Bicwiden; to most, the mule is just that, an ordinary hat-eating, ornery animal. But in truth, the animal is minor aspect of Centarius, the god of merchants and travelers in my campaign world. He carries an iron ring, fastened to his bridle (a hackamore) that has a magical ability to put foes to sleep, thus protecting Ofergenga. Sometimes, Bicwiden's back packs contain items that Ofergenga has never seen before, which he will often sell or even give to those whom Bicwiden pays attention to.

Ofergenga and Bicwiden can be as ordinary and common as dirt, or seem downright uncanny and fey, depending on the occasion and how the PCs react to them. Ofergenga NEVER acknowledges that Bicwiden has any powers or protective abilities, merely insisting that "nobody bothers us, we're so harmless" and such.