World's Delight Market

In the Allseas Port, all roads lead to the World's Delight Market. This grand square, boxed in on all sides by multi-storied shops and shopkeep housing, contains rows and rows of stalls - some of which have essentially turned themselves into semi-permanent structures through years of improvement and near-perpetual use. Wooden boning locks in canvas sheet roofs, which provide shade during the summers and block out the rain while still letting in some sunlight and cool breezes.    The market is always packed with Selkies of every fashion and background. Foot traffic is frequently congested during the day. Wagons, carts, and pack animals are forbidden in the market and its surrounding neighborhoods during the daytime to alleviate congestion, and must come here at night. The nights end up just as congested as the days, as a steady stream of wagons, donkeys, and hand-carts slowly move down the alleyways and streets to drop off goods for processing and sale. There is never a quiet time here, and local shopkeeps and bakers who live on the second and third floors of their market-shops have had to adapt to a sounsdcape of endless chaos.    The market square is more of a long rectangle, with a domed administrative building at each end. These domes each have wells and public latrines nearby, and have a reputation as miserable places: this is where the drudgery of permit work is left to rot beside people with various complaints and disputes. The long hours spent here waiting in the hot sun near the baking public latrines to discuss paperwork or get a dispute put on a court docket has left many people with a bad impression. Bad enough for these domes to feature jokingly in many selkie media depictions of hell. It may be miserable over at the waiting benches, but these are very efficient centers of paperwork that work day and night to keep the market operational.    The rectangle itself is a maze of shops, stalls, and avenues, filled with every kind of good and ware. Magic items, firearms, rare spices, chemical solutions, strange medicines, exotic animals, unusual clockwork gizmos, and rare cultural artifacts from far away can all be found here. If you are willing to pay the right price, anything can be yours. If rumors of a (literally) underground black market here are true, it may really be anything.    Another entrance to the market has a fairly tall tower marking it, serving as an aerial marker for navigating the dense rows. This is the Tower of Consideration, an old jail that has since been fabulously refurbished into a luxury rest stop and place for business negotiations. A truly wealthy patron does not wander the rows, but comes here to browse catalogs of goods and hire couriers to go into the maze to fetch them their desires. This is a popular place for political meetings as well, given its status as neutral ground.   Across the square from the Tower of Consideration is the Purser's Gate, known for its well-placed banking house owned by Clan Woshalui. Many trading companies and clans have small storehouses and chapterhouses around the Purser's Gate, to host their representatives and more efficiently manage goods distribution. Many of these chapterhouses work with local merchants to handle logistics and storage, smoothing over some of the nighttime chaos brought on by all those rushing porters and carts.    Each of the four gates into the market have a heavy guard presence, mostly from the Selkie Sacred Guard - but also notably from the Kamahep criminal network. While the guards and gangsters usually consider each other enemies, they work together to punish thieves and keep the peace here in the market. Any pickpocket or burglar who strikes here is going to face heat not only from the law, but from the underworld. Many amateur thieves have wound up gutted and dumped into the bay after trying to fence goods they stole from this market, unaware that the Kamahep tolerates no intrusion into their domain.