The Farmers Market
By Ellyke Resident

TYPE: Organic Market

SLURL: Outbreak 109, 177, 32

OVERVIEW: Reliance on scavenged goods is neither sustainable nor healthy. Dylan's dream to increase the trade in life-giving organic vegetables and produce, fresh herbs and herbal supplies, raw foods and teas, and handmade goods from natural sources. Dylan represents the Green Goddess Collective, a diverse cooperative of many small and large rural farms. She manages bringing produce to Arklay, sells/barters the goods, and redistributes the profits/supplies back to the member farms. There are mom and pop farms, Native American tribes, immigrant labor communities, back to nature hippies, pagans, former agricultural interests, agricultural-science professors and ecologists, survivalists, and DIY lifestylers. But what they share is working the land and a belief that doing things the late 20th century way is a recipe for disaster and that humans need to make changes and go back to more traditional, sustainable lifestyles. Coupled with this is a strong do-it-yourself work ethic and an enthusiasm for promoting the mastery of traditional skills so that people are individually more capable and self-sufficient. Along with selling food and promoting pragmatic skills, the group is also intensely interested in creating a "seed library" to collect and preserve as many medicinal and food plants as possible. As expected, the culture behind the group is strongly agricultural, with spirituality that ranges from "respect-the-land-you-live-on" at one end and outright paganism at the other. This cultural side could embrace harvest and fertility rituals, a new focus on the seasonal calendar, market days, scavenging trips in alliance with other groups, and fairs where people demonstrate traditional pragmatic crafts like gardening, smithing, wall-building, sewing/quilting, wood-carving, leather making, meat smoking, growing and using medicinal herbs, making candles, oils, and soaps. The collective is very interested in Arklay's survival as a trade hub and can use local skilled and unskilled workers. It seeks new agricultural tools, seeds, transportation, etc. As a background element, the possibilities are broad, and it could support a darker subtext if desperate people decided that the gifts of the Green Goddess flow more freely when her palms are drenched by sacrifices of blood and life. The storefront is a convenient place to assist customers, network, and offer valuable information to the community.

EXPERIENCE:I love the post-apocalyptic theme and I'd like to engage with the outbreak more deeply. My particular storyline offers many story "hooks" to help other players get involved, can support many fun activities, and offers a cultural element that helps deepen the play beyond "yet another shop", and fills a current gap in the range of groups by offering a dedicated agricultural group. The closest current business would be the Eights, but that is primarily a residential company. My business has agriculture as its focus first and foremost, and offers potential links to other rural based characters. Dylan is an ideal business leader for a shop of this type and has an agricultural background, most recently working as the manager for Eights and its greenhouses.