In the city of Akorros, residents have easy access to pretty much everything they need. As you move out of the city into the country, such access disappears. Towns will have shops, or at least a general store, but the farming villages just have what they can grow or make themselves.
And so the arrival of the peddler wagon is always an excitement and a cause for celebration. Children rush, goodwives put on their best bonnets and hustle and the workers in the fields leave their hoes and hurry to meet wagon when it arrives, trailing dust or mud from the road. Even before the peddler stops and unhitches their horses the air is loud with cries of "pins", "linen", "saucepan" "lace", "'metlla" and many other demands for particularly desired items.
The wagon
The wagon is almost always a high-sided miniature house on wheels, with a high seat at the front under an overhanging cover where the peddler sits to drive, and inside through a door from the seat a small kitchen/living area. A mattress on a board which swings down for sleeping and folds back into the side wall when not in use provides a place to sleep. And apart from that, the whole wagon is given over to storage.
A narrow corridor runs down the middle of the wagon, and the space either side is shelving stuffed full with items for sale - household items like pins, pans, pots; tools - axes, saws, chisels, augurs, knives, pitchforks and spades, mattocks and hoes; writing materials, including both ink and the papers and parchments for wtiting on; cloth, both sturdy linens and finer, brightly coloured cottons and wools or even occasionally silks; foodstuffs, particularly herbs, spices, sugar, salt, dried fruit, dried meat and sweatmeats; bottles of wine and spirits, in particular
guindametlla. There may be a few casks of beer, but usually the village will brew their own so they are generally for the peddler's own use. The peddlar will also likely carry a few books - not many, but enough for those who are interested.
Built into the wall in the centre of the wagon there is a strongbox with an intricate lock. In here, as well as the peddler's earnings, there may be a few more valuable items for sale - rings, necklaces, armbands, looking glasses.
The sales and the stories
The peddler may bring useful goods, but equally valued is the news they bring. Once settled, once their horses are unhitched and stabled, the peddler will setlle back on their seat with a glass of something - sometimes the local beer, sometimes a sample of one of the drinks they have for sale - and regale the village with tales of goings-on in the city and elsewhere, tales of lords and ladies, fights, battles and monsters, balls and celebrations. To start with the crowd will listen (relatively) silently, but after a while their impatience will break through, and they will start to demand the purchases again. Although the peddler will make a show of unconcern, they will judge their moment, and when they judge that the impatience has reached a sufficient peak, they will start their trading and bidding.
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