Black Hollow Market

Start-class article · First seen: s4 · Last seen: s10
Black Hollow Market
Black Hollow · the Market · the Hollow Market
Portrait of Black Hollow Market.
Location
StatusActive
First seens4
Last seens10
FactionThe Broker, The Hollow

The Black Hollow Market is the underground bazaar of Umbrafall, where lanterns drip pale light over stalls of glass vials, shackled figures and hissing fungus and almost anything can be bought [8]. It is run by The Broker, a masked dealer with green-stained gloves and a bone ledger, whose word is his bond once a deal is struck [6][14]. The party worked his contracts from session 4 to session 10, and beneath the market lies The Warrens, the lair of Maelis Dirn until her death in session 7 [46].

Overview

The Black Hollow Market is the underground bazaar of Umbrafall, a lantern-lit clearing-house where almost anything can be bought or procured: stolen goods, poisons, contraband, contract work, information and people. The Broker runs it, and the party worked his two contracts between sessions 4 and 10. Beneath it lie The Warrens, the lair of Maelis Dirn [6][7][2].

Geography and appearance

The walk there took “maybe 30 minutes? an hour?” [8]. Lanterns “drip pale light across stalls crowded with glass vials, shackled figures, and fungus that hisses when touched”, the air is “thick with venom smoke and the sour stench of rotting roots”, and “every deal seems to be whispered” [8]. No stall is mapped.

Plenty of shops stand inside the market, but they are “quite expensive” and sell “high-end magical stuff” that is “all very dangerous” [9]; a cheaper alternative, the Whisper Coil Emporium, lies “near, but not inside” it [9][10]. The seedier taverns of Umbrafall cluster near the market [11], among them the Glomangol Inn in the Wane Quarter [12].

Inhabitants

  • The Broker, a masked dealer with green-stained gloves and a ledger carved of bone [8].
  • Merchants and their goods, including shackled figures awaiting transit [8].
  • Maelis Dirn’s collectors, cloaked figures in plain stitched-leather masks who shook down stallholders for her [13]. They are gone with her.

Government / control

The Broker is the recognised authority: he keeps the market running undisturbed and can procure whatever is missing, and although no one in Umbrafall is trustworthy, “his word is his bond” once a deal is struck [6][14]. A passage tax of 50 gold applies to everyone but Hugo [15]; the Maelis contract waived it, and in session 7 the DM said it had bought “not safe passage, but untaxed passage” [16]. Maelis had run a protection racket against the stallholders, which the Broker said was “bleeding the market” [17].

The Broker also spoke of “the Hollow” as the payer of the Maelis contract [18]. The Hollow is an ambiguous Umbrafall term and is not the same thing as the market.

Notable features

  • The Broker’s room. It “smells of ink and oil and old paper”, with ledgers open and the weights balanced [19].
  • The way down. The party followed the collectors to an opening in the ground [20], and “the tunnel beneath the market yawns wide, swallowing the last of the voices above” [2]. It leads into The Warrens.

History in the campaign

Session 4: The Still Current, the Black Mask, and Hugo’s Pact

Main article: Session 4

Hugo felt “an almost burning desire” to go to the market [21]. There the Broker offered a deal: kill Maelis Dirn, who was “bleeding the market with her own racket”, and the party’s “passage through the hollow is clean. no tax, no questions” [17]; without the deal everyone but Hugo would pay 50 gold [15]. The party watched the stalls, saw Maelis’s masked collectors shake down a spice merchant [13], and tracked them to an opening in the ground [20].

Session 5: Black Hollow Market Tunnels and the Hollow Guardians

Main article: Session 5

The party followed the shakedown artists into the tunnel beneath the market, which “yawns wide, swallowing the last of the voices above” [2]. The rest of the session was spent in the Warrens below, against a regenerating fungal-zombie giant [22], two Hollow Guardians [23][24] and the corpses of a sludge-pit cavern [25].

Session 7: Maelis Falls, Vasquez Captured

Main article: Session 7

Maelis was dead, and the party walked to the market to collect [26][11]. The Broker asked “have you come to collect your reward?” [27], recognised the cracked ring, paid 50 gold and two vials of biogloom toxin, and gave Hugo a greataxe of frost [28][29]. Hugo showed him Maelis’s shipping papers, which he judged old fakes, worth something to Silent Intake near the entrance to Velkris, “Look for the Talking Skulls” [30][31]. He gave Hugo a sending stone [32] and offered the Black Vein Quarry job at 100 gold [33][34].

Session 10: Ruin Joins, the Aurelian Conspiracy, the Plate Armour

Main article: Session 10

Hugo reported the miners dead and was paid in full [35]. Asked about the Dawn Mercy Clinic, the Broker called it “just charity work” that “doesn’t move products, doesn’t move secrets, doesn’t move leverage”, and pointed to The Rat [36]. He offered a 200-gold assassination, target “somewhere in Aurelia” [37][38]. Later Hugo dragged in a dead Aurelian Paladin; the Broker had heard that people with magic “have a tendency of going missing” in Aurelia, and recognised the enchanted plate [39][40]. The party declined the contract [41].

Session 11: Owlbears and the Soulbinder

Main article: Session 11

Terry’s History check recalled the Whisper Coil Emporium as “near, but not inside” the market [10]. The walk across Umbrafall took two or three hours [42], and the party arrived at “the outskirts” of the market before going into the shop [43]. It left for Eldwythe the same day, and has not been back to the market since [44][45].

Status

As of session 23. Active, as far as is known. The party has not been inside Umbrafall since session 11. The Broker gave Hugo a sending stone in session 7 [32]; nothing since shows it used.

See also

References

  1. ^ Session 4, line 1480-1510: First meeting with the Broker; Maelis Dirn contract.
  2. ^ Session 5, line 173: The tunnel beneath the market: 'yawns wide, swallowing the last of the voices above'.
  3. ^ Session 7, line 713-746: Broker pays out the Maelis contract; Greataxe of Frost; Silent Intake.
  4. ^ Session 11, line 541-560: The Whisper Coil Emporium lies near, but not inside, the market; the party reaches its outskirts.
  5. ^ Session 10, line 446-498: Mining quest payout; Broker disclaims Dawn Mercy knowledge; The Rat referenced.
  6. ^ Session 4, line 1490: Inline citation.
  7. ^ Session 4, line 1572: Inline citation.
  8. ^ Session 4, line 1480: Inline citation.
  9. ^ Session 7, line 1093: Inline citation.
  10. ^ Session 11, line 541: Inline citation.
  11. ^ Session 7, line 702: Inline citation.
  12. ^ Session 7, line 854: Inline citation.
  13. ^ Session 4, line 1770-1776: Inline citation.
  14. ^ Session 4, line 1502: Inline citation.
  15. ^ Session 4, line 1518: Inline citation.
  16. ^ Session 7, line 806: Inline citation.
  17. ^ Session 4, line 1506: Inline citation.
  18. ^ Session 4, line 1576: Inline citation.
  19. ^ Session 10, line 446: Inline citation.
  20. ^ Session 4, line 1822-1830: Inline citation.
  21. ^ Session 4, line 1446: Inline citation.
  22. ^ Session 5, line 857: Inline citation.
  23. ^ Session 5, line 893-894: Inline citation.
  24. ^ Session 5, line 1277: Inline citation.
  25. ^ Session 5, line 1770: Inline citation.
  26. ^ Session 7, line 667-669: Inline citation.
  27. ^ Session 7, line 710: Inline citation.
  28. ^ Session 7, line 719-721: Inline citation.
  29. ^ Session 7, line 970: Inline citation.
  30. ^ Session 7, line 736: Inline citation.
  31. ^ Session 7, line 745: Inline citation.
  32. ^ Session 7, line 747: Inline citation.
  33. ^ Session 7, line 749: Inline citation.
  34. ^ Session 7, line 804: Inline citation.
  35. ^ Session 10, line 449-454: Inline citation.
  36. ^ Session 10, line 463-473: Inline citation.
  37. ^ Session 10, line 457: Inline citation.
  38. ^ Session 10, line 484: Inline citation.
  39. ^ Session 10, line 1151-1153: Inline citation.
  40. ^ Session 10, line 1331-1332: Inline citation.
  41. ^ Session 10, line 1241-1242: Inline citation.
  42. ^ Session 11, line 555: Inline citation.
  43. ^ Session 11, line 560: Inline citation.
  44. ^ Session 11, line 693: Inline citation.
  45. ^ Session 11, line 703: Inline citation.
  46. ^ Session 7, line 610-614: Inline citation.