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.

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Comments

[callada]

At the nod, he glances briefly toward the cook, then shakes his head and sips at his tea. It's hard to appreciate food these days. Hopefully that's something that will pass, but half the time he still feels like he's about to gag at the sight of anything dark and meaty. Salads are safe. Rice is fine. Only if he makes it himself, though.

"I'm looking forward to speaking with Pluto once she's less busy," he says, mostly to change the topic for his own sake. "She did me an impressive favor last time. We're lucky to have her around."

[paletteswap]

"I need to speak to her as well, but there are others who need her services more." He glances over to where she's sitting, seeing a group clustered around.

"Perhaps later. I'm sure she has some interesting information on the Hunt as well. I don't like the feeling I'm getting about this. That we may have some sort of in-fighting brewing over how to proceed against the World Eaters. It's probably inevitable, and we've been here nearly a year now. But I'd hoped that in death we'd be beyond that."

Ever the optimist he'd genuinely hoped people would work together against the threat and not potentially split into a group that wanted to lay down and die.

[callada]

"So far I haven't seen much infighting," Rosinante comments with a shrug. It isn't blind optimism though, of course - he's actively monitoring the situation, made easier by the app he got from Alistair. The same app which he's been meaning to get to Kuai the moment Will had it ready, so he's glad that the Grandmaster ran into him today.

"I do have a request, though, on that note. Come with me," he says as he stands, immediately tangles his legs in his chair and collapses on the ground. The mug in his hands goes flying and shatters on the ground, spilling tea in an arc while Rosinante grumbles to himself and extracts himself from the furniture so he can sit up.

[paletteswap]

"Not yet. It's simply a feeling I've had after Kimiko's speech, Pluto's message and talking to Robin. They have vastly different ways on how they wish to proceed, and it will likely cause conflict at some point. Human nature I suppose." He sounds resigned, he's seen it happen before. But maybe this place will prove him wrong.

Kuai stands, setting his cup of tea down and politely glancing elsewhere as Rosinante untangles himself from the chair. There's something like a smile on his face but he's far too courteous to actually laugh at him. Instead he busies himself picking up the pieces of the mug and putting them on the table. An accepted hazard of being around him any length of time.

[callada]

"Thanks," he comments as he stands carefully, and takes a moment to mourn his lost drink before he shrugs it off and continues. He can come back and get another later.

The market area is just a little too busy for his liking when it comes to the gift he wants to give, and the request that comes with it. They don't have to go far, though - just toward the end of the pier where they can stand to the side of the last booth in the row so they're not as obviously out in the open. Once out of everyone's clear and obvious sight, Rosinante snaps his fingers and mutters "silent", and the sounds of the market and the waves all cease.

From a pocket, he withdraws an SD card. "Last time the market was in town, I acquired an app you might be able to make use of. Do you have your tablet with you?"

[paletteswap]

Kuai couldn't be inconspicuous if he tried, following along next to Rosinante and standing near one of the colorful tents. No one would assume he had gone out there to enjoy the view of nothingness, and he didn't bother to try and act nonchalant. It isn't as if they're the only ones conducting "business" at the Night Market.

Pulling his tablet out of an interior pocket he nods, "I carry it with me always, even if I'm not using it. It's been more useful than I imagined."

With a wry smile he unfolds it to reveal where the SD slot is, "I owe some of my students an apology for chiding them about carrying their phones everywhere."

This isn't quite the same thing, and a far different situation, but the point stands. And Kuai is someone who can admit when he was wrong.

"What does this one do?"

[callada]

Ah, the ever-honorable Kuai Liang. It's true, though - they don't need to be completely hidden here, it isn't like they're setting up explosives or talking sensitive intelligence. Well, maybe a little bit the latter, but not to the degree that Rosinante is terribly worried about lip-reading here.

He goes ahead and inserts the card into the slot, and lets Kuai handle the actual installation details, brief as they are. "It's for searching the network. I got it from that tech vendor who was here last time but it was locked to my network information only. Dr. Ingram managed to make it so a few other people could have it, and I thought you might have some use for it. If not, consider it a thank you gift," he says with a small but genuine smile.

[paletteswap]

He deftly takes the tablet back and goes through the process. For someone who hates technology, he's certainly not inept. Scanning the new app and the functionality he nods, understanding the purpose even if he wouldn't have ever thought to request such a thing. "I see. That's very clever of you."

His eyes dart up at that last part, a little unsure, "I should be the one thanking you, not the other way around."

By his way of thinking he hadn't done anything particularly worthy of thanks, merely pulled his own and helped others. Same as everyone. But that little smile seems to say it all. He dips his head, "My thanks. I'll be sure to put it to good use."

[callada]

"You've done plenty," he counters with a shake of his head. "The safe or not app will be valuable, but beyond that, you've always done as much as you can to make sure the people here are safe. Maybe this will help with that, I don't know. If nothing else, it's nice to be able to find something that was mentioned months ago."

He's pleased Kuai seems genuinely appreciative, and his smile broadens. It's not often he gets to give things to people and although this is a practical tool rather than simply a gift out of friendship, it's nice to know he can do small things for the few around him who he trusts will make use of them.

"Only a few of us have this - you and me, Dr. Ingram, and Cao Pi. I'm hoping together we can use it to keep making this place better, or at least to keep track of everything going on."

[paletteswap]

He does a few cursory searches to see how it works: Robin. Lighthouse. Hotel. The results are impressive, and now even someone like him has no excuse to ignore the network. He's been better about that lately, after all he's had to be to keep track of what's going on and how best to keep everyone alive and moving forward.

"I hope to eventually move from simply keeping people safe to some sort of offensive maneuver. It feels like we're in a state of standing siege, where we make small victories outside the confines of our town and then are forced to regroup and start again. We can't win this battle through attrition." He pops the SD card back out and returns it to Rosinante, folding his tablet and tucking it away. This isn't really something he wants to admit, and if it was anyone else he wouldn't. But he continues, "I don't know how to do that. I've never been in a situation where the path forward was so clouded. I can't even begin to formulate a plan to bring an attack to .. much of anything. The green-eyed spirits, the world eaters, even the Hunt should we need to."

Thinking about it reminds him of the aftermath of the feast, they'd "won" but it certainly hadn't felt like a victory.

"Maybe this will help me gather information in a way to understand a little better."

[callada]

Rosinante pockets the card and nods, sharing Kuai's concerns entirely. "I hope so. I agree, it feels like all we've been doing is reacting. We need to get a step ahead of things. Read up, see if anything jumps out at you that we might have missed. We'll figure this out," he says, sounding certain, with a hard look of determination in his eyes.

This isn't something they can afford to fail at.

"I've got other business to take care of here. Hope you don't mind," as he leans away with hands in his pockets, readying to leave.

[paletteswap]

He nods, "As do I."

At some point Pluto will be done dealing with those who need her care far more, and Kuai can approach her with a selfish need of his own. Turns out it's very hard to wear his mask with only one ear.

"I'll let you know what I discover."