Winning the poll by just 1 vote, let's talk about The Jade Market.
The Jade Market is what moves the greater part of The Iron Hive's economy, a bustling array of stalls, one next to each other, everyone's fighting for your attention and your credits.
It's inspired in flea markets, sure, but if we want to pinpoint the exact one, it's one in Caracas, Venezuela called Mercado del Cementerio (graveyard's market (it's called that because of the zone, don't worry it was later renamed to The Ant Market)), I remember going there and feeling overwhelmed with people offering stuff, the screaming of offers, the dexterity required to traverse the sea of people; all while keeping your eyes peeled, alert at all times because pickpocketing was a common occurrence and noone was going to help you, security wasn't really one of the key features of this place.
picture of closed stalls in The Ant Market from JoseAGuerra on Twitter
So with these memories in mind, The Jade Market was born, the largest stalls are 4 by 2 meters, lined wall to wall right next to each other, some are just placed in the middle of a hallway, polluting even what could be a clearing where to take fresh air. Food, weapons, and ancient artifacts can easily be found within 10 steps of each other, that's the beauty of the Jade. The second page of this sector will have a Stalls table, where you can quickly roll a few d100 and get quick idea of what the players might be offered, or just pick and choose, create your own sector within a sector, which speaking of...
Some of The Jade Market's stalls, in preparation for a certain Achievement 👀
Even if it's all chaos, there's some semblance of order within it, with no regulations in place, people interconnect stalls to make bigger stores—this of course requires influence and power to achieve—giving place to things like The House of Fortune where you can go spend all your earnings, or The Red Lantern District, where pleasure and vice are at anyone's reach, if so happens they have the credits to afford said reach. One of my favorite NPCs controls the latter, Madame Odette Lafaille, we can talk about her in another update, but you'll have to wait, for now, let's close this with a glimpse into what every sector has as a footer on its first page.
I think the next update is going to be about Xiao Mifeng, what do you think?
