A10: Grand Tent

A10: Grand Tent. The chaos of the Low Market is managed as much as possible by an administrative team headquartered in the Grand Tent, a huge red-and-white-striped pavilion 40 feet high and about 5O feet across. Every day before dawn, a team of accountants, guards, messengers, and minor spellcasters (priests of Zilchus) from the Greyhawk Union of Merchants and Traders meets here to watch over the day’s transactions across the huge marketplace. Booth licenses are sold and periodically rechecked against the main roster kept in the Grand Tent, and troubles between merchants and their customers are swiftly judged and resolved. At dusk, the administrative team totals up its recetpts and leaves under guard for the union hall (TA). The tent, made of fire-resistant cloth, remains standing at all times.

Rivalries between merchants in this city are extreme, and foreign merchants who rent market space have an uphill fight. Traditional rivals of local merchants in the Low Market are those from Hardby, the Wild Coast, Dyvers, and the Duchy of Urnst. This rivalry continued even after the Greyhawk Wars, with the duchy’s merchants losing market space to very aggressive traders from Safeton and Hardby. Demihuman merchants have niche markets not much challenged by other groups (baked goods and other prepared foods from Elmshire, and dwarf-crafted iron goods from Greysmere and Karakast). However, with the recent rental of an entire building in the Foreign Quarter by the Royal Guild of Merchants of the United Kingdom of Ahlissa (F5), everyone fears that Ahlissa will overpower everyone else in both the High and Low Markets, as well as the caravan trade. (The bad old days of the Great Kingdom have not been totally forgotten, despite being as casually ignored as they are in city lore.) On the good side, this isn’t likely to happen soon, The Royal Guild moves slowly and deliberately these days, having learned caution under the long and tyrannical reign of the Naelax Ivids. Were the guild to become more aggressive, however — that would be a different story.

From Adventure Begins

DM's Notes: As expected, a certain amount of covert criminal activity occurs here. Money is embezzled, certain merchants are unfairly excluded or given favored status in the market, bribes are taken, and minor thefts of merchandise occur, not all of it brought about by the Thieves’ Guild. Sabotage, assault, and the like take place on a weekly basis. Only rarely does this activity affect business, however, and most people put up with it, as considerable profit can be made despite it. Most of this “action” will not concern adventurers, but anyone with merchant friends or relatives will hear much about the “back-stabbing, ungrateful, money-grubbing criminal monsters” who run the Low Market.