VISIT: THE NIGHT MARKET

[inthenightmods]

VISIT:
THE NIGHT MARKET

characters: everyone.
location: the floating night market, docked at the harbor.
date/time: april 10-12.
content: the night market arrives.
warnings: n/a.

and i came down from the stars.

In the wee hours of April 10, strange blue lights appear just under the waves in the harbor, approaching the dock, until they finally surface entirely. They're submarines, glowing a dim blue now that they're up out of the water, and the fleet is four vessels strong. They've brought with them a floating bridge system to attach to the harbor's main dock to allow access to all four submarines, and they start to unpack...

By "morning", under the light of the full moon, the Night Market is open for business!

This time, it's four vendors that arrive:

• Pluto, the Night Market's leader, who rolls out of her submarine in a custom-built wheelchair.


• Catherine, a coy-eyed blonde with a bombshell choice of wardrobe, who appears to be somehow teeming with secrets.


• Variks, the Loyal, a prison warden who deals in all variety of secrets.


• John Silver, an opportunistic cook who spent his life aboard a space pirate ship.

They've brought a handful of helpers with them to set up the market and run the various booths and games. Though they have no torches among them, the docks are lit with the blue glow of the submarines, their lights rippling slowly in intricate patterns and shapes, reminiscent of carnival lights.

•••
Accepted currencies at the Night Market include: Building and scrap materials, old tablets, old lanterns, captured forest spirits, torches, information, and most importantly... Plutonium. Of course, attempting to barter is always an option... but these currencies are your best bet for dealing with the various vendors offered by the Night Market.

All purchases must be logged on the Night Market purchase page while the market is open! Backdated purchases won't be accepted. However, as long as transactions are started ICly while the market is open, you're welcome to belatedly submit those transactions to the purchase page. Please do your best to log the purchases as close to the window as possible, though!

Congratulations to Sydney and King who won our last AC lottery for a chance to play Night Market shopkeepers! Sydney is playing Variks and King's playing Silver! Be sure to hit up these awesome shopkeepers up under the NPC header below! And as a reminder, please direct all plot questions/topics to one of the mod NPCs, as our players and discord mods aren't given any plot info beyond what's already available in the game. This visit, Danielle is playing Catherine, so she can answer plot questions, along with Pluto. P is for plot!

Here are the vendors and their inventories for the current Night Market visit:

PLUTO

• Special orders - Pluto can procure items just like Rastus, but she can get you specific goods from homeworlds. The more specific the request, the more it will cost. Items ordered through Pluto will arrive on the next ferry.


• Heals - A borrowed gun-looking device allows Pluto to heal even the most grievous of injuries. This item doesn't belong to her, though, so... results may vary

CATHERINE

• Confession - In the place of a standard vendor's stall is a small, modest confessional. Catherine keeps the door open on the priest's side, sitting inside it while she waits for her customers. Feel interested in airing out your grievances? Well, it might not be an official sort of purge, but hop into the curtained compartment and she'll give you a non-judgmental ear to listen. Just don't ask for advice; she's not here to give it. But if you want to pray to her, well, she won't object to being treated like a Goddess.


• A brief reunion - Just want to see someone's face again? A friend, a family member, someone you miss more than anyone else you've ever known? It seems that this mysterious lady has a knack for sensing who it is you desire to see again the most. Exactly how this works, she's not inclined to share, and unfortunately there's no real way to provide you with who it is she's able to show you... but a few meaningful moments could mean some peace of mind for some people.


• Adult toys - A padlocked trunk full of specialty toys and supplies (and apparent torture devices?) to tide over any individual who would consider themselves properly kinky (or perhaps just a tad adventurous in their intimate exploits). Anyone over the age of eighteen is free to browse the wares, but the stall's keeper will keep it locked for anyone who died before reaching a legal age of adulthood. Sorry, kids. Maybe when you've been dead for a few more years.

VARIKS, THE LOYAL

• Restraints & prison supplies - Cages, shackles, handcuffs, chains, rope. Want to keep a forest spirit (or fellow resident) contained and restrained? He's got you covered. Maybe it's for their own good, he may be the Kell of the House of Judgement but he won't question your motives too hard. What he has on display is mostly person-sized restraints and smaller cages for trapping forest spirits to use as currency elsewhere in the Night Market. But if you need something specific he may be able to accommodate.


• Lantern shells - Tired of carrying the same lantern around day after day? Change how it looks with a lantern shell. The "shell" looks like a shimmery 12-sided die in various colors but touch it to your lantern and it'll be absorbed and change your lantern into a specific color / shape / size, etc. They can be removed at will and return your lantern to it's default look. Get multiple shells and have a different lantern every day of the week! You're only as fashionable as your Ghost. Er. Lantern.


• ACCEPTED CURRENCIES - He'll take all the basics, with a preference for lanterns or lantern pieces, and also secrets. Secrets can be about yourself, others, places, the Wild Hunt... The juicier the secret the more valuable it is to him. He probably won't tell Pluto. Probably.

JOHN SILVER

• Ready-made meals - This extremely personable vendor will greet you jovially and invite you up in a very thick, very pirate-y accent— though it's probably not him that draws you up so much as the mouth-watering smell of cooking food. He has a number of ready-made meals, but he can also whip up something special if you have a specific request. And when he says specific, he MEANS specific... looking at those of you with Certain Dietary Requirements.
  
  Bonza Beast Stew: What's a Bonza Beast? Who knows! Where did he find one on this planet? You'll never find out, because it's a secret recipe. Have a bowl of this hearty stew, though, and you'll find that you'll be pleasantly warm and happy for a good long while.
  
  Wild Rosemary Quiche: Vegetarian and beautifully fragrant. Consuming this will make you particularly nimble for a while.
  
  Fish & Chips: What is says on the tin and possibly the best you've ever had. Wonder what that fish is...? The only side effect is that you have an almost insatiable desire to go swimming. Might want to be careful with that one...
  
  Steamed Buns: A meaty option and the veggie option. Both buns will increase good fortune for a limited period of time.
  
  Apple Rose Puffs: Sweet and delicate, they will also leave you smelling sweetly of flowers for hours afterward.
  
  Baklava: Nutty and sweet, after eating this you feel compelled to say whatever kind things you've been feeling or have been on your mind.
  
  Moonshine: No side effects, unless you count getting completely blasted very quickly.
  
  You can also purchase ready-made packages of ingredients with a written recipe included to take home and cook for later! Except the Moonshine. That you'll have to buy directly.


• Poisons - Ask the right questions, and you can get access to Silver's under-the-counter stash of goods. "Poisons" here is used loosely, as it includes concentrated doses of all sorts of concoctions. This includes: deadly poisons of varying intensities, poisons that induce sleep, poisons that will warm you from the inside or that will give you a bone-deep chill, poisons that are actually venom you can put on a blade, etc. All poisons are good for 2 doses, so use them wisely.


• Repairs - Nothing too complicated, mind! Silver is good with mechanical fixes, but not with anything too delicate.


• ACCEPTED CURRENCIES - Silver accepts all the regular kinds of currencies, but he does have a preference for gossip (which he loves), information, and building/scrap materials. He will also gleefully take recipes your character might know and ingredients that have been foraged or brought from the ferry as a form of payment. Keep in mind that the more you ask for, the more you will have to pay— and those poisons don't come cheap.

DR. SCHICKSAL'S HINT-O-MATIC

• AMA - Does your character have any burning questions they just need to have answered? Dr. Schicksal's Hint-O-Matic is a phonebooth-looking device with a screen prompting the user to input a question. When a question is asked, Dr. Schicksal's Hint-O-Matic will spout out an answer! Questions can be typed in via keypad or spoken aloud, and answers will be automatically read aloud for characters that can't read the screen. These answers are always true, no matter what the question, but this information comes at a cost—your character will be blessed with a random status effect for the remainder of the month. We will check permissions posts before issuing a status effect, and please keep in mind that these effects stack! 😃 Each question you ask it (or say at it, rhetorically or otherwise) will "cost" one status effect. And, yes, you can literally ask anything.

Finally, please use the Night Market Purchases page for all transactions! We're changing this up from how we did it last time so that we can better keep track of what's going where. You're still welcome to thread out purchases on this log, though! Just be sure to note it on the purchase page, as well.

•••
Other than the vendors, the Night Market has brought with them the following attractions:

• COFFEE CART - The coffee cart offers every variety of hot drink a person could fathom, and it's complimentary! A few small tables have been set up in front of the cart around an outdoor heater, glowing happily as it warms this little section of dock.


• CANDY SHOP - Sweet treats offered at the candy shop are also free for the taking, but be careful—some treats carry with them a random status effect that will last for the next hour. The treats and resulting status effects are left entirely up to you players, so feel free to create your own hijinx! This is us trusting you not to break the game, so don't abuse this privilege, and feel free to ask us if you're unsure about limitations! Not all treats will produce an effect, but those that do will have no tells, meaning characters will not be able to strategize when eating the candy. (In meta terms: if you want your character to engage in wacky bullshit, but they're a party pooper and hate fun and wouldn't willingly indulge, this is your opportunity to trick them into shenanigans.)


• CARNIVAL GAMES - The small section of carnival games includes ring toss, skeeball, balloon darts, a shooting gallery, a fishing game, a plinko game, and an RC racing game with toy vehicles. The rules are all somewhat nebulous, but feel free to play out your characters interacting with these games on your own! They're all free to play, and prizes include knitted forest spirit plushies, wind-up goldfish that float through the air, and buckets of those plastic spider rings and finger topper guys that cost like one ticket apiece at Swings-N-Things.


• WHACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MEN - They are also here, and they have a jukebox with them with an unfathomably large selection of songs. This area of the dock is probably meant for dancing.

QUICKNAV
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Comments

Ephrim | OTA

[sunsbreath]

I. On the Dock

Ephrim has seen his share of village festivals, and despite the rather odd assortment of shops and games, he isn't particularly interested in committing to a purchase on his first day. He's procured a cup of coffee instead - blessed, normal coffee - and he sits on the edge of the dock, feet swinging idly over the water's surface, listening to otherworldly music float past from that odd box, watching the stars. His small, black, wrought iron lantern sits at his side, the shoulderstrap in a small nest of fabric next to it.

If the very sight of him doesn't fill one with the urge to push him into the water, he'll eventually note that there's someone nearby, but studiously ignore them. If the situation grows unpleasantly prolonged, then he'll say something, if only to take away any sort of enjoyment one might have being silent in his company. (Only he is allowed to be comfortable with him, thank you.)

"Tell me of the stars in your world." He nods up to them, wheeling in the sky over the lake. "Keep it short, if you please."

II. Wildcard

will match format, tbh just make something up or lmk if you want me to start thanks my pals

i.

[unwieldy]

Haein doesn't mean to stay at the Night Market for as long as he does. There's nothing that he especially wants, and nothing in his possession that he thinks would be of enough value to trade for. It's on his way out that he spots a familiar figure, and just the sight alone is enough to bring murderous thoughts to mind. He could continue leaving and not deal with this. Avoidance is one of his stronger traits, but...

So is his ability to be a massive asshole.

With as much nonchalance as he can muster, Haein makes his way onto the dock, behind the other man. There isn't an ounce of hesitation before he lifts a leg to place the heel of his boot against Ephrim's back and then shoves him toward the water.

[sunsbreath]

Good news, Haein: Ephrim is neither a god nor blessed with superhuman reflexes. His good arm and stub of a right arm both will pinwheel wildly, his coffee going flying as he yelps - yelps - and falls into the water. That splash? That spray? The sight of Ephrim coming up for air, neck deep and sputtering? It's beat for beat gratifyingly perfect.

Here Ephrim is, turning around sluggishly, pushing wet hair from his face with his good hand as the rest of it lays plastered against his head and floating in the water like black seaweed. He blows water from his mouth, blinking furiously at the figure on the dock.

"What the fucking hell is your problem," he spits, and then he recognizes the silhouette. Oh, that's what the fucking hell problem is. "Whelp," he hisses next.

[unwieldy]

That is good news, and Haein relishes every second of the sight before him. There's no way he's ever going to forget or forgive what happened during their first meeting, but boy, this definitely takes off some of the sting that he's still been feeling a whole week after. Pettiness and grudge-holding make up his entire being, and he's completely in his element now.

With a sneer, he pockets both hands and shrugs casually. Oh, is this Haein's doing? Gods, it feels good to have the high ground and be able to look down on people.

"My bad," he says, not meaning a word of it. "My foot must've slipped."

[sunsbreath]

Ephrim treads water uncomfortably, eyes narrowed at Haein. Is he above thinking about the next part of this in terms of petty revenge? Absolutely. He's been wronged more cruelly and personally before, by people far more important, whose opinions actually mattered to him. Is this stopping him from thinking of three different forms of vengeance? Oh, hell no.

He floats for a moment, still a little dumbstruck by how sudden the whole exchange had been. "Child," he says finally, making no movement to splash his way back to shore, "I am forced to believe that your parents have failed you thrice: once in your manners, once in keeping your feet under you no better than the drunkard you are, and once in birthing spawn of such weakness that it cannot think of a better way of facing the truth than to lash out at its source." Ephrim does have quite an opinion of himself for someone who lashed out at a boy ten years younger than he in a moment of weakness, but hey, sometimes this is how one copes.

[unwieldy]

Bringing Haein's parents into their squabble would normally seem like a low blow, but the truth is that they have failed him. His father more than his mother, and while Haein loves his mom unconditionally, he's not fool enough to lie to himself and heap praises upon her parenting skills. She had had a difficult time as a single mother and so dropped the ball more times than he can count, but he doesn't fault her for this. It had simply been the consequences of their circumstances.

Still, it's not something he's too fond of hearing from a stranger. He keeps his expression carefully neutral, wanting to appear unaffected.

"Stick around, old man, and you'll find there's more than three." That said and with a job he considers well done, Haein starts making his way back across the dock toward land.

[sunsbreath]

Ephrim studies him for a moment as he turns away, considering what he knows of the boy and if he cares enough for him to glean his intentions or, of course, if he's angry enough with a child to seek him out again for vengeance. (He's too tired for it, but he'd muster the energy for it if he could. The heart is more than willing, et al.)

He isn't following Haein to shore necessarily, but he does need to get out of the water at some point, and he isn't so wounded that he'd rather it be after the boy left than before. So he wades, idly unpinning the sleeve on his right arm, letting Haein outpace him.

So he's up to knee level in the water, Haein's back already receding into the dark, when he begins to laugh. It's soft, not meant for Haein's ears at all, but it is there, should Haein happen to catch it.

[unwieldy]

Well, that's haunting. Haein halts in his tracks and turns around at the sound, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He hadn't expected laughter to be one of the responses for what he'd done, but there it is. He's left both puzzled and irritated, and he debates for a moment on if he should just ignore it and continue on his way.

But as unsettled as he is, he sticks around, even fully turning to face Ephrim. Leaving now feels annoyingly like running away, and he has too much pride to do that. So Haein balls his fists at his sides, body tense as if he expects some kind of retaliation.

"Don't tell me you've lost it already," he says, keeping his tone mocking, though there's an edge of uncertainty on the edges of his voice.

[sunsbreath]

"And here I thought that, of the two of us, you were the expert in loss." It's most definitely a jab at Haein's expense, but it's a moderate response, as though it's a rejoinder to a familiar joke. Ephrim will keep walking, past Haein if it comes down to it. Ephrim hadn't meant for him to hear that, but he doesn't mind it this time.

Is the child curious? Ephrim has no qualms against leaving him in suspense. Nothing this little fool has shown him so far has proven him worthy of anything but criticism, much less his thoughts. "I've taken leave of my senses as much as you have, I suppose," Ephrim says instead, then continues along his way. He is quite wet. Standing next to the bonfire would be nice.

I

[paletteswap]

"The stars?" He'd been standing nearby peering out at the lighthouse and thinking, not really paying attention to the other person silently nearby. Glancing up at the sky as if to remind himself what stars looked like he shakes his head.

"They look similar to this, I've never been able to pick out constellations very well, so I could not tell you how these differ." He frowns, taking a sip of his tea before continuing almost casually, "The ones here are being devoured though. There's less than there were when I first arrived."

[sunsbreath]

Ephrim looks at the stranger levelly, then turns his attention back up to the stars, restraining the urge to snort. He doesn't feel like being raked over the coals for disrespect. (He does feel annoyed about the repetition, but it wasn't what he found absurd.)

"I've read of them. These eaters of stars, of worlds, of light." Neutral. Not particularly urgent. "Was that the extent of your familiarity with the stars in your plane? A matter of location and number?"

[paletteswap]

"Personally, yes. I could use certain ones to navigate should I need to, but other than that I took no notice of them." Looking out at these, he thinks about that for a bit, they really are quite pretty. He'd never admired the view of them back home, nor the view of anything. Sometimes single-minded focus on a goal dimmed his perception of everything else.

"Were they more important to you? Back in your world?"

[sunsbreath]

Ephrim nods. He was the same way. And then this stranger launches into his next question, which surprises that snort from before out of him. It's much louder than he intended. At least it's more out of horror at the thought rather than base derision.

He takes a half second to collect himself. Whoops, that sure was an emotion. "The stars of Hieron have never done me any favors," he says, voice even again. It's not apologetic, but it also lacks condescension. It's just the truth.

"They simply differ from the stars here. I wondered if other planes had stars like these," he says, waving his left hand up at the night sky, "or if my world was... singular." He was about to call Hieron a uniquely terrible accident, but that sounds too dramatic, even though it's the truth.

[paletteswap]

"Every world I've been to with one exception has had stars. Similar to this." He glances over again at Ephrim, wondering what he means by the stars doing him no favors. It's an odd thing to admit to a stranger and Kuai has the distinct feeling he should have understood more about that than he did.

"The darkness is more absolute here than my world, so they stand out far more. But still stars." He hesitates before continuing, not wanting to presume anything. "Have you just arrived recently?"

[sunsbreath]

Ephrim was staring up at the stars, content to let this stranger talk away without much consequence, so when he asks another question, Ephrim drops his chin, taken slightly aback. Two questions about his circumstances. It's so frankly asked that there's really not much to discern from his intentions, but he does wonder if this is just... so-called polite interest. Weird.

"Two weeks ago, on the ferry." It's somewhat comforting to know that he doesn't have to explain that he arrived shortly after his death. Nothing to talk about, there. "And you? Have you been here long?"

[paletteswap]

"Nearly a year." He frowns, even though he knows the passage of time, saying it outloud makes it seem real. Too real. "I was with the first to arrive, this place was nearly empty before then. Only Will and Rastus and a man named Winters were around."

And there'd been more stars, something only Rosinante had thought to track. It wouldn't have even occurred to Kuai that some of them were missing. "I'm Grandmaster Kuai Liang."

A wry shake of his head and he follows that with, "Kuai."

He's not a Grandmaster anymore. Not here.

[callada]

Out here away from all the lights of town, and over the water where there are fewer trees to block the horizon, is one of Rosinante's usual preferred spots to photograph the night sky for his charts. Now that the clouds have begun to clear more frequently, he's out here often, as if he can make up for time lost over an overcast winter. Eventually, after a few minutes of working at a cigarette while taking and studying his photos to make sure they're clear, Ephrim speaks, and he looks over.

"Hm? Well, they don't look like these ones, different patterns, but otherwise it's about the same. Points of light out there in the distance," he says with a shrug. "Why?"

There's certainly some scientific explanation for them, but it isn't one he knows much of anything about. Other worlds, presumably. The mythology and religion of his homeland is just mythology made to inflate the egos of people who think themselves gods.

[sunsbreath]

Another vaguely familiar face, like Ardyn. How very strange. He feels more settled with this individual, as far as that goes for him, but it means very little when Ephrim can't quite remember who he is or where they met.

"I've been told that the stars here are burning balls of light." Ephrim turns his eyes back up to them. "Strange words. Nuclear fission." He says the words very carefully, with no familiarity. "Not much difference between what they are and what they could be from down here, I suppose. They're simply points of light."

[callada]

It takes Rosinante a moment to realize why this guy looks so familiar. He knows a lot of faces even if he hasn't spoken to everyone. Small community, after all - it stands out more if he hasn't met someone. It only occurs to him somewhat belatedly that this is another person who he has only seen once before - on that ferry the time it was full of corpses. He stares when it clicks. That's three now, so it's no fluke, but how and why did it happen?

He shakes himself out of that long pause in order to think over what had just been said. Nuclear fission - the second word means nothing to him, but "nuclear" is a term he's heard before here in reference to a very powerful sort of bomb. Burning balls of light, indeed.

"Don't know about all that, but Doctor Ingram could explain it, I bet. He used to live up there. I just know they're going dark, one by one. I've been trying to track how many we're losing for months now."

[sunsbreath]

More doctors. Ephrim doesn't look back, but he nods in acknowledgment. He doesn't know if he will seek out this Dr. Ingram, since what they have in theory is sufficient enough for him, but it's always handy to have another name to contact should he have need for it.

(He doesn't quite remember the corpses, but it's more than a little out of a desire to believe that it had been nothing more than a particularly bad manifestation of this place's whims.)

They must be of great import, these stars, if charts of them must be kept even unto the end of the world. "Is it a simple tracking of rate, or do the stars hold some solution?" It's a bit of a more carefully neutral question.

[callada]

What a strange thing to ask. Or a strange way to ask a sensible thing, perhaps. He's not sure which it is but he's aware that most, if not all, of the conversations he's had here were with people he would never normally be able to understand, and perhaps some languages are harder to translate - however it is that that happens.

"I started just to try and find which ones would be reliable for navigation, hoping we'd be able to go out on the lake here," he says, looking out over the water which barely reflects the night sky above. He still doesn't know how far it extends and it hurts knowing that given the deadliness of the spirits that inhabit it, maybe he never will.

"The fact they're going out was an accidental discovery but now I keep watch. If the rates change, we might learn something about the progress of the World Eaters through the rest of the universe. If they stop, that might be good news. If there are stars they can't eat, we need to learn why."

bless you but the phrasing on that is thanks to me playing gacha and writing tags at the same time

[sunsbreath]

Ephrim stares up into the stars, silent, taking what Rosinante says under serious consideration. This is quite an investment of time and energy into what looks to Ephrim like a bit like a losing battle for a world neither of them are from. He seems responsible. Or desperate. Or, perhaps, a bit like a hero, for as much value as that holds here in death.

"Has there been progress beyond what you've said? That they are stars, and they are being consumed." He tilts his head. "And if there is some brave star up there made of some stronger stuff than the others, how are we to know what devices it used to make itself unpalatable?" He's asking simply out of curiosity, not out of a wish to point out fatal flaws with Rosinante's efforts. "I've read of telescopes in this world of such power that they can pierce through space unfathomable, but no such things exist on current maps of this place."

look I was totally ready for like, Ephrim has some wild fantasyland speech habits

[callada]

"Robin said she might be able to, with Doctor Ingram's help. Says she has the tools to measure how far each star is from us, for example, so we could make a three-dimensional map and see if their movements are random or not. She can probably measure other things about them."

Way out of his wheelhouse now, though. Other than things like brightness and color he doesn't have a clue. Probably those things are the result of what those stars are made of, and that might be helpful, but that's not a question he can answer, which is why he went to Will for help with this in the first place.

"Anyway, I guess none of this answers your original question, but I figure there's not much point thinking about things back home when we have enough problems here."

I am here at last to ruin your day 1 of course

[donttalktome]

Listen buddy, this dock is not yours. While it may not be big enough for these two egos, it is certainly big enough for more than two people, so Will is going to stand around wherever he damn well pleases. He's decided to grab a coffee on his way to chat with Pluto (gotta figure out exactly how to interrogate her) and this is just a convenient place to drink it if he wants to avoid the people coming to get their own. So he stands at the edge of the pier a yard or two away, just blankly staring out at the water.

Thankfully(?), awkward silences barely exist in Will's mind, so he does a good job of simply existing in Ephrim's space, obnoxiously, until he's spoken to. At which point he immediately scoffs.

"You're asking me about stars and telling me to keep it brief? You know that isn't possible, right?"

Especially for someone who knows far too much about stars than anyone else would reasonably care to, and who also loves to hear himself talk. Like, duh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD33ii01kXI

[sunsbreath]

"I don't," Ephrim says, inflection perfectly flat with that particular tone one takes when they want to ask who in the hell someone else is without much actual curiosity. And as far as he's concerned, this IS his dock.

"I must assume that your reputation precedes you." Not... exactly... rude... yet. Just feeling out this fellow coffee drinker and seeing if he wants to bother with the illusion of manners just yet.