Tuesday, June 8, 2021

The Machine Magic Market

The Machine Magic Market is the central economic and technological hub in Wizard City Hexcrawl, sporting a plethora of commercial magitech options. It's a common destination for techno-pilgrims, industrialists, and engineering students from abroad.

PROMINENT PROSTHESIS VENDORS

The Market's got dozens of independent and incorporated vendors for prostheses of all shapes and sizes. There's enough here to make you fully metal-fleshed out man, if you had the inclination. Way cheaper to just put a brain in a jar, though.

Antonio's

"There ain't no broken heart Antonio can't fix!"

(Note: Antonio does not recommend replacing all your major organs with platinum magitech constructs unless you absolutely positively need it... Medically.)

Antonio is a big hairy musically-spoken man with a heart of gold. He's also a big softy, especially when it concerns heart-broken young people. You can expect excellence service at Antonio's for all your heart-replacement needs. Plenty of folks go there just for the conversation. 

Need a ticker that's not gonna break down every time you get in a fistfight with a bird? You go to Antonio's! Feeling heartsick from your last breakup? You go to Antonio's! Want to impress your rich friends by replacing all your major organs with immortal platinum machines? Antonio is your guy!

Also sells synthetic livers, kidneys, spleens, and lungs, though they can get pretty expensive. (It's way cheaper to pay a back alley surgeon for an organic service.)

[Note on Internal Magitech Organs: Whether it's Antonio's or another vendor, they largely come in two varieties: expensive and cheap.]

Expensive magitech organs are typically made of flexible rare earth materials (gold, mithril, uranium, etc.) and have a low maintenance cost, but are virtually unobtainable unless you're rich. Examples:

  • Solid Gold Heart - no maintenance required unless physically damaged. Costs ten times its weight in gold and will basically run forever.
  • Nuclear Liver - Purifies your blood with radiation! Typically not recommended unless most of your other organs have already been replaced. Your Poison Save maxes out. Death causes your liver to meltdown and produce a nuclear explosion! Will require monthly blood transfusions.
  • The Mithril Special - A set of indestructible mithril lungs and accompanying aorta will protect you from most chest puncture wounds. Any damage dice against you that come up "7" are negated.

Cheap magitech organs have a very low up-front cost, but come with some serious strings attached: high-interest payment plans, "default reclamation services", and poverty-inducing maintenance costs. Most cheap organs require regularly taken Brain Fluid to remain operational (a healing potion, essentially).

  • Iron Lung - Requires regular aerosolized inhalation of Brain Fluid, or it will rust and suffocate the user. When well-maintained protects against gas attacks.
  • The Classic Ticker - A leaden heart. Prolonged usage without Brain Fluid will drain the user's mental stats. Become immune to Charm effects.
  • The Snake - An intestine replacement device. Can only digest things a snake can digest. Tends to squirm about a bit without brain fluid. Insufficient usage causes Snake Belly Syndrome, which is kind of cool until it begins to eat its host body.
  • Plastic Heart - The cheapest of the lot. Go over 120 bpm and it'll burst. Don't take brain fluid and it'll burst. Try to avoid exercise, arousal, and any stressful situation.


Clock Incorporated

"Having an atomic clock directly attached to my brain stem has increased my productivity by 2.61%! 
I could barely n-n-notice the s-s-side effects! Shop at Clock Incorporated today!"

Byezuke

Contrary to first impression, Clock Incorporated is not a corporation.

It's a private company run by Lilly Calculator - a being more clock than human at this point. Clocks for eyes, clocks for hands, clocks for days and years and centuries. Her automaton-clockwork engineers can insert virtually any kind of clock - mechanical, atomic, electric, or otherwise - right into your flesh with minimal interference to your circadian rhythms, heartbeat, breathing, or understanding of the construct of Time.

The benefits of having a clock literally embedded into your body are more than the minute amount of time saved having to look at clocks, it also unlocks your so-called "clock feel", a self-described sixth sense that can detect unusual fluctuations in time. They also make good foci for time-based spells like Haste and Slow.

Lilly's products have the habit of disrupting sleep during the first month of usage. Abilities are not typically produced until after this layover period. All Implants allow the host to automatically tell the time and sense time fluctuations.

  • Ocular Implant - Lose sight in that eye. Visually 'see' time fluctuations. (This is the second-most accurate method.) Gain a Slow gaze attack 1/Day.
  • Prefrontal Implant - Implant cannot be destroyed or fiddled with unless you die or suffer a serious concussion. Innately 'know' time fluctuations (this is the most accurate method). Your memory cannot be magically altered.
  • Metronome Arms - Mechanically strong full-arm prosthetic. While relaxed they naturally swing like metronomes. Physical attacks using the arms deal -1d4 damage and +1d4 damage on alternating rounds. Can 'feel' time fluctuations (a relatively inaccurate method).
  • Nose Implant - Full nasal replacement allows one to 'smell' time fluctuations (the least accurate method), as well as nearby clocks within 30ft, and personal watches within 15ft.

Armstrong's Long LAW Arms

"Oh yeah, my grandma recently got a L.A.W. Now she can reach the top shelf and slap pigeons out of the sky like they owe her money. Not allowed to play badminton anymore though..."

L.A.W. stands for "Long-Ass W.I.N.G." 

W.I.N.G. is a Wetwork-Incorporated Pneumatic Growth. It's your basic machine-flesh interfaced pneumatic limb. It's like the combination of a robot arm and an air-filled tire. What's with all the acronyms? Armstrong was in law enforcement.

The store itself is filled with inflatable arms flapping around in the breeze like a bunch of wacky inflatable tube men. Armstrong himself is a balding veritable big-blustering used-car salesman when it comes to LAW arms. He doesn't put any of them up for sale that he hasn't tested himself, though. This means at any particular time he presently has 5-13 simultaneously attached mismatched mechanical arms. He rides around on them like a lopsided Doc Ock, talking big and loud and juggling conversations and clients like chainsaws.

All LAWs require some getting used to. -2 DEX for the first month of use. All DEX penalties turn into equivalent bonuses if you're using them to balance like a tightrope walker.

  • The Long LAW Arm - The gold standard of pneumatic arms. Grants the user 10ft of reach. -2 DEX
  • The Longer LAW Arm - The golder standard of pneumatic arms. Grants the user 15ft of reach, but reduces their DEX by 4.
  • The Long John LAW - A LAW for your LAW, an arm on an arm. Unfolds like a big folding knife. When used in reduced format grants 10ft of reach. While extended grants 20ft of reach, but reduces DEX by 6.
  • The Long Arm of the LAW - Your standard Long LAW Arm with a custom mancatcher attachment. Special interchangeable parts include tasers, anti-fugitive spikes, barbed wire balls, and robotic crab pincers.

Minor Prosthesis Vendors

  • Dicks - You can probably guess what they sell here... That's right, sporting prosthetics! Want a tennis racket for a hand? Sure you do!
  • Leg Day - The owner is the sommelier of mechanical legs. The borderline between leg and rocket sometimes gets a little too blurry for comfort.
  • Only Feet - You'll be thankful for the owner's zealous love for feet when your foot gets gnawed off by an owl-wolf or you step in a gelatinous cube.
  • Witch Wigs - Owner has an inferiority complex due to the debate as to whether wigs are official prostheses, that fuels her passion for weaponizable wigs. Want a wig that's secretly a bomb? This place has you covered.
  • The Mark Memorial Motorized Pet Hospital - Hosts a mobile clinic for managing pet prostheses. The whole thing looks like a fat metal centipede and moves with the same consistency. Three resident vets: Mark Jr, Mark II, and Mark III. All replicants of the original Mark.
  • Nose To-Goes - According to the publication Machine, enormous metal noses are in high demand! The better to smell spells with.


EXCELLENT ENGINE VENDORS

Transmuters love engines, and Spellgold technology has opened up a whole new realm of transmutive possibilities. Mechanical engines are really just the tip of the iceberg, though. The engineers of the Machine Magic Market are extraordinarily competitive, and frequently attempt to sabotage each others' endeavors.


Kobold Engineering

"I swear, every time I look away from two proximate Kobold machines they start breeding."

Less an engineering firm than an engineering clan. The company is collectively owned and operated by the Kobold family, whose members number in the hundreds. Even the kids get to participate in some of the less dangerous jobs, such as managing the stores. If one had to point to a leader it would be the clan's eldest matriarch Bea, who's as hard of a hardass as they come, except with her grandkids.

Kobold Engineering specializes in compact personal engines - backpack to pocket sized. Their products cover a range of solutions arcane, mechanical, and chemical, and nearly all of them can be converted into bombs with a minor bit of tinkering. In fact, their products are turned into bombs so frequently that an entire cottage industry of urban bombmakers has arisen in their wake. The Secret Police would probably shut them down if they weren't one of their biggest customers.

Their main product line in the last year included:
  • Anti-Anxiety Box - Pocket sized, converts local anxiety into pleasant elevator music! The more anxiety present, the louder the music.
  • Kobold Splitter Ray - Backpack sized. Fires a beam that converts one big thing into two smaller things of equivalent mass and half the stats.
  • Pocket Water Purifier - Pocket sized. Converts any spell put into it into Purify Water.
  • Greaser 5000 - Backpack sized. Converts any spell put into it into Grease.
  • Knife-o-matic Mk.III - Pocket sized. Converts items finger-sized or smaller into knives of identical materials (DO NOT INSERT FINGERS... UNLESS ONE WANTS THEM TO BECOME KNIVES, IN WHICH CASE DO INSERT FINGERS.)
K.E.'s main operation is a network of self-contained and booby-trapped underground caves and testing sites extending directly downwards of their on-site locations. Not infrequent to feel minor earthquakes in their shops.


Helburger-Forsch

"Your emotional energy is underutilized. Buy Helburger-Forsch converter."

Heimlich Helburger and Hans Forsch jointly own the world's premier developer of emotional-arcane converters, which probably explains their poor sense of humor. Their workshop is a feedback loop of depressing factory conditions soulcrushing their emotionally harvested workers into profitability.

The look of an emotional-arcane converter is best described as spaceman fishbowl - clear, spherical, eerily reflective. What it lacks in style in makes up for in utility - allowing one to transmute emotions into spells is a price plenty are willing to pay. The bigger the emotion, the bigger the spell.

What they lack in sense of humor, they make up for in craft. Their designs are expensive, but nearly flawless. Engines undergo rigorous testing, and occurrences of Emotional Rampage Syndrome are now prevented in 83.3% of hull integrity breaches.

Helburger-Forsch didn't come up with these names. They call all their products "Helburger-Forsch converters". These names were given by the people.
  • "The Fishbowl" - A fishbowl helmet. Any time you experience an extreme emotion (anger, sadness, disgust, joy, etc.) you do not experience it and instead gain a Spell Slot / Magic Die.
  • "The Chrome Dome" - A shiny metal skullcap. Implanted directly onto the skull. You become immune to emotion-manipulating magic, but every time you talk to an NPC without another party member present the GM speaks in a monotone devoid of emotional context.
  • "The Bright Idea" - A lightbulb-shaped helmet. Generates light based on the magnitude of your present level of excitement. The stronger the magnitude, the stronger the range. (5-50ft, use a scale of 1-10). No illumination when unconscious, unless you're dreaming.

Trebuchet Kinetics

"When you want an engine with some umph!"

Sisters Katrina and Catrina Trebuchet are the so-called Queens of Kinetics. While their contracts are largely industrial, they do have a couple of side projects that are commercially available (and a few that aren't on the books). Kat and Cat frequently take their projects to The Mall, using the soul-stealing mannequins as target practice.
  • The Extradimensional Farter Vacuum - This dangerous device sucks out the air and loose material out of an extradimensional space, shooting it out of whatever ports might exist with a force upon the port proportional to the volume, potentially turning the entrance into a projectile.
  • Force to Weight Converter - Works only once, but like a seat belt it can save lives. Converts a single instance of force into pounds of fat on the wearer. One can potentially survive a lethal blow or fall only to succumb to heart disease some time later.
  • Big Bling Bang Machine - This explosive uses Spellgold (and by proxy Spell Slots / Magic Dice) to make a detonation proportional to inputted magic.
  • The Escaper - Kinetic battery. Halves one's effective combat speed when approaching enemies, and doubles their speed when running away from them.
  • Unnamed Poison Tester - Converts the lethality of a consumed poison into kinetic energy. More poisonous, more velocity. Either way cyanide will kill you.

Minor Engine Vendors
  • Rags to Riches - Purveyor of the reverse sewing machine and the cloth to gold converter. Both require an electrical potential.
  • Throng's Long LAW Arm Bomb Bongs - They sell bangin' long bongs made of Armstrong's LAWs. They also sell space heaters on the side.
  • Just Shrink Rays - On the surface it's a shop run by an ant colony. Turns out some of them are shrunken people, too.
  • Extradimensional Associates - They didn't invent the Bag of Holding, they just bought the company that made it. A venture capital corporation wearing the skinned faces of more brilliant companies. The original Bags of Holding made by Dimensional Holdings are rare collector's items and far superior to Associates' current product line.
  • Gas-Powered Poles - Fuel to poking converter. If you want to poke something really good from really far, this is your place. Minor modification can turn gas-powered sticks into bombs-on-sticks.

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