The Best And Only Magic Item Market
There is no such thing as a magic shop. A few brewers or alchemists may sell signature potions here and there, and it's not impossible to find a crafter to enchant a sword or a pair of boots if you can travel and provide the rare components. But there is no such thing as a magic shop. In some cities, but only the largest or wealthiest, magic item brokers have a stall in the market or a discrete storefront, depending on their style. These brokers will try to find a buyer for that wizard's staff you found but cannot use or, if you think a certain sort of magic shield would be handy in your upcoming travail, will try to find someone willing to part with theirs for the right price. Of course the brokers take a percentage for their services. The very best brokers are called ring brokers, and they advertise their services with the image of a copper hoop encircling little swords or hats or the like. Few know why they get this name, or how they find sellers and buyers quicker than other brokers do. The truth is that each ring broker has a market ring, a magic ring with a single function: when a person wears it, they are immediately teleported to the Lameza Scrub Market, which is the best, and only, magic item market in the world.
The point of the ring brokers and the Lameza Scrub Market is to replace magic item shops entirely in a campaign. At lower tiers of play, player characters might be able to buy select potions from a brewer or alchemist, or get something they own enchanted, but otherwise their only opportunity to purchase a magic item is a broker. With a broker, they cannot simply go home with the item they want (or with the gold they'd get from selling the item). The broker needs time to make a connection, and may not succeed at all, though a ring broker would have better and faster results than other magic item brokers – which is to say, they are rolling on better tables. At middle tiers of play, however, the PCs should get access to a market ring, with which they can teleport to the Lameza Scrub Market.
The Lameza Scrub Market sits on a long flat-topped inselberg, on the southwestern edge and nearer the northwestern end. The surrounding country is arid, thorny scrubland, home to indigenous populations of grit hawks, tawny jackalopes, and diamond-back tatzelwurms – and home also, it is said, to feral herds of pushmi-pullyu antelope. Natural springs bubble in caves at the southeast base of the inselberg, however, making the Market's immediate environs one of the most habitable places for leagues in every direction. Pastoral nomads do herd in the scrubland, of course, but in small numbers. The only other people nearby are the students and faculty of a lich-run magic school, floating in a chained thundercloud visible to the north. Otherwise the sky is almost always clear, a hot hard blue.
Photo by Senning Luk on Unsplash
Because most visitors arrive by ring, the first thing they encounter is the triad of teleportation circles. Behind these teleportation circles is a cliff's edge, but visitors arrive facing the centre of the inselberg, which means that the market opens up ahead of them to their left, with hostels, inns, and campsites arrayed to their right. Beyond the visitors' accommodations is the village where its residents mostly live. But the market is why the bulk of the visitors are there, and it is splendid, with a mix of both permanent vendor's stands, stall space to rent by the week or month, and tables to rent by the day.
How would player characters get a market ring? It could be a reward, a hook, or a clue, or any combination of the three. If the party finds a travelling merchant dead at the side of a road, a market ring might be among his possessions; the vendors and regular visitors of the Lameza Market could provide information about the merchant's demise, setting up a murder mystery. Alternately, some of these rings have probably found their way into various monsters' lairs and hoards, so it may simply be loot. Either way, once the PCs discover the ring they found is magical, it is only a matter of time before one of them puts it on to see what it does. Magic can reveal that donning the ring teleports the wearer to a specific location, while taking it off teleports them back to wherever they were when they donned it. This magic should not, however, reveal anything about the destination.
The economics of magic item crafting are forbidding: the components are rare, but the skill needed is harder still to acquire. This difficulty means the end product is necessarily expensive, even for the more common magic items, which in turn shrinks the market. What's worse, knowing how to make one kind of magic item does not allow you to make others; magic item crafters are almost by necessity specialists. This shrinks the market smaller yet. Even a metropolis will have a hard time supporting a full magic shop (on the Material Plane, at least). The ledger books are a lot happier if you can serve a global market. The Lameza rings and teleportation circles allow just that. Brokers, merchants, adventurers, and court officials from across the world come to the Market, and therefore so too do the world's crafters, enchanters, and sellers of monster parts.
Market 17th century, Apollinary Vasnetsov, 1903, cropped
Some crafters and magic item dealers have permanent stands in the market, including a smithy or multiple tents adjoined together with different kinds of display. Some of these are even multigenerational, run by the descendents of now-deceased market founders. For instance, in the centre of the market is the inselberg's single tree, large and lonely, in whose shade a clan of hamadryads has sold spellbooks and manuals for over a hundred and fifty years. There are also smaller lots which vendors can rent by the week or month; here can be found crafters who rely on the sales in that short window to finance the next year's work. Among these is the booth the nearby magic school's students arrange at the end of each term, where they attempt to sell off the items they enchanted as practice. And then there is the long tent at the northern edge of the market, where tables can be rented by the day; more than one adventurer or daring scrounger has set up here to sell off the things they found, hoping that the profits are greater than the moderate fee.
The point of the Lameza Scrub Market, again, is to replace magic shops. That is to say, the Market should have about the same number of items that would be available in another campaign's magic shop. Yes, this is a splendid and remarkable place, with people from all across the world. Nonetheless, magic items are expensive, hard to come by and hard to make. In mechanical terms, it is the setting's only magic item shop, but it is available at all times to a party with a market ring. Any common magic item should be available here in fairly high quantities (maybe 5d4 of each, 5d8 for consumables, and not all from one vendor), but uncommon magic items should only be available in limited numbers (50% chance of being in stock at all; if so, maybe 1d4 of each, 2d4 for consumables). Only a few rare magic items should be sold here, and which they are should change from day to day or week to week. Rarer magic items might appear in the Market once in a blue moon, and then they will be auctioned off very competitively. Truly legendary items are not generally for sale at all, but player characters could nonetheless buy information about these items, as crafters and purveyors gossip about works of wonder.
Why is the Market here, in a far-flung and inhospitable place? Proximity to the magic school is some part of it; students do make their way over regularly and, though they are not big spenders, they are often willing to save and scrounge for any item that makes travel across the badlands easier. (Most commonly several students will go in together on a flying carpet, shared ownership famously leading to quarrels and complications later in a term.) And the inselberg is not all that far from the strange wind-swept city ruins, fractured and fractal, that seem to have appeared in the east centuries ago; these crumbling buildings and boulevards resemble no known civilization, and the most popular theories are that they come from a lost past or a lost future. Either way, rare alloys and magical ingredients can be found there, which is very useful for the Market's crafters. The badlands and cliffs, furthermore, offer protection from marauders or tyrants that might envy control of the Market. Finally, the springs at the foot of the cliffs are naturally enchanted; submerging an object in one of these pools imbues it with wondrous properties, though it is not easy to predict what property any pool will give the object. A small cadre of specialists have dedicated themselves to understanding the pools' fluctuations, and they will accept payment in exchange for submerging an item at just the right time to give it the enchantment its owner wants. Waiting for this moment can take weeks or even months.
The Lameza Scrub Market is not just a place to swap gold pieces for magic items, and vice versa. Like any town, it also has taverns, inns, and a general store, where parties can rest and resupply. The Market can also be a quest hub, as more than a few crafters will pay decently for difficult-to-acquire ingredients, like hydra blood, peryton hide, or basilisk eyes, and besides this the vendors will gossip about lost artifacts and their rumoured locations. Or perhaps a stall is empty because the redsmith who often rents it never showed up; her friends and colleagues would offer a discount to anyone who looked into it. Finally, it could become a site for social challenges if player characters want to engage in market politics – or combat encounters if a dragon decides the inselberg would make a good lair, and the market's wares could be the start of its hoard.
The Lameza Scrub Market Authority runs the Market, handling rents and contracts, drafting and enforcing bylaws, judging disputes, and hiring security. It is composed of inherited seats, whose holders are often also permanent or regular vendors; daily operations, however, are handled by a hired staff. Technically the Authority answers to the Kingdom of Cuatratos, but they are so geographically remote that the Kingdom has only a small presence here, levying taxes and nothing more.
The Market does not need to go by the name Lameza in your setting, nor must it be on a badland inselberg; it can be subject to a kingdom or it can be wholly independent. A lich's magic school may or may not float to the north. The indigenous and invasive wildlife can vary to taste. That is to say, adapt it as you like to your own campaign's setting. The important parts are these: a remote location difficult to access, with local resources and residents; a way for people from around the world to visit; and magic items for sale.
This is my entry for June's RPG Blog Carnival, which I also happen to be running. The topic is "Magic Shops and Their Alternatives," and you are welcome to participate.
