The Bazaar

"YOU ARE HERE — welcome, and breathe. No combat is permitted here, and the Network is pleased to let you walk it at no charge. Stroll. Spend a little. It has all been made very nice for you." — the Visitor's Map Board, Market Row

The third floor of The Descent, and the first one with a population. Below the preserve, the Stack starts keeping people: traders, fixers, a Town Watch, standing arrangements, and a rate for everything including you.

You come down the stair out of the Greenbelt and land in a plaza. Nothing attacks you. That is not a lull — it is the floor. Market Row, the Market Gate, Guild Row and the Commons are enforced safe ground, and the Network would like you to enjoy them.

What this floor is

A town. Where Floor 1 was corridors and Floor 2 was country, the Bazaar is streets with shops on them — an open market you cross on foot, with doors you can walk through, a fountain everyone is chipping in to fix, and a working economy that will happily take everything you carry.

It is also smaller than the Greenbelt and much denser. Four town spaces, one working dock, one ruin, and three rooms underneath that the map board declines to mention.

What's new here

A town that is genuinely safe. No spawns, no ambushes, no runner-on-runner damage anywhere in the town core. The rules are real and the game enforces them. See Where Things Are.
Shops. Floors 1 and 2 held the line on commerce; the Bazaar drops it. Thirteen counters take chits, and one of them buys anything you're carrying, no questions. See Commerce & Standing.
Standing with all nine sponsors. Every sponsor in the Stable keeps a ledger in this town, and every ledger is earnable here. Standing opens shelves you cannot otherwise buy from. It also resets when you die.
Work. Eight chains of paid errands, handed out by six people who are each, in their own way, using you. See The Work.
The Pinnacle Duel Ring. Fight another runner for chits and nobody dies. See The Duel Ring.
Skill milestones at 35, 40, 45 and 50. Every discipline you trained upstairs opens four more rungs here — the widest stretch of new abilities in the run so far. Skills stop climbing at 54 on this floor.
Casts get more expensive. Floor 2 priced them at 15–30 Mana. Floor 3's run 25–50, out of the same pool.

The people still doing the job

Nobody here is a local. The Bazaar was never harvested out of somewhere else — it was built, which is why it has a beautiful market and no townsfolk who actually live in it.

Mr. Albright — Faraday & Sons' bespoke fabricator, behind the velvet rope on Guild Row. The best shelf on the floor, and it will not open for a stranger.
Karen — Pop-Up Personnel, at the booth beside the stairs down. She has work for you. She has work for everyone.
Dr. Synthesis — NeuroSync's wellness counselor. Confidential sessions, transcribed and retained.
Felicia Brand — a former Concourse Resident who lost her Residency. Sells nothing. Trades information for stories about other runners.
Phil and Mr. Whiskerton — two leftovers from programming the Network scrubbed, still on the payroll of a show that no longer exists.
Captain Wray — Captain of the Town Watch, the reason the market is safe. Remembers your name.

Full files on all of them, plus the four who aren't friendly, are on The Cast.

What this floor isn't

The town is safe. The floor is not. The Loading Docks are live, the Frayed Quarter is the leveling ground, and there are three rooms under the market that nobody advertises. The stairs down sit past Karen's booth, on the far side of the one crossing that bites.

And the safety has a shape you can be caught outside of. There is a man in this town who cannot lay a finger on you in the plaza and will kill you the moment you meet him at the docks. He is not a bug. He is the lesson.

Sponsorship

Floor 3 presented by Faraday & Sons — "three generations of refinement" — with Pop-Up Personnel staffing, NeuroSync wellness, and Pinnacle Beverages running the ring. GruntCo holds the dock contract, Apex Salvage Group keeps a reclaim desk, Omni-Corp stocks the vending machine, Merritt Robotics keeps your household, and Janitech honours the standing you built on Floor 1. All nine are open to you. All nine are watching.

The fountain, alone in this town, carries no sponsor's name.

Next → Where Things Are — the town, the line, and the way down.

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