Session Five

The next two positions up-spin of the Guilds aren’t safe.

They lost their Plate Looms.

Plates don’t get pulled, power builds up. Makes all the natural life there go fully wild.

The plots and makings of the last ones to weave those plates twists into the fabric of all, and twists them toward powerful chimeric forces.

One more breach for those brave and foolish to dull their swords and shred their armor.

-Overheard in the Guilds

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Your first few hauls into the Markets go fairly smoothly. Mostly you’re carrying bars of forged stone, stacked in wide low piles and strapped to pallets by rope.

They go to the Market’s Axel Ward, to a construction site there. A series of castle suites being added to one of the lush complexes that overlook the market stalls that snake through the Market’s Spoke Ward.

The smiths at the site have great hammers they work the stone with. Spinning plates within the heads of these hammers glow reddish heat from the friction. The stone surrenders its shape like pliable iron under the Stone Forge’s strikes.

You have some opportunities to explore the markets while the pallets are pulled off of Accretio’s scaffolding.

Do I have money?

You were given a coin. Barrow explained to you that money is tracked through palm-sized painted plates they refer to as coins. Merchants add or remove filigreed paintwork to the plate and the enchantment properties of the filigree used imbues the coin with traceable history and veracity of the value stored on it.

Your coin has fifty Filigree, all have been standard bank issue, so their patterning is extremely uniform and uninteresting.

Settle in, make some coin and get some leads.

Part 2

Purchasing Power:

Small purse, low bartering talent, unknown market

7 (3d4)

Plates and Paints

22(2d20) - unaffordable

You don’t find any stalls or huts selling blank plates or any plates, really, that aren’t part of a larger assembly of some kind, all of which are wildly out of your price range.

You find some industrial application enchanted paints being sold, but it is prohibitively expensive as well.

You seem to have found yourself in the more industrially inclined vendors. Unadorned entryways, large broad loading bays, lots of individuals standing about in pairs, talking and pointing and things. Nobody reaches out or approaches you.

Maybe I can get some sacks of flour somewhere close by? Maybe a restaurant supplier or something?

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

2(1d6) - sold

(5 unspent)

You find some easily enough. You talk to a woman checking items that have been loaded onto a pallet. Some fresh vegetables twined together in bunches, some cans of milk and some grain sacks. She doesn’t really give you the time of day when you ask for such a small quantity. But her client, as they’re pulling away with this pallet on a special loading cart, they sell you two bags of flour for cheap. You spend ten filigree.

Its pulled from your coin with what looks to be a small charcoal pencil, and written onto the restaurateurs. Their coin’s patterning is chaotic and alive compared to the newer issued one you carry.

Can I try to find that game shop I passed my first time through? The crates said “Eternal Workshop” on them.

Navigate the markets

1(1d4) - sold

(4 unspent)

Yeah, you find a familiar landmark for reference fairly quickly and you get to a section of the market where there are several rowed pathways formed by wheeled carts, all constructed in some way to form portable store fronts.

There are vendors selling small pets, novelties, mason jars of elixirs or pickles.

You spot a wide flatbed wagon with tall wooden wheels. The crates within read: “Eternal Workshop”

There’s a plain looking middle aged man in a gray suit hunched on a stool, carving something with a hooked blade tool, in front of the cart. The suit’s sleeves have been rolled to the elbow. A display table has what looks to be a model city, hovering slightly off the table. A plate at its core with intricate paint work. Stone miniature buildings rise in concert with one another. As you get closer you see a great deal of the city is constructed from individually carved buildings, streets and other pieces.

  It looks to be modular in its design, as if this city could be taken apart and rebuilt.

  The placard on the table reads “Portable Orbital”

  He sets down the piece he’s carving and notices your approach. Raises an eyebrow. Pulls at his tie a bit.

I point at the table. “How much for one of those?”

6 (1d10) - Unaffordable

(4 unspent)

“Gotta buy the basic set, then buy pieces as they come in. I make some of my own pieces and sell ‘em for a little cheaper. They don’t always work as well.”

“How much?”

“Basic set is eighty. Comes with a few buildings and foundational stuff. The Workshop sets a standard rate, can’t go under that and still make money.

Is 80 filigree a lot of money?

Well it’s more than you have.

“You need a lot of stone for those pieces? I work for the slab cutters. I could get you some materials for trade.”

So you’ll get one roll to try to get up to a 6, at the cost of offering to broker raw materials on the sly from the Guild you work for, or coming up with it some other way.

4(1d6)

The two of you talk for a while. He explains the practice of Portable Orbital. It’s a city construction game where you assemble an orbiting city in tandem with up to three other people. Some people apparently treat it like an artful practice, while others focus on efficiency and a point scoring system.

He asserts that the spectrum of opinion on Portable Orbital and how it ought to be played reflects quite cleanly the state of practical plate painting in general, academically speaking.

You get a loose sense of the rules as it is done at an entry level setting.

He takes twenty filigree from you, leaving you with twenty remaining on your company issued coin. You walk away with a starter set of Portable Orbital, and a checklist of material required by you for full payment. There was a brief discussion of extra custom pieces being provided depending on the quality of stone you provide him.

I guess I’ll head back to the Yard.

Accretio, having been emptied, made their own way back to the Slab Yard. You’re able to follow the trail of intermittent tufts of pale ash and find them in their nook. They’ve been quite quiet as of late. But obedient.

Barrow has a few friendly words for you as you return, but the underlying implication is that you’ll have to find somewhere new to stay after tonight, and that maybe one more round trip to the job site might not have been totally out of the question. Still plenty of work to be done, though, and he tells you it’s all par for the course.