Chapter 6: The Carnival Markets
The Carnival Markets attract traders and revellers from far and wide. The bustling bazaars are raucous and sensory affairs, full of colour, full of life. Wandering the crowded streets you can see the great diversity of the people of the WasEarth. You could spend a lifetime documenting and recording the curiosities on display and never truly capture it all.
RePurpers
Of the traders who attend the Carnival Markets the sellers of old-tech are perhaps the most common. RePurpers travel the Oddscapes in their quest for salvage and the remnant tech left by our ancestors. Most of my photo-rigs, vidKit and drones are made from RePurp tech. I have procured some rare treasures whilst perusing the clutter of RePurp being bought and sold. RePurpers are resourceful and pragmatic folk who love a good haggle.
It is in the outskirts of the Dead Cities where the most valuable RePurp can be found - in the stinking hills of ancient landfill sites that sit mouldering beneath the dust. It can be grim work but every RePurper lives with the dream of one day finding something of great worth. The big score.
RePurp
I love the abstract chaos of RePurp. It’s tarnished, well-used beauty. It serves as a reminder of our our past but also as a symbol of our ability to survive, to remain.
Sportch Traders
But it’s not all about old tech, there are also new tech sellers who reform the RePurpers’ salvage, splicing and melding it with Spore to create engines and conduits and constructs. SporeTech, or more commonly ‘Sportch’, is fundamental to the flourishing of the NeoTribes and the markets are full of it.
Sportch sellers are often living adverts for their own wares and they come dressed to impress.
Sportch
Sportch is everywhere. From the colossal Spore Harvesters of the Northern Scarlands to the intricate mycelial circuits used to power the ServerOrchards and construct bodies of our Alt-Life citizens. Sportch is beautiful and chaotic and wonder to behold.
Fungalchemists, Mycaumaturges & Savvies
As well as the throngs of traders and revellers there are visitors who have other more arcane wares to sell. Fungalchemists and Mycaumaturges manipulate the Spore to create new properties and applications, they are biochemists and synthetic wizards, master matter manipulators. They keep themselves to themselves and aren’t normally keen to have their image captured…
And then there are the Savvies, the collective name for the myriad of Shroomsayers, Sporewitches, Sha-priests and abHealers who, like the shaman and druids of old, slip into the hidden spaces, the ruptures and rips created by the Spore. They return with insights and teachings which they trade for food and Sportch.
Savvies are often solitary wanderers of the Oddscapes but they always converge on the Carnival Markets and festivals of celebration to converse and share their sublime treasures. Despite their eccentricities and often strange appearance, Savvies are well respected for their understanding of the Spore and its secrets. We will meet more of their kind as we travel deeper into the Oddscapes.
