Moon Market

The Moon Market is a notorious marketplace on Cocoro, which gets its name because from the sky it can only be reached by a ruge which is constantly moved around to a different moon. From the land, however, it can be reached from the surrounding areas normally. The Moon Market is a hotbed of activity at all hours, and is always crowded with vendors and customers—not just from Cocoro, but from other planets as well. In fact, the Moon Market is one of the largest, best known, and most comprehensive black markets on all the treaty worlds.

The Moon Market is one of the few places in Cocoro that is not part of the territory of one of the world's notorious bosses. While it borders the territories of three different bosses, the Moon Market formally belongs to none of them, being administered jointly by a consortium of bosses who have uncharacteristically allied for this purpose. In practice, not all the bosses in the consortium have equal power; three in particular tend to dominate the Market affairs. These three are Brosnya, boss over the territory he calls Dragon Lake; Lady Mestershire, boss of the Province, and the Batibat, boss of Hungertown. Together, these three more or less dominate the other nominal members of the consortium and are principally responsible for setting the Moon Market's policies. Of course, these three bosses don't always agree, and may find uses for the other bosses in the consortium as pawns in their disputes with their peers.

Many restricted or forbidden goods are bought and sold in the Moon Market, and officially the Market itself is illegal. This accounts for its concealment; the bosses of the Market keep it hidden from the authorities and entreat its customers not to reveal its location to anyone who can't absolutely be trusted. In practice, the Market's location is a very poorly kept secret, and only the most incompetent seekers would be unable to find it if they really want to. However, due to a combination of subornment and the recognition that it brings in money to their world, the Cocoran government has little real desire to enforce its interdiction of the Market's activities. Its supposed concealment gives them an excuse not to do anything about it, allowing them a plausible deniability through the pretext that they're trying to put a stop to the Moon Market, but can't find it.

Layout

The Moon Market covers a roughly circular area about 850 meters in diameter, with three smaller circles attached irregularly around the side. It is surrounded by buildings and by some of the strange and unnatural rock structures that abound on Cocoro, thick enough that the Moon Market can't be seen from the outside and there is no way to enter it except through the buildings. This includes by climbing over the buildings; the bosses of the Market continually maintain a ruge over the Market, ensuring that large vehicles and anything else that can't fit through the environing buildings cannot get into the Market from outside. Rather, the ruge connects the area above Cocoro to a moon elsewhere in the Dupliverse, possibly far distant from Cocoro itself. The only way for large vehicles to enter the Market is through the ruge, which requires them to travel to the moon where the ruge is located. The Market bosses move the ruge every six weeks; though its movement times are regular, however, the locations are not. There is no pattern to where the bosses move the ruge to, and typically the only way to find out its location is through word of mouth. In practice, this, again, is something of a poorly kept secret, but it's not quite as poorly kept as the Market's location on Cocoro, and the fact that the ruge can be moved at will means that if knowledge of its location ever does reach the wrong hands the bosses can move it again to correct their mistake. Thus the ruge forms another line of defense in case the government ever did decide to try to take out the Market; the forces they'd be able to move through the buildings are limited, and the ruge would prevent them from bringing in reinforcements by air. The cost of perpetually maintaining the ruge over the Market is enormous, but the bosses' profits from the Market are more than enough to cover it, and they apparently think the additional security worth it.

Most of the activity of the Market takes place in the central circle, the smaller adjoining circles being used mostly as landing sites for the few craft that do enter the Market by air and as rest areas. The Market proper is a scattered mess of permanent booths, temporary stands, and strolling or standing merchants without any sort of storefront; the narrow alleys between the sellers are thronged with customers pushing past each other in all directions. To a first-time visitor, the floor of the Market may seem cluttered and chaotic, but the experienced marketgoer can find hidden patterns to the chaos. The permanent booths, in particular, serve as landmarks, and even many of the temporary stands or standless merchants come back to the same location again and again. Moreover, certain parts of the market tend to be devoted primarily, though not exclusively, to particular purposes. Someone looking for music would be best served to visit the northeastern corner of the Market, while someone seeking the services of a skilled hacker would be most likely to find what he seeks at the center. Because of the difficulty for newcomers of navigating the Market's congested maze, there are people who make a living there as guides, bringing visitors to what they seek in return for a small payment.

One thing conspicuously missing from the Market is duplicators. The Market bosses don't want anyone able to come into the Market except through the begirdling buildings, and have expressly ensured that no duplicators are ever brought or built there. This means, among other things, that hungry visitors can't just duplicate food or drink at will, and that the Moon Market is one of the few places in the Dupliverse where a vendor can actually hope to sell refreshments to visitors.

History

The Moon Market is some sixty years old, having been founded by a powerful boss named Bigmouth who ruled a territory including the Market's present-day location. Bigmouth made deals with some of the neighboring bosses to coöperate to found a market in the area that would enrich them all, convincing them to give him some leeway in construction and in attracting people to his territory in exchange for a share of the profits. In fact, while the founding of the Market was real, it was also part of an elaborate plan of Bigmouth's to seize his rivals' territories. However, his second-in-command, Serafadi, was uncomfortable with his master's treachery, and feared that his scheme would lead to an all-out war among the bosses that would be disastrous for everyone concerned. Accordingly, he decided to implement some treachery of his own, and sold out Bigmouth to his neighboring bosses in return for being recognized as the new ruler of most of Bigmouth's territory. As part of the deal, however, he ceded the Market, declaring it an effective no-man's-land over which no boss would have sole dominion.

When the Market first appeared, the Cocoran government was not as apathetic toward it as it is today. Indeed, in one of the government's rare rouses to action, it sent a contingent of enforcers to put a stop to the Market's illegal activities. Getting wind of the government's plans in time to prepare, the then bosses of the Market managed to acquire the means to produce a ruge that would keep out the bulk of the government's forces. As it turned out, the ruge was unnecessary to repel that particular attack, as the government did not yet know the Market's location, and before their forces could find it bosses finagled an undercover deal with the Overcouncil, offering the government a share of their profits and convincing them that the Market brought in enough income to be a benefit to the world despite its illicit activities. Though the council seemed mollified, the bosses nevertheless kept the ruge up and took measures to defend the Market in the case of another attempted shutdown in the future.

Wares

In the Dupliverse, in the era of the Two Commodities, physical objects are, in and of themselves, by and large useless as trade goods. It's said that the only things left of real mercantile value are energy and knowledge. Energy is an essentially fungible resource that the merchants of Cocoro are in no better a position to supply than anyone else. That leaves knowledge, and this is something that many of the traders in the Moon Market are willing and able to provide. For sale there are secrets from many worlds, restricted information of all kinds, private details of notable individuals and their doings and holdings, all available for the right price.

But not all knowledge is sold in literal form. Physical objects may be freely duplicatable, but first one has to have one to duplicate, or the knowledge to create it. Thus some such objects are sold in the Moon Market, objects that the buyers do not already have access to. This includes artworks, especially the outré baberies characteristic of Cocoro. But it also includes less licit wares. Drugs, restricted weapons, proscribed life forms (sold as pets or for other purposes), and more can all be had in the Moon Market if the price is right.

Another form knowledge takes is that of service, with providers putting their skills to use for pay. This, too, can be had in the Moon Market, both in legal form and illegal. The former include designers willing to fashion novel objects to their clients' specifications, teachers willing to pass on their skills for suitable renumeration, and prostitutes proficient at pleasing their clients. As for the latter, one can in the Moon Market acquire forged supernumerary licenses, passports, and other documents; arrange for illegal duplication; even set up an assassination or another inconvenience for an enemy.

Regulars

While multitudinous new customers pass through the Moon Market constantly, many of the shopkeepers are there daily, or nearly so, and are fixtures of the place; quite a few even take shifts with their own duplicates to make sure they're manning their stations around the clock. A few of these market regulars have become particularly well known, either because of some odd quirk, because of their skill level, or because of the unusual service they provide.

Valin Mengerian has a reputation as one of the best detectives in the Dupliverse—a reputation no doubt highly exaggerated, but one he's eager to capitalize on. He's decided to set out a shingle in the Moon Market because he knows anyone in desperate enough need to find him here is also likely to be desperate enough to pay him well. Uda Iida sells new identities: with her services, a client can get a whole separate name and legal existence, in addition to their original identity, with a whole new quota of permitted duplicates and everything else it entails. Uda is not the only vendor to specialize in this service, but she is regarded as the best and most reliable—and, accordingly, she's also the most expensive. Mascome Brietch, on the other hand, is apparently the only one to sell what he sells: real humans and other ellogous beings, permanently paralyzed through a proprietary process and available for use as distinctive décor. He ensures that the duplicates he sells are declared legally destroyed to avoid notice, but in fact they're still fully alive, though immobile—untended, they'd die of thirst, but he encourages his clients to simply periodically renew them via duplicator so that won't happen.

There are also a few Moon Market regulars who aren't selling anything, and who maintain a presence in the market for other reasons. Myrya Sume, a native of Cocoro who resembles little more than a floating sphere with mismatched eyes, spends most of her time in the Moon Market just watching, or frequently asking visitors a barrage of seemingly purposeless questions. If confronted, she claims to just enjoy observing and people-watching, but some suspect she may have more sinister motives. Bantac Kelon has declared himself something of a freelance enforcer, doing his best to keep order in the Market though he has no formal authorization to do so from the bosses; while he's not the only individual to do this, he's the most prominent and best known. As his position is unofficial, he receives no salary for it, but many of the merchants are appreciative enough of his work to give him some free tokens of their gratitude. Cheli Dharumada is a near-constant presence at the Market, but not as a service provider but as a recruiter. Representing the Sesatarians, an interplanetary mercenary organization, Dharumada is always on the lookout for potential new members, and figures that those who would find their way to the Moon Market, in having shown themselves both resourceful enough to find it and morally flexible enough to be willing to do business there, may be suitable candidates.