First Impressions
Osket’s General and Adventuring Goods is a two-story building with a small adjacent stable right next to the Guild Gate – one of the first buildings a new arrival in the city sees.
Both the building and the adjacent stable is nothing to write home about – just your run of the mill, average Ptolus establishment. Well-kept, but presenting nothing that would differentiate this place for the dozens of similar locations throughout the city.
And yet, Osket’s is almost always busy, sometimes even during the late hours of the night.
The Owner
Osket’s General and Adventuring Goods is, as the name implies, owned by Osket – a human in his mid-fifties who walks with a pronounced limp.
Before opening his store, Osket was an adventurer. Originally hailing from Ptolus, he traveled all over the world, not only carrying out quests but also working as a mercenary for a little while. Throughout his two decades of adventuring, he made many connections with traders, other adventurers, and more. When he returned to Ptolus, he used the money he’d made adventuring and those connections to establish Osket’s Goods, making use of those same connections to drive traffic to his shop.
Osket is a gregarious fellow, quick to assist whoever comes into his store – although he has employees, he still works just as he used to, often leaving said employees with nothing to do. This is exacerbated by the fact that Osket lives inside his store, his home taking up half of the establishment’s top floor. This means he’s liable to popping into the store just to check how things are going.
Osket also has a strange quirk. If asked about his limp, he is glad to tell the story of how he got injured – but he never tells the same story twice. Even if it’s the same person asking a second time, Osket always treats them to a different story, each of them sounding truthful enough. If confronted about this fact, Osket simply laughs it off, saying the other person is probably misremembering something – “I’ve always said I got this limp fighting an Owlbear”. By this point, people assume Osket’s simply doing a bit, having fun with the question.
Employees
Osket employs five people. One is a stableboy who only works during the morning and afternoon – if people want to get their horses at any other time they have to either do it themselves or find Osket and ask for his help. Two are security guards, which, although Osket grumbles to whoever he meets that he doesn’t need them, remain employed. Finally, he also employs two people to run the shop – trade items, buy and sell, clean, and so on.
Of the five employees, the security guards are former adventurers who had trouble finding other work to do. The stableboy is an orphan, a son of one of Osket’s adventuring buddies. The remaining two store employees are both young, barely older than teenagers. They both want to become adventurers, and Osket has been teaching them the basics – while also reminding them that they can do other things.
Services
Osket’s stable has, in theory, room for eight horses. In practice, the actual number is more like three. The other spots are reserved year-round by adventurers and merchants who don’t have a particular date for their return to the city. As such, they’ve paid Osket some extra money to simply buy a spot in the stable for as long as they need it.
As for the store itself, Osket’s offers a small selection of food and drinks, mostly things that will keep well on a journey. It also offers a selection of weapons and armor – most of it is mundane, but people might occasionally find enchanted items here too. Apart from brand-new items that Osket sources from the city’s blacksmiths, he also sells used weapons and armor, belonging to adventurers who either retired or switched to something else.
Finally, Osket also offers part of his establishment for trade. He himself is quite happy to trade items instead of buy or sell them – it reminds him of his adventuring days, he says. Customers are also free to trade items between themselves, with some merchants specifically coming to Osket’s shop to do that. Thanks to his connections, Osket is happy to act as an intermediary as well, finding buyers, sellers and traders for items a customer brings in.
There is also one item that Osket does not exactly sell, but is equally as important – if not more – than his other wares. As people come and go from his shop, Osket talks to all of them, and picks up various rumors, stories, and pieces of news. Osket disseminates that information to the next customers, ensuring that they spread throughout the city. Generally, although Osket is no snitch, it is considered a good idea not to tell him anything that is a secret.
Sometimes, people don’t even need to tell Osket something explicitly. A smart man, Osket can work things out from details – for example, if the merchant who comes in from the north twice a year with furs brings other wares instead, and the adventurers from that place haven’t shown up in a while, it doesn’t take a genius to realize there’s probably some upheaval there.
Finally, Osket has recently been engaging in a different enterprise. Not all adventurers who head out from Ptolus are properly equipped, some lacking supplies, weapons, or something else. To these people, Osket presents a deal: He will finance their expedition, giving them whatever they are lacking. In return, when the expedition is completed, he will receive in coin the price of the items he gave the adventurers, plus an additional fifteen percent of the remaining money they’ve made.
Osket has a good instinct when it comes to such things, and the adventurers he’s chosen to monetarily support thus far have proven most able – as such, he’s made a good return on his investments. However, he’s becoming more and more reckless with those investments – if only a couple of adventuring parties fail in their quests, Osket might find himself in quite a bit of financial trouble.
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