Peddler

Alert

Resource

Support

Diplomacy

Type

Power of Contraband

Sells Items Under the Table

Setup: Setup a “black market” near the forge. Manifest any number of pods, vouchers, or technology, up to a total of 8. Probe each “item” and then display 6 of the items and shroud 2 of them in your black market.

When not a leader, after arrival, you may use this power to allow either the invader or defender to “purchase” one item from your black market as a “customer”. You and the customer must agree on both the amount of influence the customer pays your offer in exchange for the item. You may relay any of your private items during the haggle. If you do not, the customer may still purchase a private item without seeing it first.

During any upkeep, you may scrap one item from your black market and seal your cache in your nexus until the end of upkeep. “Restock” your black market by manifesting pods, vouchers, or technology and either display or shroud them until your black market has 6 public items and 2 private items.

Legacy: Manifest the forge showcase if it does not exist. Add 10 additional pods from the dark forge to the forge showcase. These pods are replaced if removed from the showcase.

Though their methods are unknown, the Peddlers have the means to obtain rare and illegal goods that have been monopolized by the Federation. For the right price, they’ll sell these goods to help others achieve their dreams of Cosmic conquest. Given their prices, they might one day have the means to buy out the Federation.

Not Leader: Orientation

Optional

Wild Flare

At the start of your orientation, you may discharge this flare to offer your entire cache, with or without this flare, to another alien. That alien may haggle with influence equal to their authority. If the haggle fails, scrap your cache and gain a free resupply.

Invader: Orientation

Super Flare

At the start of any orientation, you may choose one public item from your store and claim it.

Any: Orientation

Modifications

Originally the power to “sell”. Changed to “contraband” to distinguish it further from Merchant’s power of “commerce” by giving it more of a seedy undertone and making it more about the illegal selling of goods than simply selling them.
Original Peddler can only sell pods and technology. Mine adds the ability to also sell vouchers, since vouchers only exist in my Cosmic. Original Peddler also can choose between the forge or the dark forge, but mine simply manifests random pods from any source.
Original Peddler functions by selling an item of its choice to everyone and letting everyone bid for the item. I modified the power to remove the auction mechanic and instead let Peddler choose the customer and the customer choose the item. The idea was to make Peddler feel more like an item shop than an Auctioneer.
Original Wild Peddler offers its entire cache to everyone, letting everyone make an offer. Since haggling is more of a 1-on-1 concept in my Cosmic, I modified it to choose someone to sell to from the start.
Peddler’s legacy brings forth the forge showcase and dramatically expands it, allowing aliens to draft specific pods from boons and the like. Aliens that specialize in pod drafting greatly appreciate this legacy, since they can get much more value with less fear of adding junk. More aliens will be looking to act as a backward with this legacy in play. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

If Peddler ends up in your fleet, they are much more likely to sell something to you than their opponent. Keep this factor in mind if there’s something in the market that interests you.
Vouchers and technology are much rarer than pods, so customers will naturally be more interested in purchasing them. Getting exclusively vouchers and technology can be tempting, but then Peddler would be arming its opponents with such equipment that it cannot easily obtain itself. Having only a few vouchers or technology and making them your shrouded items can make aliens more likely to buy your pods as well.
Since Peddler cannot choose which pod to sell, it should make sure there are no pods it wouldn’t want its customer to purchase when choosing them. Revealing a shrouded item can increase a customer’s interest in it, especially a voucher or technology.
Peddler’s power is optional. It never needs to sell one of its pods if it doesn’t want. Refraining from selling can put additional pressure on leaders to commission you.
When haggling, avoid letting Peddler overcharge you for a pod. Getting a single pod in exchange for 5 influence could give Peddler 5 pods for the one you receive. If it’s a valuable pod, you might offer 2 or 3, but otherwise try to compromise at 1 pod for 1 influence. For technology and vouchers, it could be worth paying more influence depending on their value. If Peddler won’t show you what it is, avoid paying too much. Peddler generally wants to make a sale if possible, so remember to leverage your ability to walk away at no cost.

Development Notes

Peddler offers such an elegant and simple effect in concept that is actually quite complicated in practice. The basic idea of setting up a store and selling pods and other objects is great from both a roleplay and flavor perspective.
Mechanically, my biggest issue with original Peddler is how it feels more like an Auctioneer. It chooses one particular pod and sells it to anyone who pays for it. It almost feels like it defeats the purpose of having a “store” since it doesn’t operate like one. I wanted it to feel more like a shop that one would find in a roguelike deckbuilder, where you can pay in between combats to improve your deck. Peddler’s choice comes from who it chooses to side with, creating incentive for aliens to commission Peddler to their side if it has an item they want. Giving the customer more choice makes it feel more like a natural buyer and seller relationship, as it would be weird to go into a store and be told what you are going to buy. That’s much more of an auctioneer thing, where the item is presented first and people bid for it.
I wanted to make sure that the amount of influence an alien can offer is flexible and doesn’t automatically fail the purchase if they offer something too low and Peddler doesn’t like it. Since they take place in the voice channel, I decided haggles should have a 30 minute time limit to give aliens enough time to agree on how much influence they should spend and what they want to spend it on.
The ability to freely choose between pods, vouchers, and technology makes for an interesting power. Technology is likely to be most useful in the long run, but it takes time to research. Vouchers have more immediate utility than pods or technology, but they can be situational if you don’t know which one you are getting. Pods have the lowest value, but their value can shift depending on the customer. For instance, Volt will value completely different pods than Crystal or Vox. It can be tempting for Peddler to exclusively take the rarer items for its black market to maximize the influence it can obtain, but it has to weigh that benefit against the cost of giving other aliens vouchers and technology.
After Engineer, Peddler is the second alien introduced to Cosmic that can manifest technology, though only Super Peddler can obtain it for itself. A power that can manifest powerful objects that it cannot itself use is an interesting limitation, similar to that of Packrat. It ties into the popular expression in the drug trade of “don’t get high on your own supply”. When focused on making a living in the underground market, getting addicted to what you’re selling is a quick way to cut into your profits. I can imagine the Peddlers operate on slim profit margins given the value of the goods they are selling, so I imagine they need to sell the pods to recoup some of their losses. Perhaps Super Peddler becomes so skilled at smuggling goods that they’re getting them basically for free.
The two shrouded items in the black market is a fantastic idea that really captures the vibe of an underground store. It’s common when dealing with the black market that there are items “off the menu” that customers have to ask for specifically just to see it. It works great for roleplay as well, since the Peddler can feign ignorance and say they don’t have such an item or that the customer isn’t ready for an item like that.
Powers like Peddler make me glad that haggling is an established mechanic with built-in rules, so I don’t have to describe how it works in the alien bio of every alien that uses it (Pirate, Packrat, etc.)
The biggest issue with Peddler’s theme is the crossover with Merchant, as the power of commerce has direct crossover with the selling of goods. However, a “peddler” is defined as one who sells illicit or illegal goods. They are like the black market in contrast to the merchant’s normal market, which is why I adjusted Peddler’s power name to match. It’s also why I wasn’t able to change Peddler’s name to something like Shopkeeper or Vendor, which are also too neutral for my theme.
Given the complexity of the power and the use of technology and vouchers as common objects, Peddler is a well-deserved red alert alien. Even from a thematic level, a creature that can somehow obtain some of the Federation’s most heavily guarded tools and sell them for a profit under the nose of the Federation would be pretty dangerous on the Cosmic stage. Like a shadowy organization that can somehow steal nukes and sell them to the highest bidder.
There aren’t many strong power verbs that specifically refer to selling contraband goods, but the power to “sell” is too neutral to capture the dark undertone I’m aiming for the power. I decided to use a noun for Peddler’s power name to mirror Merchant using the power of “commerce”. The term “contraband” refers to illicit goods, things which are illegal for Pedder to sell. A “black market” refers to an underground place of business where illegal goods are sold outside the purview of the law. During the Prohibition era in the United States, people would sell alcohol on the black market since no one could buy it legally.