Rosebriar: Market and Ravel

Now for a new district in my setting for You Can't Go Home Again. Rosebriar''s main commercial district has seen better days. Even before the Great Recession, stores were closing due to competition from the big box shops on the edge of Rosebriar. Now mainly populated by empty store fronts, it feels more dead than alive.

Rosebriar: Market and Ravel

They went out of business years ago.

Description

Market street runs South of Heywood from Appleton to the Works. It intersects with the much older road of Ravel which follows an old farm route from Appleton to the what is now the local highway. Both have a long history as Rosebriar's major commercial areas. Ravel once allowed farmers to sell their meat and produce to a larger market. Market, constructed in the 1950s, overtook Rosebriar's Main street as the heart of commercial activity in town.

Now both only have history. Empty store fronts outnumber surviving businesses. Historical markers compete with going out of business signs for the attention of pedestrians. Faded advertisements for decades dead businesses adorn crumbling brick.

Even the signs of life illuminate the decline. A new restaurant struggles in an old bank building, the vault serves as a private dining room. Shops pop up in unused buildings selling candy or books for charity. Few come by and a month later they vanish. Struggling businesses try to get the attention of the cars that shoot past with bold sale signs and by paying the desperate to twirl signs on street corners. Most are ignored.

A few businesses cling on, more labors of love than commercial successes. A used bookstore in an old restaurant features Shakespeare on the menu. The owner of an antique shop cluttered with products of the Depression chuckles at the irony. Another shop on Market sells music instruments to aspiring musicians, the proprietor gets them cheap from his brother. He owns a pawn shop on Ravel that buys them back for a fraction of the price.

Local Hedge

a thick canopy shrouds the Hedge around Market and Ravel, creating twilight conditions along its well laid trods and pathways. In places dirty cobblestones cover the routes. Travelers should be alert for Hobs and hedge beasts. The area sees plenty of foot traffic.

However, little bounty can be had along the somber paths as fruits or tokens in it are swiftly picked up and carried to the local market. Only the occasional piece of trash, such as a discarded for sale sign, mars the wild undergrowth.

Those seeking Goblin Fruits suffer a -2 penalty to their search rolls due to the barrenness of the region. The relatively straight (for the Hedge) paths however grant a +2 bonus to rolls to navigate in or through the area. It is especially easy to find the local Goblin Market (+4 bonus).

Damnation City Stats:

Physical: Access +2, Safety 0
Mental: Information +2, Awareness 0
Social: Prestige 0, Stability 0

The two wide streets that define this district allow drivers to pass quickly through and unfortunately past the area. Generous sidewalks compensate pedestrians poorly for the struggle to cross Market (and Ravel as it leaves town). While the few surviving shops invest in locks and security systems, the rest of the area remains empty and unwatched, making travel, especially at night, hazardous. The region holds several used bookstores and the offices of the town newspaper, the Rosebriar Daily, which keeps the residents well-informed.

Vice: Emptiness. A longing for the good old days leaves a hole in the hearts of the residents. When a business dies, it dies quickly. Piled up debt leads creditors to lock up the shop and sell what stock is left at liquidation rates. After a short flurry of activity, nothing remains.
Virtue: Careful Attention. Those businesses that remain thrive due to their attention to detail. Here clerks work hard to give customers a good shopping experience. Customer retention is their lifeline.

Site: Rose & Willow Flowers

Type: Commercial
Background: For 30 years this small floral shop on Ravel has provided flowers for weddings, holidays and special occasions. A large willow tree out front partially obscures the sign but the colorful display in the main window always draws in passers-by. They seldom leave empty-handed.

Sarah Wilson runs the store along with her son Eric. She moved to Rosebriar in the early 80s hoping for a new start for her and her son. Divorced, she's had to struggle to take care of a business and a family on her own. Now in her 50s, she keeps herself busy creating bouquets and trying to set her son up with a nice girl. She loves to talk to customers about Eric's work and how sad it is that Kalte Forge shut down.

Vice: Justice. Sarah has little sympathy for thieves and hoodlums. She and a few others in the area manage a neighborhood watch to keep Ravel safe.
Virtue: Pride. Sarah takes pride in her work, especially her success in running a business on her own.
Aspirations: See her son find a wife, sell you a large order of flowers

Eric Wilson helps at the store while he searches for a new job. Before Kalte Forge shut down three years ago, Eric worked in its engineering department, designing on better casting methods. Now this fit young man suffers the ignobility of living with his mother. By day he works at the shop and searches for a new job while in the evening he distracts himself with alcohol and fast women.

Vice: Lust, Eric loves the ladies.
Virtue: Honesty. Eric speaks plainly and never embellishes the truth, something that hinders his skill as a salesman.
Aspirations: Get a job as an engineer, find a commitment-less relationship

Finally some of the fae in the area have discovered that the leaves from the willow tree out front can be brewed into a bitter tea. Drinking it restores a Glamour. They wonder if the Wilsons are under an enchantment.

Site: The Thistle and Skeins

Type: Supernatural
Background: Rosebriar's Goblin Market sits in a glade that joins five paths in the Hedge. Four of those paths see frequent traffic from the areas that touch Appleton, Heywood and Old Town. Few travel the other path's yellowish cobblestones.

The market itself is a haphazard affair, even for a Goblin Market. Sellers work out of carts, wheelbarrows, or just a quickly set up table and stool. They trade in Goblin Fruits, Oddments, Trifles, Gewgaws, and the occasional Token or Goblin Contract. Those who sell here sign a simple pledge: to be honest in cost and merchandise, to do no violence within the glade with customers or merchants, and that all items sold must have been found or stolen.

Hobs gather in the market twice a day for an hour before and after dawn and again at dusk. Otherwise the glade remains empty except for a battered signpost decorated with messages, offers, and ads.

Story Seeds:

Ashes of Desire: A potent item has appeared in the market. Promising the ultimate high and the one time ability to make any person or item perfectly desirable, the ashes will be sold to the highest bidder in a week. A race is on to gather the most valuable items found or stolen to be traded for it. Some wish to see the ashes destroyed. Others wish to contract the characters to steal them. Some will kill for them.

Maintaining a Monopoly: A new Goblin Market has popped up, operating out of an unused storefront on moonless nights. The Thistle and Skein wants you to shut them down. They offer a bounty of goods and a place in the market in return. A pair of Changelings and their hob partners operate the new market, called High Trod. They sell crafted Tokens and Trifles at a steep mark up. They counter with the offer of a single potent Token if they disperse the riff raff at the other market. They also mention that their goods at least promise to be honest.

Fire Sale: The bookstores in the neighborhood sport an unusual number of gateways into the Hedge, the product of a Changeling researcher long work. Recently a pair of the stores have been burned to the ground. The bookshops have become targets of the local bridgeburners. Do the characters try to save a source of literature or allow these pathways to knowledge and the Hedge to burn? Rumors say that the fae researcher also created a number of gateways into and out of the archive of the local newspaper.

NPCs:

• Third Hand Trill’s: this three armed Hob sells most of the rare Tokens at the Goblin Market. Most assume he stole them. The truth is more complicated. Trill learned the location of a junkyard in the Hedge, a place littered with Tokens and Oddments. The catch? Each one is cursed or broken in some way. Trill never lies about their condition but tries not to draw attention to it. He's also reluctant to divulge his source.
• Donald Mark: Donald, Don to his poker buddies, has served at the Rosebriar Daily since the 60s. Now semi-retired, he manages their archives and maintains a regular and much-loved column on local fishing. He also keeps track of state history, especially the changes to it. Donald's coworkers and friends remain unaware that he isn't human. A vast incomprehensible machine placed him here as part of an early warning system to monitor temporal shifts in nearby New York City. Donald has also taken (on his on volition) to chronicling the history of Rosebriar: all three of them. He's not sure what to do with this information, a fact that threatens his status within the system.