Chainlink #10: Better Magic Item Shops

As they are typically presented, magic item shops  are what I call "cheesecake fantasy," which is to say, they take the same approach to fantasy that pin-ups take to sex. It's artificial, easily digestible, without a terrible amount of substance. Cheesecake can be fun but it's too rich to stomach outside of small quantities. To me, if an element is cheesecake-y, it feels fake, like it's part of some artifice for players with no attempt at fitting itself into a plausible, thought out world. Magic item shops evoke this feeling in me for three reasons:

1. D&D economies are typically a bit weird and nonsensical at base, but magic items call more attention to that than most other things. Who can afford to pay so much for these things? Certainly not very many people. How are they staying in business? I don't know, it doesn't need to make total sense, but right now it feels as though the concept makes zero sense. 
2. In my experience, magic item shops take a lot of cues from antique dealers and curio shops, things that really belong in a more Victorian setting. I know most D&D games aren't strictly grounded in any one time period (my setting certainly isn't) but the obvious energy of anachronism feels very noticeable, and is perhaps the most responsible for the cheesecake feel of the concept. I  don't want my grimdark-caked boots to track all that Fuzzy-Middle-Ages over Pumat Sol's Early-Modern carpet. 
3. Magic items as presented in a shop feel less like legendary treasures and more like shiny souvenirs. I want them to feel impressive or legendary, but that's undercut by there being a whole shop of them sitting just around the block. It's like buying a lightsaber toy at Disneyland.

Now, despite all of that, I like the idea of alternate ways to obtain items, and, if it can be managed, things that players can sink their gold into. So, if we like the purpose magic item shops fill, what does a version of them more in line with a medieval fantasy setting look like? It should be noted I'm going purely off of vibes here. Maybe what I'm about to say is totally anti-medieval. But, given I don't tend to play with medievalists, vibes will do for now. 

First big change, they probably shouldn't be shops in the traditional sense. Buying magic items involves tracking down exceptionally gifted craftsmen with a talent for the mystic arts, so wizards.

Sidebar: One of the assumptions I've started to develop is that mage isn't necessarily a job in and of itself. People learn the art and carry it with them into their regular crafts. Granted, most of these wizards are still hermits, vagrants, ascetics, or any other variety of isolationist weirdos. But it's not unusual to find great blacksmiths, seamstresses, or potters amongst their ranks. Those towers get boring and lonely, you've gotta have a couple of ways to fill the time.

These guys are the closest thing to normal magic item shops, but they probably don't have any sort of back stock, meaning you're commissioning items, not buying them, and they only work with a handful of mediums. Find a wizard who's also a gifted potter, that guy can make you magical pots. He can't do swords, or boots, or cloaks. To me, it makes sense that these folks wouldn't have much use for gold (or actively eschew it) if they're not spending much time within society*. You'll have to pay in some other way, either through bartering or deeds. 

These folks will vary in terms of their capabilities and quality. Some will be smiths of merely exceptional talent, and accordingly, only able to produce rudimentary magical items. Others will be ranked amongst the greatest craftsmen to ever live, and will be accordingly able to create items of far superior quality. These folks are rarer, even more anti-social, and more expensive, but in my mind they're usually less ascetic, and more rich weirdo, so they'll probably accept gold. 

I've been mostly describing these folks as outcasts since I usually want there to be a bit of separation between the supernatural and the average citizen in my worlds, but I think if you find yourself in a big city, you'll probably be able to buy things like potions and scrolls, which I conceptualize of as taking less magical talent to craft than other items. Spell scrolls you can probably get from the scribe's guild, where they have one poor sop who can cast half a cantrip before she gets dizzy sitting in a room cranking out a scroll every week. It's painstaking, boring work, but access to low grade magic is pretty game changing for people, and the nobility will pay handsomely for such magics. I figure potions are something that you can get from folk healers or doctors who may have a slight aptitude for magic. 

I think the big takeaway I have from thinking this through is that specificity goes a long way here. Magic item shops as they usually exist are too broad and fuzzy to feel particularly real or grounded. If you narrow their scope and recontextualize them a bit, they don't feel quite as off when slotted into the standard fantasy milieu. I had a fair amount of ideas when writing this post, and I'll probably be back next time with some riffs on the ideas contained within. Probably a list of magic item merchants. 

*What does this wizard need gold for? Roll 1d4

1: Alchemy. They thinks the secret to immortality is tied to the metal, and are trying to create a tincture from gold that will extend his life.

2: They're running low on supplies, and will need to travel to the city to buy ink, paper, chickens, drugs, etc.

3: They owe a yearly tithe to a powerful monster (dragon, beholder, etc) in exchange for a particular service. 75% chance it's just a protection racket.

4: They're building a giant statue out of gold and they need every little bit they can get.

Wizard Cancer

This one wound up more ghoulish than expected. Don't know how canon it is. Everything within probably happens, but not regularly. 

Cancer has been with us for as long as we have fought not to die. It is an unraveling of the self as a unit working towards a singular goal, a parasite that emerges from within the self as a result of traumatic, microscopic damage to some of the smallest component parts of our being. Cancer disregards its place as part of a functioning whole, seeking only to grow and consume, to its own detriment, and eventual extinction. Cancer is chaos, hunger, life incarnate.

The universe is unraveling. It does not remember what it is, how it should function. It is at war with itself. Its brain is filled with tumors. Magic is the milk of reality's cancer, the ultimate product of its slow decay. The use of magic, therefore, begets cancer. The presence of the arcane within a body is often at risk of sending one's cells into the deepest sort of katabasian spiral, a maddening, nigh unstoppable descent. Many elder wizards are full of cancers. Their throats swell with rocky lumps, their tongues swell, their fingers bulge. Their poor brains are packed full of tumors, smooth and slick, jostling along with the tides of thought like stones worn smooth at the bottom of a riverbed.

Wizard's Cancer

Among those who practice the art, there are many folk traditions that they embrace to ward off the disease. Scarification and ritual tattoos in vulnerable areas of the body, and piercings of silver and gold are said to help. Most wizards have elaborate tattoos all along their hands, sometimes on their throats, and silver piercings through their tongues. Some go further, piercing their ears, noses, lips, cheeks, or foreheads (usually this means something resembling a dermal piercing but some do drive spikes into their own heads). Wizards use staves and wands to distance themselves from their magic, hoping the wood will bear the cancer for them (when it works, the wood gnarls, which is why they always have those twisting, knobbly things instead of straight canes). Surgical removal of tumors is often attempted to varying degrees of success. Wizards rarely throw these tumors away, once removed.

Wizard Cancers

A wizard's tumor is a dangerous and sometimes valuable thing. They are treasured the most by other wizards and occultists. They are good offerings to spirits and gods, they are powerful reagents in spells and potions. Eating one is said to bolster your power, or bestow blessings upon your bloodline. Sometimes a tumor has magic of its own. When you kill a wizard, that magic might activate, whether as an explosion of their bottled up potential magical energy, or as fleshy serpents peeling their way out of the cadaver and leaping towards you with gummy mouths.  

Cancer Wizards

Because they're so valuable, some wizards cultivate cancer, in themselves or others. Growing tumors is a delicate art rooted in biomancy and beast magic, with its own practices and ethos. Common hosts include one's self, farm animals, familiars, or apprentices. This is generally a good reason to be wary of wizards that have had lots of apprentices or who keep many at once, they might be keeping the majority of you around for subtle (but often ruinous) experiments. Tumor growth can be used offensively theoretically, if you make them grow fast enough, but it's such a slow death that it's not particularly common for biomancers to whip this technique out against you, unless they're really good at it. Some people might think to use it as a weapon for assassination, but it's often too slow for that too. Better to just push the king down the stairs and make it look like an accident.

Cancer Wizards?

Sometimes, contact with a powerful source of magical radiation will cause tumors to grow within a person that have the initial magical waveform scraped into their DNA. This usually results in the person with the tumor being capable of magic, often pretty powerful stuff, at the cost of their bodily health. Using the tumor feeds the tumor and encourages further rebellion. Such mages burn bright and fast, and are often dead within a handful of years, if not months. Their cancers are the second most valued by other wizards. The first most valued are the ones that can talk. 

Cancer Wizards!

It's super rare, but it happens. It takes a potent magically charged tumor, ideally one developed from brain tissue. If it gets big enough and is fed consistently, it can awaken. Often these tumors seek to usurp their hosts, and sometimes they succeed, replacing their brains fully, or extracting themselves from their hosts. Some powerful wizards are actually tumors grown from the people they appear to be. If they haven't body jacked their host, they will be, to be delicate, fucking disgusting looking. Giant ambulatory tumors are just really horrible to look at. They might embrace it, or they might seek to use beast magic to modify their form into something more personable.