Competition: Local and Ruins

Finished
Local and Ruins

Now that the rebuilding effort is in full swing, the surviving Kaedeans have begun exploring their civilization's abandoned capital city as a new trading hub between villages, and many new businesses and places of interest have been cropping up in the old capital of Shihon. However, such places must be cataloged and registered before they can fully be opened. It is your job to go out and find what new sights there are to explore now.

For this competition, it is your task to design new places of business and leisure for the Capital of Eldar. These entries must be in a Wiki style format using Markdown. Entries should describe where the business is housed, what it sells or what services, if any, it provides, and any information about who runs it, at minimum. You can make as many places as you can think up! Good luck and have fun.

Competition Information
Parent Competition
Operation Rebuild Eldar
Organized by
Obelisk Adherent Rrogon Skar Agrona
Running time
2020-04-12 until 2020-04-30 (19 days)
Target Unit
House Galeres
Competition Type
Other
Awards
Fourth Level Crescents
Participants
4 subscribers, of which 2 have participated.
Results
Member
Qyreia Arronen
File submission
Locale & Ruins, QA14369.pdf
Placement
1st place
Member
Master Ruka Tenbriss Ya-ir
Textual submission

Can be pasted directly to wiki as needed. Uses wiki coding, not Markdown.

===Kadean Kuriosities===

Coined as such by non-natives unable to pronounce the Kadean name, '''''Kadean Kuriosities,''''' or '''''Kurios,''''' is a "secondhand antique" shop that sells anything and everything one may imagine. Lavish furniture, rundown amenities, appliances, scrolls and texts, instruments and knickknacks, heirloom vases, jeweled eggs and claw-cuffs and headpieces, bowls and basins and beds, cosmetics and art pieces and sculptures, cryo units and blaster carbines -- it and more are all stacked to the polished wooden rafters. One can navigate a tower of books and take a turn around a corner to find a kettle cozied up to piles and piles of priceless gems and silks. Climbing over a palequin and ducking through an array of rice-paper fans may reveal a golden statue with offerings of chamber pots and vibroblades and children's toys.

If one can even find their way to a wall, they would find a price marker scribbled in charcoal on the very windows themselves, stained glass and lined in precious metals. It is sometimes joked the only way to make it back to the front counter — less a counter so much as a long, elegantly carved bar, now defunct, its beverage shelves full of more "rarities" — is to follow the smoke signals generated by the owner's always-lit pipe.

Originally a land owner's city home in the Sapphire District of [[Shihon|Shihon]], the glazed granite building is very outsized for its current use, the front three rooms — a private entertaining lounge with bar and theater floor, a welcome hall, and a guest dining area — all full to bursting with product. The back half of the home is staked claim by the shopkeeper and his assistant, and jealously guarded by way of locked doors and impassable clutter, the only navigation into the living areas some secret between the two.

The owner of the Kuriosities, '''Nihimasa''', is a spindly, hunched Kadean with gray and silver scales and gray eyes, once standing much taller, though now his feathers fall limp and his scales grow pliable with oncoming age after a long-lived life...at least for a Kadean. He is ruthless, shrewd, and generally only seems to care for himself and his profit, haunted by whatever he saw during [https://discourse.darkjedibrotherhood.com/t/sins-of-the-past-plot-updates/1272/35 the Plague]. Nihimasa, like many surviving Kaedeans, took great joy in seizing what were once Sardinian properties and assets first upon exploring the abandoned capital city and its surrounding city states, a final posthumous victory in their [[Eldar#History|generations-long blood feud]] for superiority. He tends to mark up his prices greatly when dealing with off-world traders, not only due to his distrust of them but due to the opportunity for much greater wealth than the natives hold, glaring at them from under his wide-brimmed paddy-hat.

The only creature seemingly in Nihimasa's good graces any longer is '''Kunoe''', a younger female Kadean with a tan hide striped in brown and black scales. Her eyes are silvery, pupils ringed in brown, and a crest of short purple feathers runs from her forehead to the base of her spine and down to her elbows. Small, compact, and slightly scarred, whip-quick Kunoe is frequently seen skittering between narrow walkways in the store made out of jumbled items, worming under and around and over shelves and messes to restock, catalogue, or otherwise fetch from or add items to the collection. Kunoe is very suspicious of offworlders, a trait that she and her employer and landlord share, and is very principled and jealous. She watches every customer from the stacks like a predator, hissing under her breath if they get to close or if any of them menace Nihimasa.

It's said that his shop is of "curiosities" is all just belongings pillaged from Ancestors-know how many homes, stolen right off the sicked corpses of the dead and looted from other stores and families, but Nihimasa denies such accusations stringently, blowing smoke in the face of all complainers. He refuses to bargain, rarely barters for anything but credit, and has been known to charge even heftier sums if someone wandering in just so happened to break down crying over what they claim MUST be their Plague-lost mother's family necklace, just for the trouble of...reuniting them with the item when they are oh-so-emotional. In the few instances customers grew violent over their claim of an item, Kunoe has always been quick with a blow dart or a flash of talons, hissing and spitting with a violent loyalty to the graverobbing collector no one can comprehend.

Placement
2nd place