The market has no address. It has intermediaries, back rooms, and people who know people. Prices are not posted. What you pay depends on what you need, how badly you need it, and whether the seller has correctly read the desperation in your expression. The figures here are what those who know the city call baseline — a starting point for a negotiation neither party will describe as such. The GM adjusts freely based on circumstances, risk, and the particular hour of the night.
A broader picture of Soltherra’s economy — wages, daily costs, and the rest of what things actually cost — lives at Economy.
Substances move through the outer districts the way water moves through old stone — everywhere, quietly, and by paths the city has officially declared do not exist. Each one has its population, its price, and its particular relationship with the word again.
| Substance | Price | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Slow Herb | 3–5 Bits per pouch | Dried leaf, smoked or chewed. Produces a gentle calm, dulls anxiety, and stretches the hours into something almost bearable. Common in the outer districts. Technically illegal. Universally tolerated. The city guard smokes it too — which may explain the tolerance, and possibly the tolerating. |
| Ember Dust | 2–3 Crowns per vial | Ground mineral, inhaled through the nose. A few minutes of euphoria, followed by confidence, sharpened senses, and the persistent conviction that you are handling everything extremely well. Lasts several hours. The crash — exhaustion, paranoia, the slow understanding that you were not, in fact, handling it — arrives reliably afterward. Popular with Upper Caste thrill-seekers and caravan guards who need to stay alert through long watches. Addictive. |
| Pale Drop | 5–8 Crowns per dose | Liquid taken under the tongue. Within the hour, the user is conscious but fully inside a hallucination that registers as more real than the room they are sitting in. Lasts 4–6 hours. Some users report shared visions with others who took the same batch — scholars dispute whether this is the substance, the suggestion, or something neither camp wants to be right about. The High Caste use it for recreation. The Casteless use it to be somewhere else for a while. Highly addictive. |
| Void Salt | 15–25 Crowns per pinch | Rare crystalline substance. Temporarily shuts down channeling entirely — the user cannot channel and cannot be affected by channeling for several hours. The practical applications have not been lost on anyone. Criminals use it to neutralize channeler guards. Pit fighters use it to remove the gift advantage before a fight. Certain Upper Caste assassinations are rumored to have involved it, though the rumors never come with names attached. Possession is punished severely. Extremely illegal in a way that Slow Herb is not. |
Papers, weapons, passage, information. The black market sells things the city controls, things the city prohibits, and things the city pretends do not require a market because acknowledging the demand would raise uncomfortable questions about the supply.
| Item / Service | Price |
|---|---|
| Forged caste papers | 50–200 Crowns (quality varies) |
| Smuggled weapon (no questions asked) | 150–300% of standard price |
| Hired assassin — Lower Caste target | 100–300 Crowns |
| Hired assassin — Middle Caste target | 500–1,500 Crowns |
| Hired assassin — Upper Caste target | Negotiated. Rarely below 5,000 Crowns. Often paid in favors. |
| Stolen magitech item | 30–70% of legitimate price |
| Passage out of the city (no papers) | 50–150 Crowns |
| Pit fight entry (spectator) | 2–5 Crowns |
| Pit fight bet (minimum) | 1 Crown |
| Information — street-level | 5–20 Bits |
| Information — institutional | 5–50 Crowns |
| Bribe — city guard, outer districts | 2–10 Crowns |
| Bribe — city guard, inner districts | 20–50 Crowns |
Black market prices are not stable. They respond to supply, to risk, to whether there was a crackdown last week, and to how clearly a buyer’s face communicates that they have no fallback option. The figures above are baselines — what the market looks like in ordinary times, from a reasonably informed buyer who has not just explained how urgently they need this.
The GM adjusts freely. A city on lockdown doubles certain prices and makes others temporarily unavailable. A buyer with no obvious alternative pays more. A buyer with options, patience, or the right introduction pays less. The market reads people. That is why it has survived as long as it has.
See also: Economy — currency, wages, living costs, and what everything else in Soltherra costs.
© Soltherra RPG System