Market

In the center of the city, a popular tourist market has turned into hub of black market trades. It's a "known secret." If you're looking for medicines, weapons, or strange artifacts, you go to the market. One particular store- An old coffee shop- has been fitted with dozen of makeshift stalls, each manned by someone brave, or foolish enough to venture out and bring something back. Here's a catalog of some of today's offering.

Item: Sealed package of Kurdizov Medicines

Price: $750, or best offer

Notes: The vendor would not allow me to open the package, it was sold as is. The medicine inside could be expired, broken, or entirely not present. But here, it was bad practice to question a vendor's stock. The outside of the box claimed that there were three dozen packs of pain management medication. The vendor claimed it would be useful if I was going back into the zone- Or looking for a fun night. He claimed that this was scavenged from one of the still operating hospitals - A "friend" managed to misplace some incoming medicine off a palette. I offered the merchant five cell phones with unlocked SIM cards. He accepted the trade- but request I give him a couple packs out of the box. I agreed.

Item: Tourist Map w/ annotations

Price: Best offer

Notes: A map of Downtown Palmyra, hand annotated with notes of blockades, ongoing pockets of conflict, and sightings of several creatures. The vendor also offered to throw in some rumors for free, about some supplies that'd been left behind when the Liberty Lions pulled out of an old warehouse. He told me to act quick though, as he'd already told half a dozen other people the warehouse's location. The information was approximately a week old. I declined the map, but offered the merchant a pack of pain medication for a blank map - Apparently he'd stopped by all the big tourist spots and grabbed as many boxes as he could carry. I was fairly convinced that he'd lay claim to almost every tourist map in the city.

Item: Leather Journal, heavily damaged

Price: Free

Notes: A sickly looking woman had a stall at the very back of the shop. In fact, I almost missed her entirely, as she was crammed behind palettes, and crates. She wasn't energetic like the other vendors, she didn't beckon for me, or shout out her wares. Instead, she sat, staring off into the distance. When I approached, she didn't even look up. It wasn't until I reached for the journal that her attention snapped to me, stopping me in my tracks. She warned that the notebook had been recovered in the heart of the city, where the worst of the Flash's anomalies resided. It had belonged to a young man who'd died in the crossfire between the Feds and the Lions. When he was struck and killed, he'd been searching for his older sister. He'd heard rumors that she'd recently moved through the area, and after being separated for months, he had hoped they could be reunited. The journal detailed the young man's final days.

She didn't outright say that it was cursed, but that's what it felt like. I decided not to buy this one.