When last I wrote about my library Dungeons & Dragons game, there was an incident with a cursed axe. Since then, the party managed to free a Marid (a sort of aquatic-themed djinn) and gain its help in traveling to the elemental plane of water. There, they managed to find the way to the Citadel of Ten Thousand Pearls, a floating island city at the heart of Marid politics where their patron's long absence due to imprisonment had led to a loss in standing.
Investigation directed them to the City of Glass in an ice-bound region of the plane, and they have a magical folding boat that can become a seaworthy ship, but none of them know how to sail. I decided there must be a market where treasures, rare specimens, and slaves might be bought and sold as status symbols and ways to flaunt wealth, so the party was able to locate a trio of shipwrecked sailors who had survived a storm so severe it tore a portal to the plane of water.
The party decided that when in Rome, they would do as the Romans. First, they added the cursed axe and another treasure they had found to the auction to earn money, and I came up with rules on the fly to roll dice and see how much others bid up the items. Then they asked their Marid friend to be their proxy and bid in the slave auction. Humans are boring, common, and short-lived, so they got few competitors.
There were also other items for sale. They decided to get creative. They passed on the auction for a lot of kobolds and skipped the deep gnome, but decided to buy a tiefing who assured them he was also a sailor. After spending thousands of gold, they found out he lied to them. They checked, but he bluffed. The dice tell the story! Being a Dungeon Master is fun.
After a while, two of the characters decided to see what had happened with the cage full of kobolds. After flattering the djinn who bought them, they learned he needed food for his zoo. They tagged along to witness feeding time at his zoo. I flipped through the Monster Manual to get quick inspiration for his menagerie, and described how the kobolds were gulped down or torn asunder during feeding time. They felt a bit bad, and bought one off the menu. The kobold was grateful for the reprieve.
As they set sail for their next destination, the bard decided to teach their new kobold companion how to play the flute. I had no choice but to run a quick search for something suitably awful to represent his enthusiastic practice.
So, who is worse, the players who bought slaves, sold a cursed axe to an unsuspecting djinn noble, and watched kobolds get fed to monsters in a zoo? Or me, the DM who inflicted that song upon unsuspecting players?
