Cavern's Gate (D&D 3.5) (IC)

[SpokenSoftly]

The adventure - or vacation, or afternoon hobby, whatever you want to call it - is about to begin. The wizard and the barbarian have arrived on time at the Gate, a simple indestructible chalk portal to the Cavern surrounded to a small market for adventurers. However, the rogue (who had drawn the short straw and was thus leading this time) is late, as is a fourth companion.

Laelliss and Thhartokk have as long as they need to look around and buy goods. However, it is currently 11:00 AM and the rota has them cycling onto the portal at 12:15. The party ahead of them, a group of experienced mages who used the Cavern for alchemical experiments, are getting ready to enter, and the one-hour cooldown between uses will begin once the fourth mage steps through.  

[serketcity]

Aarde smiles at the array of shops before her. She could barely wait to try out her axe against whatever lived in the dungeon under her. As the last mage entered the dungeon she turned to their resident spellcaster and latched onto his arm.
"Oooh, Quentin! Do we get to visit all the shops now? Can we? I wanna go look at the potions, is that okay? Have you ever done this before? What do we have to do, exactly? Do we need anything we don't have? Can we buy a healer? I'm so excited." She calmed herself briefly before looking around. She was shaking, physically, from her sheer excitement. But that part was already obvious from pretty much the entire post before this one, so that didn't need to be restated.

((OOC: What kind of shops? Specifically, I guess, weapons and potions?))  

[SpokenSoftly]

(Enough shops that any non-artifact item, magical or not, that costs less than 500k gold can be found, though items that cost more than 100k take 1d4 hours per 100k gold value to locate. The sorts of things available to level 1 PCs are instantly locatable, and given the fact that the Cavern is a sort of Saturday-night attraction, most cheap items (such as short-swords, longswords, and other unenchanted weapons that the cavern-spawned monsters have) are both free and worthless economically-speaking. There's a charity pile to one side of the portal where all the free stuff is dumped. Assume everything there is made of iron or steel, and that finding a standard martial weapon (exotic and ranged unavailable) takes 1d4 rounds, or 1 round if looking for an edged weapon made for a medium-sized character. Also, did you paint the fourth wall in your intro post? If so, you win an Internet.)  

[serketcity]

Aarde's eyes shine bright as she finds the pile of free items nestled soundly between two stalls for objects that cost actual money. She stared at it longingly for several seconds, then decided that if she was to be prepared she might as well grab a few weapons while she was at it. I mean, what if one she's using breaks? That would be bad. So she decided to pick through it to see if she could find a few specific things... weapons that looked cool, or deadly, or shiny, or magical.... etc.

((So do I have to roll if I let you pick, say, 4 martial weapons at random, based on (in-game) what I see first? Also, how much would a potion of cure light wounds cost at this... bazaar?))  

[SpokenSoftly]

Quote:

Looking for nothing in particular nets you 1d6 interesting finds, any number of which you can keep or discard at your own discretion. I roll for number found and specific damage type, though beyond that I'll select specific weapons. When I roll for damage type, I roll 1d4, where 1 is slashing, 2 is piercing, 3 is bludgeoning, and 4 is "reroll twice and pick something with and/or both results." For example, this time I came up with a 4 on the d6 roll, and rolled the following on the d4: 4, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, so one bludgeoning-piercing, one piercing, and two slashing weapons.

Items within the Gate Markets are at-cost from what is found in the PH and DMG, and may be sold for the same amount. Most merchants here are just looking to see what interesting things turn up next. Since rare items are randomly generated by the dungeon, prices are only determined by how rare it is for experienced adventurers to go in and come back out with said loot.

Also, in order to make it easier to tell IC and OOC apart, please keep normal OOC (random chat) in the original thread and questions about game mechanics in this thread, in a [ quote][/ quote] bracket. Thanks.

Despite Aarde's desire for interesting weapons, the best she could find was a morningstar, a shortspear, and a pair of kukri.

LOOT

Morningstar X1 - 6lb, 1d8 bludgeoning and piercing damage, X2 crit
Shortspear X1 - 3lb, 1d6 piercing damage, X2 crit, 20ft range increment
Kukri X2 - each 2lb, 1d4 slashing damage, X2 crit on 18-20)

 

[Laelless]

(( GAH! SORRY! MIDTERMS! I didn't even know this one started! ))

Quentis the gnome sat on his bench, waiting for his barbarian "friend" to finish with his shopping. The wizard was always too apathetic for his own good, so he sat there, grumbling as people walked by.