Meat Market

## Description:

The Meat Market, also known as the Bazaar of Flesh or Emporium of Entrails, is an Out-Realm marketplace, a Detached and Locked Hinterland located outside of the conventional Realms, used by all kinds of monsters, beasts, Demons, Undead, and villains alike as a means of producing, distributing, and selling biological matter. The Market is a giant maze of booths, stalls, storefronts and buildings, shacks and huts, and ramshackle lean-to's haphazardly slapped together; this labyrinth goes on for several miles in any given direction, and is constantly bustling with activity.

The JPCU came to discover the Meat Market in 1992 CE when a pair of Investigators were trailing an employee of Marshall, Carter & Dark Ltd. The duo of Investigators stumbled into the Meat Market and were forced to flee shortly thereafter as the Hinterland's denizens caught on to the pair's poorly constructed ruse. The SCP Foundation later corroborated the JPCU's information, and JPCU operations to investigate the Market further were undertaken.

### Physical Description & Attributes:

The Meat Market is only described as a giant marketplace, an open-air bazaar interrupted by random blocks of buildings of various sizes, each of radically different styles and from different time periods; few buildings sit in organized blocks, and even fewer have consistent electricity or plumbing, let alone phone service or internet access. The endless tents, stalls, vendors, shacks, huts, lean-to's, and other makeshift structures conceal the nefarious intelligence, the careful order and unspoken rules that govern and direct the uncontrolled chaos of the Market.

The Meat Market's climate usually sits in the sixties degrees (60's) Fahrenheit and rarely moves outside of that range naturally. The Market does not experience rain, and instead experiences shifting clouds of incredibly dense fog or miasma. The Market's sky extends only a few hundred (~400) meters into the sky, and its underground extends upwards of one (1) mile. The Market experiences a day and night cycle that matches that of Earth, but the Market has no visible Sun, sky, Moon, or stars; the dense fog prevents vision of the sky regardless of one's elevation. Due to the large population and application of Undead within the Market, there is no Sun or Moon that could harm or endanger any one group; instead, a pale blue light is cast over the Market for twelve (12) hours of the day, after which point the Market descends into total darkness for twelve (12) hours. This pale blue light tints everything in the Market blue, but does not put off ultraviolet rays that would harm certain Undead. Despite this day and night cycle, however, business does not stop just because the undefined blue light turned off for the day; business in the Market is conducted all day, every day, without break or holiday for most of its vendors and visitors.

Being a Sealed and Locked Hinterland, the Market has no official entrances. Instead, visitors must have access to one or more special teleportation Spells that bring the user to the Market; each of the Spells correspond to a particular area or district within the Market. As there are no formal entrances, these Spells teleport the user(s) to the nearest unoccupied space of appropriate size to the intended location.

#### Economy:

The Meat Market's economy operates via a great number of systems. Currencies from all over the Material Realm, other Realms, other Universes, mundane and paranormal currencies, all of it is accepted by someone at the Meat Market; additionally, the Meat Market also maintains a steady barter system within itself, not relying at all on external visitation to supplement it. A visitor can bring anything or nothing to the Meat Market and find someone willing to sell them something in exchange for some other thing in the visitor's possession, down to even memories, years of the person's life, limbs and organs, the person's Soul, etc. The unregulated nature of the Meat Market ensures that this system continues to function without disturbance; this system also allows for any service or currency to be converted into any other currency, although it may take some time or connections with dozens of various vendors. Biomass is often the de facto currency within the Meat Market, although almost everyone is also willing to deal in Ectoplasm; given the illegality of the exchange of humanoid Souls, Ectoplasm is the next best thing. Similarly, Suffers are also well-recognized as methods of payment, as are Pigs' Blood and Blood Diamonds.

The creation and trade of organic materials is incredibly lucrative, but also considered highly illegal in most parts of the K2 Universe; in cases where it (or certain aspects of it, like monster corpses and alchemical ingredients) are taxed in other parts of the Universe, the Meat Market stands as the perfect tax-free environment for someone to build their business. Tens of thousands of vendors produce and sell all kinds of products, from exotic monsters and animals to the corpses of monsters to exotic magical plants to lab-grown clones to magic Alchemy-made clones to specific mutations to drugs and toxins of both the mundane and paranormal varieties; if Magic and/or nature can make it, the Meat Market sells it somewhere for the right price.

##### List of Known Vendors:

1. The Tailor: An enigmatic gentleman vendor of impeccable fashion sense known for his flesh-shaping Magic; life-extending procedures, body modification of degrees both minor and drastic, and actual tailoring are all available for a high price, as The Tailor is considered the best at what he does.
2. Wholesteel Alchemy Solutions: A well-known Alchemy vendor in the Market most famous for his mastery of the creation of living bodies through Alchemy; to avoid trouble with the IRS, the vendor, Jackson Wholesteel, cannot provide the Souls for said bodies; bodies can be made-to-order, purchased from the available stock, or bought from the pre-made seasonal line-up.
3. The Spitroast: An infamous establishment within the Market that advertises itself as a "restaurant" with only meat-based products; the twist, of course, is that The Spitroast serves food from *all* kinds of meat, including flesh of humans, eldritch abominations, alien creatures, magical beasts, food enchanted with Magic, food laced with drugs or toxins both mundane and magical, etc.
4. The Blood Bank: The Market's largest vendor for blood of various kinds, owned and operated by Vampires of House [REDACTED]; blood of magical creatures, mortals and gods, and more are all on offer; blood is labeled if its source is known, which also allows the Bank to provide blood from specific people for the right price; the Bank is not liable for the deeds done with the blood its services provides.
5. The Sanitized Slab: Every Necromancer's favorite stop in the Market, owned and operated by "Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Doe," the Slab is the Market's largest vendor for whole dead bodies, both of the recently deceased and of the ancient and long-since-died; the Slab's network of informants and deliverymen, most of which are Undead or constructs, even snatch up bodies that drop within the Market's borders faster than their bodies turn cold.
6. Skin and Tones: Advertised as the best tattoo parlor in all the Realms, S&T is the Market's premium option for tattoos of a Magic nature, particularly those often considered illegal, taboo, or otherworldly in other Realms.
7. The Charnel House: The Market's closest thing to a treasury, mint, or recycling center; rotten, unused, unusable, or unwanted pieces of flesh are purchased at greatly diminished prices by the Charnel House, where it is ground up and rejuvenated into Biomass, a popular currency in the Market with near limitless potential in the hands of any of the Market's thousands of other vendors.
8. The Spinal Tap: A tavern/inn/bar open to all of the Market's inhabitants infamous for serving various forms of bodily fluids (neat and in cocktails) alongside potions, alcohols, and poisons of both mundane and magical varieties.
9. Bronze Hog BBQ: A Kentucky Barbeque restaurant known for its incredibly cheap but delicious soul food and barbeque; the restaurant, owned by Jones Jethro Jr., is also infamous for its small size and habit of attracting the more unsavory types of clientele, including Demons.

##### Other Factions within the Market:

1. The Ossuary Club: [REDACTED]
2. [THIEVES GUILD]:
3. Unseelie Court: Being the tricksters and lovers of violence, the Fae of the Unseelie Court tend to frequent the Meat Market; Tooth Fairies, Bone Fairies, and all sorts of delinquent Fae use the Market to buy and sell their macabre wares. The Unseelie Court within the Market, often called the [REDACTED] by locals, has no real authority but does have a small "neighborhood" within the Market dominated by Fae vendors that cater specifically to Fae needs; the [REDACTED] Mafia runs out of this neighborhood.
4. [REMOVED]

#### Government & Laws:

The Meat Market has no official government body and abides by no official laws or code of conduct. The inhabitants and visitors of the marketplace relish in the freedom from external forces and proudly declare that no major law-keeping organization holds sway within the Market. If one were to inquire with an inhabitant of the Market about the legal situation, their response would likely be to rob, kill, or mock said individual simply to prove a point; there are no laws in the Market.

However, should a visitor enter the shop, stall, vendor, or property of a business within the Market, that person is considered to be under that business owner's rules. The punishments for breaking any of those rules is usually death; dealing with new vendors is, therefore, a dangerous and tense experience, and often requires deep research beforehand to prevent accidentally breaking the vendor's personal code of conduct and angering them.

Various other factions within the Market claim to hold sway over certain regions or districts, operating in gangs or mafia-like structures. The Thieves Guild that operates within the Market is notoriously active and infamously skilled, but rarely operates within the Market and never against a vendor that has hired or helped the Guild in the past. Certain groups have attempted to lay claim to the entirety of the Market over the Market's long history, but none have done so for any extended period of time; such actions always result in immediate hostility from the Market's inhabitants and visitors alike, all of whom rely on the Market's anarchy and laissez-faire economics to operate and conduct business freely.