Grudge Match at the Underground Market (Patreon)

Sunken markets spot the Bazaar of Sails – five oval market set ten to twelve feet below street level. Where the Bazaar is mostly temporary structures, the sunken markets contain permanent structures, workshops, food & drink, and entertainments. The Market of Wines (which only has a total of four wine houses and mostly deals in leather and bronze goods) is notable in that there is a gate between one of the wine houses and a bronze-crafter’s that leads into the sewers that drain water and waste from the bazaar.

The gate and door remain unlocked, and people surreptitiously slip through them at all hours. Along and near the waterways down here are a number of “underground” shops – a black market dealing in various goods (mercenary work, stolen valuables, poisons, drugs, texts of dark rituals, etc), along with a small underground tavern, a shrine of the priesthood of grudges, a small security office, and some smaller “stands” around the edges where beggars sell stolen goods and makeshift equipment.

To the right of the main sewer line we have the underground market proper. A set of shops along the wall adjoining the sewers – opposite the shops we have the tavern (Grandle’s Underground) at the north end, and a security office (because they deal with their own problems down here without bringing the local watch into it) at the southern end. Between the two is the most memorable element of this literal underground market – a shrine of the priesthood of grudges. Here long scrolls are added to, listing grudges held and discharged throughout the city – these scrolls threaten to overwhelm the statue of the Lord of Grudges at the far end of the shrine, and not only take over the vestibule on the way in, but flow along the “street” of the underground market (it is jokingly said that the longest of these scrolls is a list of everyone who has ever dared step on the scrolls).

At the south end of the main underground market are a few stalls that are a reminder of how this all began – small stalls shoved into cramped corners where “street” vendors sell merchandise of unknown origin (from stolen and mislaid goods to scavenged materials). There are more “shops” like these on the left side, a set of basements and tunnels that are poorly maintained and scattered with little “shops” of the worst variety.

In addition to the sewer entrance from the sunken market, there are two sets of stairs leading down to these markets. The one on the right (in the back of Grandle’s Underground) leads up to Grandle’s Tavern which is perched on the edge of the Market of Wines. The one on the left, leading down to the less savoury areas, just opens up into the Bazaar of Sails without any indication of what’s beneath.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 9,600 x 12,000 pixels (32 x 40 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the recommended 10‘ squares that make sense with the design) – so resizing the image to 2,240 x 2,800 pixels or 4,480 x 5,600 pixels, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2024/04/11/grudge-match-at-the-underground-market/