MartMart Mobile Marketplace

A MartMart Mobile Marketplace is a standardized, enclosed vendor kiosk designed by MartMart International for deployment from the back of a large truck or from the hold of an airship. Enabled by some of the same mechanical computer technology involved in stage automata, an "M4" is designed to provide shelter, automated vending, RadNet communications, and catalogue order services in remote locations.
Mobile Marketplaces are a conceptual throwback to the Steamtech age, where the equipment involved with such convenience took up the space of two railcars and was frequently the subject of commerce raiding. Now, in an age where far-flung corners of the Manifold Sky are more accessible than ever before save for the lack of pre-existing infrastructure, MartMart International hopes to provide its classic vending and mail-order services to a new generation of pioneers, explorers, and freelancers of all stripes.

Design

A Mobile Marketplace in its stowed state is an aluminum shipping container twelve feet long, eight feet wide, and eight feet tall with all its major edges beveled. Two pairs eight-by-twelve planks are arranged on hinges at either side of the container, springing out to form decks and awnings when the kiosk is deployed. An antenna mast may be deployed from the top to allow for longer range RadNet communications than otherwise possible with handheld units.

Entries

A doorway on the side of the Mobile Marketplace permits access to a small seating area at one end of the container. Whenever this door is opened, a ceiling light turns on and voicebox plays the notoriously catchy "Wherever thou art, theres a... MartMart!" jingle in the compartment beyond (see Contents & Furnishings).
A utility panel is located beneath a protective cover next to the door and may be used to feed external power to the container or access the integrated RadNet antenna. Access panels at the rear and top of the container provides access to the biodiesel cell, batteries, mechanisms, stock, and cash box; a proprietary array of locks and booby traps at these access points serve to dissuade theft.

Contents & Furnishings

The visitor compartment is well-insulated and features a small, but comfortable sitting area for one or two patrons.
The forward extent of the visitor compartment is decorated with a mural that is unique to the individual Mobile Marketplace. These works of art represent major styles of the era (Forgist Deco, Voxelian Idealism, and so forth) as executed by an artist commissioned by MartMart International. A frequently-visited Mobile Marketplace often becomes a curiosity (or, if immobile, a landmark) because of this artwork, but the mural serves a secondary purpose as an indicator of the buildings age and identifying mark for MartMart International maintenance crews.
The back extent of the sitting area features two panels. The left panel features a coin slot, money counter, and numerous dials, the last of which are each marked with a type of small product - typically food and drink items, but sometimes toiletries, souvenirs, bottles of fuel, ammunition, or other small novelties - which is stowed in hoppers within the container. These dials can be turned to set the quantity of each to be dispensed, but mechanisms within the kiosk prevent them from being turned to a value greater than the number on hand for ease of logistics. When the last knob is turned to the 'dispense' position, each dial from left-to-right and top-to-bottom begins to count down along with the money counter as the requested items are dispensed in paper tubes from a slot beneath the panel - provided, that is, that the right number of Navigator's Guild Credits have been inserted.
The right panel features a catalogue in the form of metal-bound leaves behind glass - in the manner of a jukebox - as well as a teleterminal. Visitors to the kiosk can use these facilities to request larger, more expensive items via a limited RadNet connection. The length of any single transaction is limited to 128 characters as a result of the GasKIT architecture inherent to the kiosk and the limited power of the RadNet transmitter, but more transactions can be purchased at 2 NGC each. Catalogue item numbers are short alphanumeric strings so as to leave room for account details, such as bank routing numbers, to permit remote transactions beyond those handleable with pocket change.

Type

Kiosk / Small store

Environmental Effects

More than most such multinational corporations, MartMart International's jingle is true to the organizations mission statement and corporate creed: no matter the cube, you will find a MartMart there in some form or another. The presence of a MartMart Mobile Marketplace often indicates that a location is too remote for the corporation to consider constructing a permanent establishment there, but not so dangerous that no one is expected to ever visit at all.
As such, Mobile Marketplaces often become central elements of new settlements or, in truly untouched or dangerous locations, lifelines for lost travellers back to civilization. For example, there are Leather Jacket Nomad waystations that consist solely of a Mobile Marketplace stuck where it parachuted down into a box canyon or dense thicket of cacti in the middle of the desert. Similarly, the rare few M4s dropped into the Distal Tesseract are sometimes used for shelter against the elements and predators like the Distal Flenser.
The limited selection of on-hand products within the Mobile Marketplaces have given rise to various confusion culinary creations and other objects of creative thinking under pressure. The notion of mixing disparate items like Caldera Red and the contents of a Voxelian Dry Ration, as popularized in Zevtwill's Big Book of Taboo Treats: It's Suspiciously, Seditiously Delicious!, originally came from soldiers buying up the contents of an M4 dropped near the Rostral front in the War of Reunification.

Owning Organization

MartMart International

Use in Adventures

A MartMart Mobile Marketplace might make a useful waypoint for adventurers operating in remote locations of the Manifold Sky setting. These all-in-one adventure sites provide the option for characters with skills related to crafting, bartering, or larceny to use these abilities when the wider context of the adventure might not allow for this (i.e. wilderness survival stories). Furthermore, because of the services provided there, a Mobile Marketplace will tend to gather NPCs in the area to it, providing opportunity for characters with primarily social skills to use them and opportunities for the Game Master to dispense lore or quests to the adventuring party.