Bustral Market Square forms the centre and commercial heart of Fornford. A wide open space with a large fountain in the middle it is surrounded by shops and much of its cobbles is covered with market stalls. Amongst the many merchants there, here are a few of the highlights.
The Completely Ordinary Shop That Sells Completely Ordinary Hand Tools in a Completely Ordinary Way- Svend, the proprietor, sits at a desk at the front of the shop in what appears to be the only clear space in the entire three story building. No matter who enters, they look up with a slightly dejected look and begin to recite the following. “Welcome. Offer me a fair price for whatever you can find, and I’ll accept it. No, I don’t know where anything is. No, I can’t help provide guidance. Yes, I used to be a tailor. No, I don’t know where all this stuff comes from.” The shop was hit by a magical accident 2 years ago and now, every 6.48 days, piles of random hand tools magically appear throughout the premises. Svend is too saddled with debts to be able to leave, and so he sells whatever he can. The tools themselves are all in good condition and pretty much any hand tool you want if you can find it.
Burlington of Shields- The finest bespoke shields this side of the Queen’s Mountains. The Burlington’s have been making shields for 11 generations now and the current Master of Defense is very pleased with their brand new premises on Bustral Square. This boutique of shields has been custom fitted with not just a showroom and manufacturery but also a suite of rooms where the staff provide a precise fitting process that not only includes the physique of the intended user but also an analysis of their fighting style. Burlington’s offer a range of custom shields but the elite service is only available to those warriors the Master of Defense deems worthy. It would besmerch the Burlington’s name if they sold their shields to simply anyone who could afford them. That would lead to these creations being improperly used or worse, not properly maintained. A potential client will be rigorously interviewed and undergo several training exams in the basement against Burlington’s battle automaton. The service doesn’t include magical enchantments but Burlington’s will recommend a select list of mages who can be trusted with their shields.
That There Pie Shop- If you want a meat pie, this shop will sell you a meat pie. What meat? Just accept that it’s meat. The filling is greasy and doesn’t fill the undecorated and slightly soggy pastry. This is somewhat acceptable as the pies are cheap and served piping hot straight out of the oven. What seems to keep the shop in business is the baker and sole staff, Clude Cludson. A young man of intense beauty and statueqsue, nearly everyone is struck by how handsome he is. Such is his stunning appearance, his pie shop has a much greater trade than the meager quality of the pies would normally bring in.
Diffciliny’s Urban Spice Experience- A glass and white metal structure on the front of a huge warehouse, the Urban Spice Experience takes up almost a third of one side of Bustral Square. Diffciliny was a small-time merchant until a lucky piece of adventuring gave them the capital to buy out the previous owners. Diffciliny has ideas on how to diferenticte himself from the other spice merchants. The experience is mostly empty space, with samples of the available spices on white metal tables below huge stylistic hanging artworks of the spice. The staff are all dressed in blue flowing robes and talk in looping paragraphs of keywords. The fashion forward crowd of Fornford adore the novelty and are entirely happy to queue outside for the latest limited edition spice mix. The popularity persists despite magical illusions that pop up every few minutes to advertise the mailing list and a checkout procedure that requires pages of personal information.
Fastest Fast Fruit- A network of small stalls and tall stacks of boxes under several tents in the main square filled with fresh local fruits. Everything is so tightly packed it’s almost impossible to freely move around. The easiest way is yell out what you want and get ready to catch. The store owner is, possibly, a very fast gnome riding a very fast giant jerboa. Getting a better identification is difficult given the speed she moves at over the course of the morning sales. In the afternoon the jerboa can be found sleeping amongst a pile of rugs whilst Matila dozily sorts through her paperwork. Notionally the shop is shut after the morning, but Matila will take pre-booked sales of exotic items she’s sourced from overseas.
The Shop of The Unwanted- It’s not actually on Bustral Square proper, but ever so slightly down on of the side alleys. Under a black leather canopy is a frosted glass door into a room that’s brightly lit. On an array of pedestals are pieces of thin metal with glowing glyphs etched onto them. The shopkeeper wears a loose robe that conceals almost every of their features save for a single glowing green eye. The voice is pleasant and feminine but their movements are brutish and gracelss. The glyphs represent things that you do not want. The outer ring of pedestals are for unwanted things that are generic – plague, burns, illness, grief. As you go closer to the centre, the unwanted things become more and more personal to the shopper until they are greeted at the centre by the thing they want the least. Touching the glyph will cause the unwanted to appear or occur within the next day. The price? That’s to be negotiated on how badly you don’t want the unwanted.
Threasnos, God of Trade’s Temple Giftshop– A temple to the god of trade would be remiss if it didn’t have a shop attached to it. Like all good giftshops, this one sells a vast collection of branded items, knick-knacks, and tchotchkes that are all of dubious use. There’s tea towels, pencils, rubber, tiny model churches, postcards, bookmarks, and tiny bells. The shop sells a few of these to the faithful and those in need of stationary but they make the majority of their trade on blessing the merchandise. Every purchase from the temple giftshop comes with a blessing from Threasnos granting a 10% boost to sales income and bargaining for 26.2 hours. With the prominence of the temple of Bustral Square, the local merchants are somewhat forced to daily make purchases from the giftshop to cancel out the effect of the blessing on potential customers.
Image Credits: Photo by Christy Ash on Unsplash