Antah-Bazaar
The Border Market: a sprawling tent-city of silk pavilions, brass lanterns and clattering stalls pitched directly at the lip of the precipice where the ocean drains into the void. It is the liveliest place in Everdew, and it is built on the edge of nothing.
The Land
Sensory overload as civic policy. Merchants shout across stall-lanes, street food billows from copper braziers, and goods salvaged from vanishing lands are auctioned to travellers who have crossed a continent to bid. The contrast with the grey abyss a few strides away is the entire aesthetic and the Vastra know it perfectly well.
Everything that leaves World's End leaves through here, and a good deal that never came from World's End at all is sold as though it did.
The Vastra
Entirely bodiless — swirling motes of golden and sapphire flame inhabiting elaborate physical shells. To touch the world they animate loose armatures of vibrant silk, tailored sherwanis, or salvaged lamellar bronze and brass, with a jewelled mask or carved wooden visage where a head should be, hollow behind the eyes but for two dancing sparks.
They claim to carry the original culture of all Wisps, from before the realm fractured, and refuse both the Memoria's sorrow and the Lumina's seclusion. Incapable of eating or drinking, they throw opulent banquets anyway and delight vicariously in the scent of spice and the roar of conversation.
Out of Antah-Bazaar they work Everdew's trade routes as caravan masters, dealing in relics, planar curiosities and fine textiles. If a shell is destroyed the essence simply discards it and drifts, untouchable, until new material can be gathered — which makes robbing a Vastra merchant a poor long-term plan.
Encounters
Roll d100. A market on the lip of nothing. Most rolls are commerce; the interesting ones are what the commerce attracts. CR is scaled to Faerie size — see Challenge by Size.
| d100 | Encounter | CR |
|---|---|---|
| 01–10 | 1d6 Vastra caravan masters with relics, planar curiosities, and a price for each | — |
| 11–18 | 2d6 stall-holders, hawkers and auctioneers, none of whom will let you pass quietly | — |
| 19–25 | 1d4 pickpockets working the stall-lanes, at least one of them very good | 2 |
| 26–32 | a bad bargain: something sold as World's End salvage that came from three tents over | — |
| 33–38 | 2d6 booklice in a relic-dealer's stock, who know what half of it actually is | 0 |
| 39–44 | 1d4 moths drawn to the brass lanterns, and the transport lane they block | 2 |
| 45–50 | 1d6 fireflies sold by the jar, escaped, and now the whole lane can see | ½ |
| 51–56 | 1d3 jumping spiders on the tent-ropes, running the roof-lines | 1 |
| 57–62 | 2d4 cockroaches under the food stalls, unkillable and unbothered | 1 |
| 63–68 | the drop: a stall, a bidder, or a party member goes over the lip, and the void is patient | — |
| 69–74 | 1d2 house centipedes through the awnings, from above | 3 |
| 75–79 | 1d3 hornets at a spice brazier, and the whole lane clearing | 4 |
| 80–84 | 1 greater robber fly working the airspace over the tents | 6 |
| 85–89 | 1d2 rats in the goods, organised, and negotiating on behalf of others | 12 |
| 90–93 | 1 bat through the lanterns after dark, hunting the lane by sound | 10 |
| 94–96 | 1 magpie in the market — thief, hoarder, will trade with you, and will cheat | 17 |
| 97–98 | 1 Hunger-touched thing that walked in out of World's End wearing a shell | 16 |
| 99 | 1 barn owl over the tent-city, silent above the noise | 19 |
| 00 | 1 raccoon at the edge of the lanternlight. It has hands. It opens things | 22 |