Roleplay City
Oberon Castle => OBERON CASTLE: Drink Today, Die Tomorrow => The Markets => Topic started by: RPC Admin on January 27, 2006, 12:50:31 AM
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Market Thoroughfare
The main street of the markets is a wide one. Permanent shops line both sides where the more successful merchants trade in all manner of things from their small stores. Most merchants live above their stores, or behind them, depending on how affluent they are if they can afford a second level built above their shop.
The wares found in these permanent shops are scattered - a butcher could be beside a tailor, who could be trading beside a toymaker or a preserve-maker (those who sell pickles, preserves, jams and other food items in jars). Farriers (horse care and accessories - sometimes even vet services for horses) and blacksmiths will tend to have their shops near the stables, as do saddleries.
Market Stalls
These are temporary wooden stalls that are set up early in the morning and torn down when darkness falls.
Different areas are assigned to different types of traders: Those who sell livestock are forced to the penned stalls near the stables - such creatures as cattle and horses (donkey, mule, draft horses), pigs and sheep can be found here.
At the other end of the long line of stalls are the produce-sellers, the farmers wives or children flogging the leftover produce which the nobles servants didn\'t pick up by wagon direct from the farm.
Most merchants with other wares prefer not to trade near either of those stalls as the smell becomes overpowering near the end of the day\'s trade. If faced with one end or the other, the smell of over-ripe fruit and rotting vegetables is favourable over sun-baked animal dung.
Merchants will race for the middle stalls, and the earliest risers will be rewarded with the busiest and cleanest areas. Hunters who don\'t trade with a butchery will hang their game on string from a temporary beam between two posts. Fowl of all kinds plus deermeat and even pelts can be found from these stalls.
There are also spice stalls, perfume stalls, silks, tailors who mend while you wait, box-makers, jewellers and bead makers, and all sorts of traders can be found in these makeshift stalls.
Even though the markets are a working area, people tend to dress up, or else the guards will pick on them as thieving scum or beggers. Nobles as a common practise would send their servants, but there are a handful that wander the markets personally.