That last smuggling run netted a vast haul of treasure and the characters need somewhere to spend it. Or the game leader has a plot need to give the players an important item. Commercial establishments are ideal for this.
The Flower Market
In the dry desert heat, this shop is boarded up. The sun bleached sign paley reads “The Flower Market”. When the rain comes and water hits the shop front, it’s not just the dust that is washed away. As the water seeps into the wood, the colours brighten and darken. Bright greens and glowing yellows speckled with deep blue and vibrant reds. The boarding unfolds and peels away as leaves and stalks grow from them. Beyond the revealed doorway is a sunlit room filled with any seed or bulb you could possibly be looking for. The proprietor is a small woman, no taller than a human child. Her eyes are completely green and she giggles at the slightest thing. If asked, she says that her name as Asme and that the shop doesn’t like the dry. The most treasured seeds are housed in the root tangled basement. At the back of the shop is a shop seed, a huge 300 kg bulb.
Dragon Potato
If you want the tastiest baked vegetables in this city, you’ll want to get it from a Dragon Potato cart. There’s half a dozen of the cart on the street. The higher the cooking temperature, the better the flavour. Dragon Potato uses the hottest fire there is; dragon fire. Hence the name. They’re not employing magic to do this though. Each cart has a miniature red drake in its belly. In return for coal and meat, they little dragons can blast out a continuous stream of fire just perfect for cooking with. Where the owner was able to find six tameable drakes they’re not letting on.
Never Ending Junk Shop
If you can’t find what you’re looking in the merchant’s quarter, the traders will send you to this shop. A huge warehouse that occupies most of one side of the old dock yards, only a simply hand painted sign on the door identifies it. Inside the warehouse are vast shelves stuffed to overflowing with anything imaginable. None of it is organised and most is not priced. What’s particularly strange is that if you go back the next day, the entire stock will have changed. Rabort, the young man who owns it, bought it from the original owner a few years ago. The store sits on a twist in the cosmic strings. All the junk that gets lost in the space in between ends up here. Including some things that are better left lost. The original owner was looking for a particularly powerful magical device, but never found it.
The Knowing Shop
It’s very easy to miss the small door to this shop, tucked as it down an unmarked side street. Yielding under a firm push the door opens into a candle lit interior. The shop is full of small cupboards and chests of drawers. All are made of magnificent wood with beautiful carvings. A tall man in a black suit reads as he patiently waits. The shops products are contained within the furniture. If you’re just browsing, then the draws are full of interesting things that you don’t need. Go into the shop knowing what you want, the contents changes to variations of what is looked for. However, you can’t have more than one drawer open at a time and if you close a draw, the contents will be different when reopened. Choose carefully.
Image Credit – Pearls on Rialto Bridge by Jacob Surland – CC-BY-NC-4.0