Goblin Market: Sparrowjenny vs. Scabramouche

So last night I launched a Changeling game. The characters are members of a motley - the Intercessors - who intervene in disputes and resolve them.

The game started in a Goblin Market. Goblin Markets in Southern Arizona/Northern Mexico are along two lines: a swap meet, or a drug deal. They all appear to be trailer parks too. This particular market was called "Doctor Whitetree's Swap Meet". Doctor Whitetree had a problem and summoned the characters to deal with it. Two of his vendors, Sparrowjenny and Scabramouche, were feuding and they had polarized the swap meet into factions, which was driving away customers. The preliminary payment was a box lunch (sandwich, fruit, chips or potato salad, and a grape soda whose bottle had a label not in any language they recognized) and one silver coin.

The characters went to discuss the case with Sparrowjenny first. Sparrowjenny had some birdlike features but chief among them was a big giant beak. She started into her sales pitch about the shiny objects that she had, but stopped suddenly, sniffing the air and, almost crying, asked if the characters had an apple. When the apple came out she almost broke down into sobs. Finally they got the story out of her:

She lived in the orchard and larder of a True Fae who had torn out her stomach, so that she couldn't eat anything, and no matter how much food she was surrounded by, she would still starve constantly. This amused the True Fae greatly, who would often chain her to tables at feasts and would always be sure she cried herself to sleep in an orchard whose trees hung heavy with delicious fruit.

One day the greedygut nasty troll Scabramouche was caught in the orchard shovelling dozens and dozens of apples down his maw. His uncaring, brutish smirk at her starvation also tickled the True Fae, but the theft could not be overlooked, so the True Fae told them this:

"Scabramouche, every apple that you ever have, you must give the first bite to Sparrowjenny."

Sparrowjenny was elated with the arrangement, it meant she could actually not be starving all the time. In fact, she grew so strong that eventually she escaped or wandered away, ending up at the market. (Scabramouche was allowed to go after being punished, but in practice his greed for apples would ensure that he could never be far away from Sparrowjenny for very long.) She even "hatched a brood", stomachless naturally, and chews up, digests and vomits that first bite of apple for them sometime.

But now, Scabramouche has decided he can give up on apples just long enough to watch her brood starve to death while she wails her sorrow. Can the characters get Scabramouche to accept their apple? She'd be ever so grateful and give them this lovely headlamp reflector that one of the PCs was looking at.

Scabramouche (a horrible, fat-gutted, massive-handed, green, sloppy-drooling monster) told them a similar story, but to hear him tell it, he despises Sparrowjenny for her patheticness and reliance on him, and anticipates the delicious cruelty of her children starving to death enough that he can give up on apples and just get by on stolen applesauce. He sells horrible smells and methamphetamine and would the characters like any?

The two vendors have paid and inveigled the other merchants into taking their sides, with the result that everyone is arguing, scheming and attacking each other.

You may recognize this if you ever took a course in contracts as a question of reliance.

Sparrowjenny relies on Scabramouche for that first bite of apple. But the True Fae neglected (?) to force Scabramouche to continue to obtain apples forever. So when Scabramouche makes a decision that normally would be completely unremarkable - to stop eating apples - it damages Sparrowjenny, who has come to rely on that first bite.

Goblin Markets is a PDF-only release from White Wolf. One of our very own RPGMM members, Jess Hartley was one of the primary authors.

Can you figure out how the PCs resolved the situation? Look for my next blog post...