Meredith's Haggling and Hunting Emporium

The appearance of the shop is heralded by a small cottage appearing often near a forest, and a sign swinging in the breeze that proudly proclaims the name of the establishment hanging from a beam well above the door. When one enters, they find themselves suddenly open a teleportation platform that glows green next to an identical platform that glows red, the shop not entirely unlike a hybrid of a general store, an apothecary, and a hunters shop. Against the northern wall stands a large board with various notices of bounty and hunting contracts fixed upon it for people to choose from that boasts rewards as well as the locations of where the posting originated from. At the southern wall resides a long railed bar top that is topped with odds and ends, materials and strange books, the wall behind it lined with bottles, vials, canisters, and shelves. In the middle of the shop are four tables with items that radiate an ominous aura, all chained down to the surface as if they might escape on their own.

Special Tools

These items are created by Meredith for harvesting monsters. Some items must be used to capture specific aspects, such as Banshee Echoes, Demilich Smoke, Demonic Imprints, and Motes of Necrotic Energy.

Item	Cost	Weight
Enchanted Vial	3gp	-
Hamund's Harvesting Handbook	50gp	5 lbs.
Harvesting Kit	30gp	7 lbs.
Spirit Paper	1gp	-
Oil of Taggit (2 doses)	40gp	-

Enchanted Vial

Some creature parts have powerful, yet fleeting, magical energies within them. The motes from elementals for example hold traces of their former essences in them but disperse rapidly upon the destruction of their original form.
An enchanted vial is inlaid with several runes designed to keep any magical resource within from dissipating while the lid is closed and is often the only way of transporting certain parts back to a workshop for crafting.
Items that require an enchanted vial to be harvested are fragile by nature and must be stored inside an enchanted vial quickly to prevent degradation. Any attempt to harvest a material that has an enchanted vial as a requirement must be initiated within 1 minute of the death of its creature.

Hamund's Harvesting Handbook

This book is filled with all sorts of useful information on the creatures that inhabit the multiverse, specifically, which parts of them are useful for harvesting. Using this book grants you advantage on any Appraise ability check.

Harvesting Kit

This kit contains everything the average harvester needs to prepare and harvest a carcass for usable parts including a skinning knife, a bonesaw, 2 glass vials, pouches of salt, and tweezers. Proficiency with this kit lets you add your proficiency to any check made to harvest a creature.

Spirit Paper

Spirit paper is a versatile tool that resembles a square of bleached papyrus. The secrets of its production were only recently discovered, and reverse engineered from secrets brought back from distant necromantic cults. By performing a small ritual with the spirit paper shortly after slaying certain creatures, a copy of that creature’s soul is bound to the spirit paper for later use. These copies are not a true soul and are more akin to an echo. These echoes do retain all of the memories from its original body, and a few crafting techniques utilize these echoes to grant an item a low level of sentience or to mimic the abilities of their incorporeal reflections.
Using spirit paper is often the only way to harvest anything useful from creatures with incorporeal forms. Any harvesting attempt made for a creature part that has spirit paper as a requirement is done using a Wisdom (Religion) check rather than the usual check and is rolled separately for each item. Once a sheet of spirit paper has been used successfully to harvest an item, it cannot be reused, even if the item it contained is released.
Unlike most harvestable materials, materials that require spirit paper to be harvested dissipate very quickly after the death of its creature. Any attempt to harvest a material that has spirit paper as a requirement must be initiated within 1 minute of the death of the creature and takes 10 minutes to successfully complete.

Oil of Taggit

^{(Contact Poison)}
A creature subjected to this poison must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or become poisoned for 24 hours. The poisoned creature is unconscious. The creature wakes up if it takes damage.
Contact. Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects.

Notice Board

The notice board holds up to five fliers at a time for different bounties, hunting contracts, and item demands. Each flier includes the type of notice (Capture Bounty, Hunting Contract, or Harvest Request), a clear title, and a reward amount. Other details vary from possibly helpful tips, to nothing else other than the basic three. * denotes a legendary monster bounty.

Notice Name	Contract Type	Reward Amount
Unknown Creature Contract	*Hunting Contract	Variable, minimum 4000g
Chimera Contract	Hunting Contract	Variable

Notice Types

Capture Bounty

Capture bounties are contracts that require the targeted creature to be brought in alive, either conscious or unconscious. Some will stipulate that they must be unharmed, others may leave it up to interpretation. Creatures and humanoids alike can be the target of such contracts, and the reward may be lessened if the target was requested to be in a moderately untouched condition, but was brought in near death. Meredith highly suggests either using your wits or Oil of Taggit to achieve these contracts. Unless the contract is for a noble, Meredith will hold onto the target herself in the shop for collection and pay the adventurers herself, as she will be reimbursed by the one who posted the contract.

Hunting Contract

Hunting contracts require the slaying of a determined creature or creatures, often with the need to bring back pelts, teeth, or heads back as proof. The cleaner the kill the better, as those who fulfill the contract can sell those parts on to Meredith for more coin, or try to locate someone else to make something magical with the rewards reaped of the bodies. Most often these are contracts put forth when an area is unable to handle a creature or a herd of creatures that are plaguing them.

Harvest Request

Harvest requests require the slaying of a determined creature or creature type for a specific component of their bodies, be it the eyes, breath sacs, hearts, or other difficult parts. The cleaner the kill the better for this kind of contract, as wanton slaughter might make it impossible to harvest or nearly so. Unlike hunting contracts, harvest requests require skill and care to extract the exact component from a corpse, therefore making it the most difficult contract to manage. This may result in the need to slay more than planned to acquire the requested item, and make it far more deadly for the adventurer to manage.

Legendary Bounties

Marked on the board with an asterisk (*), these contracts are true challenges that are put forth by none other than Meredith herself. The amount of coin offered can sway even the most conservative of adventurers into attempting to fulfill these, though many will die well before being able to do so. Only those who Meredith feels have a chance of success will she vocally advertise these to, and even fewer of them return. A legendary bounty requires the death of an incredibly dangerous foe, and then the harvesting of the heart, which then must be given to Meredith to receive the reward. Only the very brave, very foolish, or very desperate attempt these contracts.

Purpose / Function

Meredith's Haggling and Hunting Emporium is an interplanar shop that waits for worthy hunters and harvesters of creatures, monsters, and men to appear to. This shop buys up harvested parts for coin, has a bounty and hunting board to accept contracts for coin rewards, and sells unique items that are required to be able to harvest certain powerful (and rare) aspects of slain creatures, such as the mystical Spirit Paper that allows a skilled harvester to capture the last echoes of a banshee's wail.
Adventurers that have been able to gain access to the Emporium are able to easily sell the harvested parts of their kills for top coin, instead of trying to find someone who even desire such things before they begin to decompose. Leather, organs, and even stranger remnants of these felled creatures are all desired here as they can be sold on to the appropriate buyer; for better or worse.
At times, there may be legendary monster bounties available to hunt when posted by the green hag Meredith herself, which require extreme amounts of skill and planning to survive, let alone to harvest the remains afterwards. These contracts, of course, reward generous amounts of coin if the hearts can be harvested and returned to Meredith.

Type

Shop, Magic

Parent Location

Astral Plane

Owner

Meredith