>>5189472>>5189524>>5189577>>5189773>>5189794>You put nearly all of it to the debt, taking only a handful for yourself.>Your current debt to Bartholomew Stolze sits at approximately 19,800,000 Ducats. (20 Brands)The markets are always open in Babylonia.
Beyond being one of the more developed powers in the Flooded World, the island itself is a crossroads of commerce. She rides just at that sweet spot, where the trade winds converge, and unites the north and southern hemispheres, and the post-Cataclysmic World.
Travelers of every race, creed, flag and color arrive, bringing the goods and cultures of their disparate homelands, bunkers, or migrant fleets. Stone, ore and lumber from the Megiddan Empire. Furs and ice from the Nordling Seas. Spice and silk from the Far Orient.
Anything and everything could be found in the Free City-State of Babylonia, and her tropical islands known as the Belt of Dreams. At any point in time, even in the wee and witching hours, there’s always a deal being cut, and fortunes exchanging hands. Most, but not all, legal.
Foggy Bottom comprises one of the city’s dockside districts, with a medium-sized dock for trade and cargo ships. It’s hardly the largest, losing out to Bracken Plaza for ship berths, Upper Garden for residential housing, and Saltside Corner for dense clusters of industrial complexes.
What it does have, however, is ready and immediate access to Grand Market Square, linking the outer and middle rings of Babylonia together. Not that it’s the only gate, that would be an urban planning nightmare. But it is the one that’s most convenient for the most people going to-and-from Dockside.
You know the way like the back of your hand, and settle neatly into the marketplace to kill some time. In any other situation, you would’ve schlepped yourself directly to the ship. But there’s more than enough time between your arrival back to Babylonia, and the actual time on the paper for your transfer. More than enough to get a decent meal that isn’t sequenced proteins, and something that isn’t scurvy-b-gone to wash it down.
Squinting at a billboard menu, you mutter to an expectant server: “I’ll have a number nine, a breakfast special, and the chef’s pot.”
Babylonia is a city that seldom sleeps. But thankfully, it is a city that always eats. One would be hard-pressed to not find at least one food vendor open, especially returning after a late-night shift. Even as dawn comes slowly over the city spires, Mount Gugalanna and the Great Heroes, there are dozens of restaurants already several hours into their shifts.
Bakers fire up their ovens, cooks ignite their stoves, and line chefs prepare their deep fryers for the morning rush. In the market square, where the inner, middle and outer rings intersect, everyone is equal in the search for breakfast. Only the truly desperate, inconsiderate, and/or "fresh off the boat" would violate the inviolable sanctity of the breakfast queue.
(cont.)
