“Come one, come all, come fat, come small, we’ve wares to sell and dreams to weave, desires to stoke, and ailments to balm. You there! Stride no further into the market! First, harken to me! Close your eyes, traveler, just trust me, I’ll not steal from you. Good, now imagine what you seek, anything, even if it has never existed - a bauble conjured purely from your most fevered dreams… now open your eyes. I guarantee you’ll find it here in Greyburgh... it’s all a matter of seeking. But some seek day and night, for years even! First they lose their way among the labyrinthine shops and stalls, then they lose their purse, then their teeth, then their mind.
The market can be a harsh mistress, friend, but fear not, you’ve me to guide you. I swear I’ll see you to your heart’s desire and safely out again… for the right price… everything here in Greyburgh has a price… if you are willing to pay it.”
- Graemin Satterlay, Greyburgh Market Barker and Lantern Guide.
The Scarsbourne river draws fleets of mercantile vessels from the vast reaches of Aeternum to Greyburgh Market, there to divest their exotic cargo, and disembark cloaked strangers from far-flung places. The market is a crossroads and a dumping ground for some the most arcane and esoteric oddities coughed up by vagabonds, traders, the dead and the dissolute. Any goods and services imaginable can be found for sale among the market’s sprawling warrens of shops, stalls, tents and stands, and for the right price, any dream can be bought, and nightmares are sold for a song.
Learned and dedicated seekers can unearth any number of priceless relics, from the funerary scrimshaws of long-dead magistrates, and arcane orreries whose levitating spheres match no starry sky ever glimpsed by sage or traveler, to sheet music to soaring arias about heroes whose names have sunken into antiquity, strange votive candles sculpted from soul-wax whose wicks hiss and scream with the voices of the undying, and the tattered journals of long-vanished explorers bearing their hastily scrawled last wills and testaments.
But to seek is to risk, and Greyburgh draws as many terrors as it does treasures. Horrid predators stalk the stalls as well seeking prey, sport, or perhaps a tome holding the secret to whatever ancient curse drove their family into ruin, and turned their flesh to putrefaction. Knives hide beneath cloaks, talons up sleeves, and more than one cowl conceals an ancient vampire’s glistening fangs. Forbear, for Fiends, deathless horrors, and cursed beasts prowl and (even peddle their own wares and services) throughout Greyburgh Market.
From the Market’s southern spur, the long, serpentine Greyburgh Street slithers and wends its way across the entirety of the Strigham District, bringing the insidious and inscrutable interests of noble houses, and other intrigues into the market where tensions sometimes explode into murderous melee or arcane duels.
More perilous still, the market rests in the long and sinister shadow of Drachengeir’s Palace, where the towering draconic-Fiend, a living cathedral of smoldering bones and eldritch horror, dwells within its crumbling and ancient lair. To date, the Fiend has never directly preyed on the Market, choosing to feast and raze elsewhere, rather than disturb his roost. However, occasionally the odd relic from Drachengeir’s Palace finds its way into the market stalls, found by some tinkerer or peddler in the gutters, washed down from the draco-Fiend’s teeming hoard of long-forgotten treasures… and what ire might this misplaced bauble inspire in the Fiend is best left to the terrified imaginations of the District’s storytellers.
Beyond Drachengeir’s Palace lies the wasteland-slums of the Spooks, where roving gangs and stalking nightmares slaughter the Districts poorest wretches another with abandon. The blood from this charnel house occasionally splatters far, and though Drachengeir’s Palace stands as a cursed bulwark between the bedlam of the Spooks and Greyburgh, the Fiend’s corruption also spreads like slow-moving cancer through the houses of rich merchants and the desperately poor without prejudice.
However, nestled into an abandoned alleyway in Greyburgh, lies a long-abandoned tower, its shingle though worn and warped by time, still bears the emblem of the Tethered. Once an Order House kept a watchful eye upon Drachengeir and the many dangerous denizens who make this Market. Perhaps brave heroes of stalwart heart could fan the Order House’s cold lantern hearth to golden flames once more, and strive to cleanse the seeping corruption from Greyburgh at long last.
The Rules
To fully enjoy this book you will need: The Core Rule Book andFragged Aeternum.
