Seelie Market

Attentive travelers might notice a shimmering, majestic dragon soaring above the clouds. A wagon caravan trails behind the dragon, attached to it by a magical harness. Usually the dragon disappears behind a cloud, taking its strange caravan with it, and is seen no more. But sometimes the dragon makes a gentle, spiraling descent into a forest or another secluded area. Those who seek it out discover a bustling market where fey folk peddle fruit, haggle over bargains, and seal sinister deals. This is Seelie Market.
The market’s vendors are an eclectic mix of goblins, Fey, and awakened Beasts and Plants. Vendors don’t accept coins or other typical currency. Instead, these merchants demand performances, answers to riddles, favors, or other intangibles.

Type

Market square

Description

Fruit Stalls

Scattered throughout Seelie Market are stalls brimming with ripe apples, apricots, grapes, mangoes, and other delicious fruit.
Goblins native to the Feywild run these stalls, calling out to visitors and tugging at their clothing to get their attention. The vendors explain that while a piece of fruit might look ordinary, it has wondrous and (mostly) beneficial properties.
When a creature eats a fey fruit, roll on the Fey Fruit Effects table below. A creature affected by a fey fruit can’t be affected by fey fruit again for 24 hours. If a fey fruit isn’t consumed within 24 hours of its purchase, its magic expires and it rots. The merchants relate this information to anyone who buys a fruit, always downplaying potentially negative side effects.

Fey Fruit Effects

Price

Characters must give a lock of their hair to buy a fey fruit. The goblin vendors don’t specify what they need the hair for, but they give the hair to Granny Goosefinger, the hag who runs the doll shop (see the Antique Dolls section), in exchange for jewelry.

Card Collector

Come one, come all!
A satyr wearing a velvet cloak beams at you from a stand full of card decks. He waves with a dramatic flourish, and a set of cards appears in his hand … or did he pull it from his sleeve?

A satyr named Hugo Clovenhorn sells card decks from this stand, performing card tricks as he talks. He might pause a conversation to pull a card from behind a character’s ear or to sneeze and send a flurry of cards spewing onto the table.
Hugo stocks multiple regular playing card decks featuring illustrations of Feywild and Material Plane locations the market has visited. He also might have an uncommon magic card deck for sale, such as a Card Sharp’s Deck, a Deck of Wonder, or a House of Cards.

Price

Hugo gives a deck of playing cards to anyone who can pull off a flawless card trick. A character attempting to impress Hugo must perform their trick and succeed on a DC 12 Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check. Each character can attempt this check once.
If the characters want to purchase a magic card deck, Hugo requires one of them to beat him in a card game; the party gets only one try. To play against Hugo, a character attempts three DC 15 checks: one Intelligence (Investigation) check, one Wisdom (Insight) check, and one Charisma (Deception) check. A character who’s proficient with playing cards has advantage on these checks. If the character succeeds on one or no checks, Hugo wins. If the character succeeds on two or more checks, the character wins and is rewarded with one of the uncommon decks of magic cards listed above.
If a character loses the game, Hugo doesn’t accept any more challengers from the party. He does, however, offer the party an alternative way to earn a deck of magic cards he has in stock. He explains he has always admired Merriweather the birdkeeper, but he has never mustered the courage to strike up a conversation with her. He asks the characters to get her to come over and talk to him. If the characters succeed, he gives them the magic card deck, but if they fail, he immediately calls off the effort.

Rare Birds

Cacophonous squawking comes from a stall marked by a pennant reading “Merriweather’s Beautiful Birdies.” A dryad hurries from birdcage to birdcage, feeding an array of feathered friends. “Now, now, settle down,” she yells to an exceptionally loud parrot.

Merriweather the dryad showcases her collection of birds from this stand. She has owls, chickadees, hawks, hummingbirds, and more; thanks to spending time in the Feywild, they all have fanciful coloration and sing unusual melodies. Some sit in cages, while others hop around on open-air perches or fly around Merriweather.

Price

Merriweather gives a character one of her birds if the character serenades that bird with a song. A character who wants a particular bird can approach that bird and make a DC 15 Wisdom (Animal Handling) or Charisma (Performance) check. On a successful check, they earn that bird’s affection, and Merriweather gives that bird to the character. She will give only one bird to each character, but if characters fail to serenade a bird, they can keep trying with different birds until they succeed.

Matchmaking with Hugo

Merriweather has always admired Hugo Clovenhorn, but she hasn’t acted on her feelings out of concern he doesn’t feel the same way. Characters acting on Hugo’s request to get an introduction to Merriweather can tell she reciprocates his feelings by succeeding on a DC 12 Wisdom (Insight) check, and they find it easy to get her to visit him. Many methods might work, including conveying his interest in meeting her, pickpocketing something of hers and placing it by Hugo’s card stand, or fabricating a reason for Merriweather and Hugo to meet.

Secondhand Trinkets

A lean dog with long, pointed ears sits in the middle of a giant rug, surrounded by trinkets. The dog looks up to you and smiles, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. “Secondhand bargains,” he barks. “Best deals around!”

Secondhand items and other useless trinkets lie neatly arrayed across a giant rug. They belong to Clawson Blink, a blink dog that gained the ability to speak Common from a helpful druid long ago.
Clawson has ten items from the Trinkets table of the Player’s Handbook for sale. He also has items he markets as “today’s secondhand steal,” highlighting them to any visitors:
A pair of small, rose-tinted glasses with round lenses, A droopy potted plant in an old boot, A rusty metal goblet shaped like a frog opening its mouth to the sky, A wide-brimmed, palm-frond sunhat that has been chewed on, A utensil shaped like a fork on one end and a spoon on the other, A thick, sun-yellowed book on seasonal agriculture written in Halfling, A well-used squeaky toy in the shape of a garden gnome with a red hat, A glass statuette of a rust monster.

Price

Clawson’s rules are simple: a buyer can take any item from the rug, so long as they replace it with an item of similar value. What counts as “similar value” is up to Clawson. He’s a very particular dog with very particular tastes, and he cares about an item’s oddity or unusual story more than its usefulness.

Spell Scrolls

A table bears an assortment of little jars filled with tiny scrolls. A pixie no bigger than a human hand sits on a cushion beside the jars, using a small quill and inkwell to write on a scroll. She looks up at you through horn-rimmed glasses. “Can I help you?”

Lavender Shasphene is a studious and impatient pixie merchant who sells Spell Scrolls from this little table. She has five Spell Scrolls for sale.

Lavender’s Spell Scrolls

• 1st level scroll: Cure wounds, Faerie Fire
• 2nd level scroll: Moonbeam, Protection from Poison
• 3rd level scroll: Antagonize

Each of Lavender’s scrolls is no bigger than a human thumb. Thanks to her minuscule handwriting, characters will need a magnifying glass to read one. They can purchase a magnifying glass from the Antique Doll Emporium, and Lavender directs a character there if an adventurer comments on her small handwriting.

Price

Lavender takes voices as payment. A character loses their voice for 10 minutes when they buy a 1st-level scroll, 1 hour when they buy a 2nd-level scroll, and 1 day when they buy a 3rd-level scroll; these durations are cumulative for characters who purchase multiple scrolls.
Whenever a voiceless character tries to speak or vocalize, they burp tiny bubbles instead. Lavender can mimic that character’s voice perfectly for the duration of the effect, and she delights in doing so. A Remove Curse spell or similar magic ends this effect.

Fortune-Telling

A silver-colored tent stands near the market’s center, marked with a banner bearing a colorful jester’s hat surrounded by the words “Oddlewin’s Tent of Many Fortunes.”
When the characters walk through the flaps into the tent, read or paraphrase the following text:

Warm light glows from a single lantern in this otherwise dark tent, illuminating canvas walls decorated with patchwork iconography of comets, keys, knights, and more. A small goblin sits cross-legged on the ground, wearing a blue hat and a lopsided smile. A stack of ivory cards lies before him. “Took you long enough!” the goblin says, beckoning you to sit.

This goblin is Oddlewin, a fortune teller. The ivory deck before him is a Deck of Many Things that he uses to read people’s fates. The symbols on the tent’s walls represent the deck’s cards.
Oddlewin is a nilbog, a goblin possessed by a trickster spirit. If Oddlewin is slain, the trickster spirit flies from the tent to possess another goblin, who strolls back in and acts just as the old Oddlewin did, using Oddlewin’s stat block.
Characters who succeed on a DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) check notice Oddlewin casts multiple shadows on the ground and the walls of the tent. These shadows are of Small and Medium size, and some have distinguishing features like horns, but their features are otherwise unclear. They seem to move independently of Oddlewin’s actions, but they remain connected to his feet.
Oddlewin’s Deck of Many Things is a nine-card set containing the Comet, Fates, Fool, Key, Knight, Rogue, Ruin, Sage, and Throne cards. He stole this deck from a riffler in the Feywild many years ago. Oddlewin doesn’t declare the number of card draws when he uses the deck for fortune-telling, so the cards’ magical effects don’t activate.

Price

Oddlewin will read any character’s fortune if the character agrees to lend him their shadow. He tells the character their shadow will return to them when the fortune comes true. A firm handshake with Oddlewin seals the deal.

Fortune-Telling

To read a character’s fortune, Oddlewin draws a single card from his nine-card deck and places it on the ground in front of him. The corresponding symbols on the tent’s canvas walls glow briefly. After Oddlewin speaks the card’s fortune, the character feels a chill run up their spine as their shadow gains a life of its own—untying itself from the character, leaping to Oddlewin, and joining the nilbog’s other shadows. Oddlewin then removes that card from the deck for any subsequent readings for the party.

Fortunes

Card	Fortune
Comet	“Carry a lit flame with you at all times. You will be rewarded with wondrous treasure.”
Fates	“You are fated to witness a terrible catastrophe. Take solace in knowing there is nothing you can do to stop it.”
Fool	“Someone who seems helpless will call for your aid. Do not trust them.”
Key	“A dream will bring answers to the questions you seek.”
Knight	“Someone will offer you their services in a time of great need. Trust them.”
Rogue	“A foe is hunting you. They seek vengeance and shall arrive soon.”
Ruin	“You will soon lose something you hold dear.”
Sage	“Give advice freely and often. It will save another’s life in the near future, earning you their loyalty.”
Throne	“Great responsibility shall be thrust upon you. Only you will know if you are ready.”

A character’s shadow returns to them when the fortune comes to fruition, letting that character know this is the moment Oddlewin foresaw.

Show spoiler

Fortune Fulfillment

Comet. If the character keep a candle, torch, lantern, or other flame or source of light in their vicinity as often as possible, that light eventually illuminates a Bag of Holding or another uncommon magic item in a hidden place.
Fates. The character sees a terrible fate befall another person. Ideally the character witnesses this alone or is the first to see it. For example, they might see a villain slaying an important NPC, a village being burned to the ground, or a catastrophic storm on the horizon.
Fool. An innocent-looking person or creature seems to need the characters’ help but is a hungry monster in disguise. This might be a hag disguised as a child, a werewolf in wolf form whimpering and feigning injury by the side of the road, or a group of zombies made to look like starving travelers by a nefarious necromancer’s Seeming spell.
Key. During a long rest, the character experiences a dream that gives them insights on their current quest. This could be a prophecy telling them where to go next, a vision of someone who can assist the party, or a wise figure who receives and answers questions in a manner similar to the Divination spell.
Knight. An NPC offers the party assistance at a crucial moment. This could be a champion jumping into combat when it looks like the characters might fail, a noble helping the party avoid a sticky situation with the law, or someone offering the characters a place to stay. This NPC asks for nothing in return and, if treated fairly, might even continue to help the party.
Rogue. Someone from the character’s past appears, bent on revenge. This could be someone from the character’s backstory, someone the character wronged on a previous quest, or a relative of someone the character killed or brought to ruin. This person might seek revenge in combat or through social sabotage.
Ruin. Something of value to this character that isn’t on their person is stolen by burglars or a recurring villain. Alternatively, someone close to this character is kidnapped or killed.
Sage. If the character heeds this fortune and starts giving out unsolicited advice, that advice eventually saves someone’s life, either by keeping that person from venturing into harm’s way or by warning them against a disastrous financial decision. That person then helps the character in gratitude.
Throne. The character is given a leadership position on the council of a village, a guild, or an organization. Alternatively, a young creature—such as an owlbear cub or a griffon hatchling—is left in the character’s care after the death of its parent.

Drawing from the Deck

Though Oddlewin doesn’t offer this option unprompted, a character can cajole Oddlewin to let them declare a card draw from his Deck of Many Things and pull a card from the deck. Oddlewin secretly enjoys seeing the chaos creatures bring about by drawing from the deck. He allows each character to draw one card.

Antique Dolls

Shelves of antique dolls stand in the shade of a sickly green awning. Hunched over a small worktable is a wizened woman with warts, bedraggled gray hair, and sallow, green skin. She hums a haunting tune to herself, peering through a magnifying glass to paint a tiny pair of lips on a half-finished porcelain doll.

Granny Goosefinger, a green hag, makes and sells dolls here. Some dolls are made of porcelain, others of cloth. All have round, beady eyes and perfectly painted smiles. Granny Goosefinger also has three magnifying glasses, one spyglass, and ten mirrors for sale.
If any characters gave their hair to a merchant at the market’s fruit stands, the party might see their hair already glued atop the heads of some of the dolls, perhaps crafted in the characters’ own likenesses; Granny Goosefinger works fast. Though she puts most of the hair the goblins give her toward decorating the dolls, she saves a bit for Scrying spells or evil hag magic.
Granny Goosefinger refers to the characters in cloying terms like “dearie” or “my sweets.” There’s a calm, collected wickedness behind her smile.

Price

A character who wishes to buy a doll or a glass object must trade Granny Goosefinger three days’ worth of good dreams. She seals this bargain by having the character prick their finger with one of her sewing needles.
A character who pays this price is plagued with nightmares of haunted dolls for 3 days. Every time the character finishes a long rest during that period, they must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. On a failed saving throw, the rest restores none of the character’s Hit Dice. A Remove Curse spell or similar magic ends this effect.

Map

by Francesca Baerald