The Dead Market By Big Puffin Games

Instruments: 1d6





Game Description 


Once a year, the living are permitted to mingle with the dead in a marketplace of horrors and delights. You have 24 hours to see all you can before you must leave.



Game Content Warnings 

These are content warnings that are from the game prompts and are present in all playthroughs.





Playthrough Content Warnings 

These are content warnings specific to this playthrough only.



Game Playthrough

Word Count: 654      Played: Nov 11, 2024





5. Help a Lost Soul

Roll: 6 

I'm not the most knowledgeable person, so when a tiny little skeleton, no larger than the size of my thumb, asked for help in finding a certain stall, I almost set it back down and marched away. But something about them, perhaps the size, or the cadence of their voice (how like a dream it was!) compelled me to help them, even if it was against my interests. 

For hours we wandered in between the stalls, each selling a myriad of goods which, by all accounts would have taken my eye, except for the lost little soul in my palm, pinching and prodding me forward. 

In what to me felt like only the passage of less than an hour, quickly turned to six by the time we found the small bed-maker this soul sought. Without so much as a word, they hopped off my palm and scurried into the depths of one of the pillows on a child-size bed. 

The stall-keeper was nowhere to be found. 

Hours: 6 / 24

1. Explore the Market

Roll: 3

Whatever my intentions before had been completely displaced by my previous actions and I decided that I would rather search the area for something of my interest than to attempt to make my way back to where I had previously been browsing. 

All notions of anything I had previously thought interesting was gone from my mind as I perused the various scents and sights of a food court, made of both the ichors of and for the dead, and the fruits and meats of the living. 

A skeleton was roasting a pig, while next to them a corpse was kneading what would otherwise be dough, except for the foul color of ooze which seeped from it periodically. I kept my distance from them, no matter how tempting the pig was. 

Instead I settled upon a small child, human and living in appearance, who was selling sweets and fruit. I purchased for myself three apples, a small tub of caramel, which I consumed immediately, and a box of fudge for tomorrow. At least that is what I told myself knowing full well that I would be eating it within three hours time. 

Hours: 9 / 24

5. Help a Lost Soul

Roll: 6

Perhaps word had gotten around amongst the un-dead that I was a helpful soul, or at least a gullible one, for a second, though admittedly much larger, skeleton, one the size of my shin, tugged at my trousers and asked for me to help them find their way as well. 

And having helped that other one, I felt as though I had no way of discarding this one, and as such lifted it to my shoulder, where it clung to my hair as we made our way through the stalls.

I suspect something must be afoot, for, as previously happened, what appeared to me to merely be minutes, though they were long minutes, was indeed another 6 hours of my time, searching for this bone's stall. 

This one was completely different, it was a spice shop, though none of the spices kept their appearance longer than a few seconds. Each grew and changed into something completely new and I stood there mesmerized by the changing of the herbs only to find that my passenger had left and I was now alone. 

Hours: 15 / 24

6. Leave the Market

I spotted a third skeleton, slightly larger, start to approach me, and having had my fill of playing escort to the undead decided it was time to take my leave of the place. 

It was quite unfortunate that I would not be able to explore the market to my content, as so many of the different stalls called to me with both their exotic and mundane wares. But there was always next year. And there will always be more time after my death.



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