Friday, January 25, 2019

D20x5 Marvellous Merchants

Buying stuff but less boring.




D20This Merchant Is...
1Someone who claims to be various folkloric, long-lived figures. The Wandering Jew, Merlin, the Devil, or their regional equivalents.
2A poltergeist haunting the store. Its unfinished business is getting rich.
3A luminous being from a higher reality, slumming it.
4Offended by any direct references to commerce. Trades must be performed obliquely.
5A treacherous ogre wrapped in heavy chains. They can’t leave the store or harm anyone who isn’t touching the chains.
6Asleep, and a powerful psychic. Their store’s strange staff are projections from their dreams.
7Blind and covered in sensitive, twitching fingers. They can pinpoint the slightest air movements.
8A sharply dressed skeleton animated by the magic coin rattling around in their skull.
9Only heard and never seen. They always seem to be behind a curtain, or just behind you.
10A woman with a nest of magpies for a head. When she talks, each magpie says a word in turn.
11Afflicted with technicolour buboes which have unfortunately spread to the goods and customers they’ve touched.
12Trying to pawn off goods stolen from perhaps the wrongest possible party to steal goods from as quickly as possible.
13Cursed to operate their shop until the next fool purchases the deed off them.
14A half-liquified person who inhabits a system of tubes and hydraulic prosthetics built into their shop. They’re a former adventurer who’s turned to selling their loot off to afford the alchemical treatments that keep them from totally losing cohesion.
15A lizard-man who aspires to be a dragon, though they must acquire their hoard through trade rather than tribute.
16A little god of greed, all silks and shimmering gems, carried around their shop in a palanquin-temple by their devotees.
17A stitched-together geriatric who’s extended their life by taking the vital parts of their debtors.
18A tremendously fat person covered in gold dust, with symbiote-slave fungaloids living under their rolls.
19An expertly crafted, life-sized puppet, indistinguishable from a person at a glance. It’s unclear how they’re being puppeteered, or who’s doing the puppeteering.
20A trio of goblins in a trenchcoat. Their competent merchant-identity only exists while they’re together. If separated they become merely three crass yet somewhat shrewd individuals.
D20This Merchant Sells...
1Incredible, implausible weapons.
2Unique and bizarre potions.
3Barely tamed warbeasts.
4The right words for any situation.
5The bones and belongings of burned witches.
6A hundred different kinds of ice and fire.
7Time. Good times, bad times, fast time, slow time, any kind you could want, but it doesn’t come cheap.
8Pet golems.
9Keys that open portals to other worlds.
10Maps that lead to lost things.
11Memories.
12Enchanted replacements for your body parts and bodily fluids.
13Pardons for any crime, indulgences for any sin.
14The services of exotically effective assassins.
15Grimoires, tomes, and manuals.
16Goods possessed by spirits, ghosts, and demons.
17Legitimate claims to other peoples’ land and titles.
18Every imaginable luxury, and a few besides.
19Luck.
20Masks and faces.
D20This Merchant’s Store Is...
1In the shell of an enormous walnut.
2Much bigger on the inside.
3Accessible only with the right invitation.
4Currently a hot topic of discussion among the trendy and elite.
5Decorated with fake coins.
6Made from other shops’ signs.
7Built on a scale that’s not conducive to human navigation. You’ll need some rope and ladders at the least to get around it.
8Temporally suspect. An hour spent haggling inside might mean a week has passed outside.
9Built on unholy ground.
10Alive, and will act to defend the merchant and their wares so long as it’s kept sated.
11An illusion created by a djinn.
12The first sign that a goblin market is coming to town. This is generally not very good for the town.
13Willing to part with a few choice items for free in return for some political favours.
14Aggressively normal.
15Under assault by mercenaries hired by a rival merchant.
16On fire. 50% it’s always like that, 50% chance it isn’t and the merchant is desperate to save their wares.
17Grossly overpriced, even for the goods they have for sale.
18Under surveillance by secret police.
19Protected from theft by ushabti animated by the ghosts of failed robbers.
20Infamous for its yearly clearing sales, which always escalate into bloodbaths among deal-hungry customers.
D20This Merchant’s Store Can Be Found...
1Wedged in an underground crevice.
2In a crooked alley off a crooked street in a crooked town.
3At the back of a tavern’s pantry.
4In a bazaar which gathers in graveyards during the new moon.
5Within a cave in the side of a hill.
6On the other side of a door which stands alone in a forest clearing.
7Only during the witching hour.
8Down the throat of a talking crocodile.
9Behind a brass-ornamented door that appears in random places underground.
10In a howdah atop a giant elephant.
11At the base-peak of an inverted mountain.
12Scuttling around on its millipede foundation-feet.
13By ordering the right dish at an exclusive restaurant and being invited to the back.
14By spending a special coin at any other shop.
15On the underside of a glass floor disguised as a pool of water in a park.
16By anyone following a white cat.
17By getting lost in a place you’re familiar with.
18Hidden in plain sight in a market square.
19Tangled in the roots of a tree that matches no known species.
20In a circle of mushrooms as wide as a castle’s walls, invisible from outside the circle.
D20This Merchant Prefers To Be Paid...
1With slaves, the more unusual the better.
2With monster corpses. Parts of monster corpses are also accepted at a discounted rate.
3In blood. Quantity matters more than quality.
4In dreams, the sweeter the better.
5In shameful secrets.
6In favours and fetch quests.
7With the icons of saints.
8In difficult but not unsolvable riddles.
9In fear, anger, and desire.
10In food and drink they’ve never sampled before.
11With stuff that’s flammable, which they burn immediately after receiving.
12With things that have never before been bought or sold.
13With the tears of other merchants.
14In songs. If someone else then tries to sing the song sold to the merchant, their throat with seize up and their tongue will cut itself on their teeth.
15In the breaking of your bones, the longer and deeper the better.
16In names. The name has to be one of yours for you to rightly sell it. Names you might call your children or pets fill the place of copper pieces in this shop.
17Beautiful things.
18With things from far away. The further away its origin is from the shop, the more valuable it is to the merchant.
19A price that’s been gambled on. Double or nothing, or the like.
20With things that have been used to commit a crime.

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