The Midnight Market

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Matter of fact, I may require that of all MM vendors: they must not hide themselves beneath a mask. Hmmmmmmm.............

What does that mean for Jackie Montarri?

[The Giamarga]

<shrill voice>"Off with her head(s)!" </shrill voice>

[NeoTiamat]

...interestingly, if Jacky just wandered around the Market without any head at all, that would:

A. Be not much stranger than anything else there.

B. Turn out to be remarkably effective at keeping anyone from connecting the headless person to Ms. Montarri of the Red Vardo Traders.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

We have a winnah! I was figuring for the head-under-arm pose a la Marie Antoinette, but I love the idea of Jackie going totally headless. It even conserves the negative levels she gives her heads.

For that matter, I suppose Jackie could use an illusion to do the same among mortals, by not wearing a head at all. Of course, it had better have auditory components....

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Hmmm, browsing the NS Gaz for info on Colin, I find Thedmore. I think he'd love the MM, especially since Meredoth can't go there. Finally Theddy has an advantage that Meredoth lacks.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

...interestingly, if Jacky just wandered around the Market without any head at all, that would:

A. Be not much stranger than anything else there.

B. Turn out to be remarkably effective at keeping anyone from connecting the headless person to Ms. Montarri of the Red Vardo Traders.

C. Blend right in with the Lebendtod.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

One thought, which might help with the whole "why doesn't everyone us it", is that there's always a bigger fish.

I think this is one of the biggest controls: absolute lack of privacy. This gives me the feeling that I want for the MM, where it's known all over among evil critters, but most of them find it distateful.

I think that's enough to keep it in check for now. For that matter, I think that's enough to cause it to be forbidden among the Kargat, among others.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

We have a winnah! I was figuring for the head-under-arm pose a la Marie Antoinette, but I love the idea of Jackie going totally headless. It even conserves the negative levels she gives her heads.

By her most recent rules, in Gaz I, if she walks around headless, she starts to accrue negative levels herself. These are healed when she dons a new head, but I could see why she'd be reluctant to risk it.

For that matter, I suppose Jackie could use an illusion to do the same among mortals, by not wearing a head at all. Of course, it had better have auditory components....

In her headless form, she doesn't have any spellcasting ability anyway, but if she took the time to learn some (which seems out of character considering her easy access to other heads that can do it for her), it would be rather foolish of her not to learn the silent spell feat as soon as possible.

(This brings up the question: can she cast an illusion while wearing a spellcaster's head, and then concentrate to maintain it even after she removes the head... I vote no.)

Anyway, apologies for sending us off on this tangent.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Resurrecting this thread, I'm about to introduce the MM yet again, and I'm wondering about the trick of resting (and restoring spells?) by abusing the temporal flux. Should I allow spellcasters to get a full nights sleep, re-memorize spells and leave with less than an hour passed in the waking world?

[NeoTiamat]

It's the Midnight Market -- make it a service you have to buy.

Sure, you can try to find a little corner to doze for a while, but even if you find one you might end up with some very freaky dreams that don't grant any real rest (AKA, no healing, no spells regained). But there's some kind of hostel, if you're willing to cough up the cash, and don't mind being stared at by a cat-eyed goblin all night.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Maybe the goblin will even leave you in peace if you tip him?

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Yeah, I think this is what I was looking for before with Kara's Daughters. I thought I was being too much of a rules lawyer, but the Midnight Market brings out that side of me. It begs for exploitation of every little thing. It isn't just nature that abhors a vacuum, it's economics. This temporal distortion in the Market is just begging for some enterprising young goblin to create a side hustle from it. So who would fill that void?

The Market is noisy, so I'm picturing a row of tents with gentle music that creates a white noise effect. The guy in charge is a smarmy little Abber who warns about the dangers of sleeping anywhere else. HIS establishment has dreamweavers that create beneficial dreams and trap nightmares. And once he has his place up and running, it's hard for anyone to compete.

[NeoTiamat]

I think a good default answer to any potential mechanical shenanigans with the Midnight Market is "You can do it, but it will cost you." As you say, economics abhors a vacuum, and chances are good that whatever the PCs come up with, some merchant or other has already had that idea.

[brilliantlight]

Unless I missed it there isn't much said about the Darklord Jeremy himself and I would like to know more. What is his background story? Why did killing Emily attract the attention of the DP enough for them to create his domain? He seems a fairly weak willed Dark Lord (Which is fine) because he let's someone hijack his nightmare, is it this weakness that helped him attract the attention of the DP?

I really like the idea of the domain , I just would like to know more about its Dark Lord.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Unless I missed it there isn't much said about the Darklord Jeremy himself and I would like to know more. What is his background story? Why did killing Emily attract the attention of the DP enough for them to create his domain? He seems a fairly weak willed Dark Lord (Which is fine) because he let's someone hijack his nightmare, is it this weakness that helped him attract the attention of the DP?

I really like the idea of the domain , I just would like to know more about its Dark Lord.

Well, I was one of the first to object to it being a domain at all. I've mellowed on the concept since, but I still run it as a no-man's land that it outside of all domains. The metaphysics of the demiplane really need a few exceptions IMHO, or they get in the way of a good story. I'd consider it as a Fracture or a Mistway or an Oubliette before a domain. Oubliette would be the simplest; it's already the exception to the rule that all real estate needs a DL. No muss, no fuss. No need for Jeremy at all.

The way it's presented with Jeremy as a comatose patient somewhere in a dream, a strong case could be made that he's not a true DL at all, but a dreamer in the Nightmare Lands whose dreamsphere has attracted all these visitors by virtue of its stability. He may have failed a couple Powers checks with his betrayal and murder of Emily, making him immortal as long as he sleeps, and the marketeers keep plying him with stuff to keep him asleep or something like that. This would fit the general idea that this space is constructed by/for him, but he's not truly in charge of it

If you want to run with the idea of Jeremy as DL, here's my thoughts on the matter:

1) Don't make him a comatose dreamer. Just have him physically trapped, like all the other DL's.
2) I'm not a fan of insane or amnesiac lords who can't remember why they are being punished. I'd make him remember under certain circumstances; maybe if someone tries to help him find her, he remembers more and more until it all comes back, and he has to kill the person who helped him to cover it up.
3) Based on the world he created, his crimes were tied to marketeering. I'd illustrate that by having him continue to make desperate deals that keep the Market moving. To get information on Emily, he sells his hopes and fears to Grandmother Thorne, buys potions from the alchemists to jog his memory, guides people to this or that stall in exchange for coin, etc.
4) I'd tie him more directly to the Minister and the market-men. Perhaps some of his desperate gambits have side effects that give him some of the features of the Minister, and canny observers see the Minister getting weaker and weaker, until they switch places, only to play it out again the next day.

My best pitch for his backstory: Jeremy ran minor cons on a street market in Paridon, steering people toward the ones who would profit the most off of their desperation. He collaborated with drug dealers, pimps and others who enslaved people's minds and bodies, but he made himself scarce long before the truly darkest deeds were done so as to claim his conscience was clean. He was extremely good at what he did, and two of his most successful ploys were faking a broken arm to gain sympathy, and asking people for help finding his nonexistent fiancee.

As fate would have it, he did in fact get engaged. He ran into a girl from his childhood, whom fate had taken down a different path, and found himself in love. When it came to explaining what he did for a living, his con artist training kicked in, and he exaggerated his relationships with the people at the market to put himself in a better light, making himself out to be a victim of circumstances, indebted to a "monstrous" debt collector and his "wretched" henchmen. At first she was sympathetic, but as she proposed ideas for leaving, brought money to pay off nonexistent debts, etc. he was forced to spin more and more stories until his handlers seemed practically supernatural in their ability to compel him to do their bidding. Eventually she found out and confronted him, forcing him to admit that he had willingly and deliberately betrayed people into the hands of these monsters...and that they money was so good for doing so, that he didn't want to stop. The truth of her words cut so deep that he choked the life out of her to make her stop saying it. Her final words were, "Tell the truth," just as the Mists rolled in.

Now Jeremy is in a different market, where everything he had told her is the truth. There really is a monstrous Minister supernaturally enforcing everything, even compelling rulebreakers to be his lackeys, and there really are hideous wretched marketeers manipulating Jeremy's gullibility. He really is an innocent bystander, most of the time, and his arm really is inexplicably, perpetually broken. He really is searching for his fiancee, despite the fact that somewhere deep down, he knows he'll never find her alive. He now spends most of his time in the position of the people he manipulated, at the mercy of the market, desperate to change a fate that he wrote in blood two centuries ago.