Raxilliah the Merchant

 Raxilliah the Merchant is an interdimensional being and traveler who employs agents across the multiverse to gather forgotten or hidden knowledge. Appearing as a humanoid figure in a long dark cloak, their face forever hidden in the shadows of the hood and hands and arms wrapped in dark cloth, Rax is of indeterminate or possibly no gender. Rax’s voice is a weird amalgam of male and female, young and old, voices. Raxilliah travels the dimensional planes in their “shop”, a small store full of curiosities arcane, weird, joyful, and profane. The door to the shop appears on a wall, or sometimes in thin air, usually near the beings Rax hopes to contact. Regardless where the door appears, it is always at night, the door open, the portal is shrouded by thick fog which accumulates near the entrance, with light shining out. 

Raxilliah will typically find a young person on a particular world and become their patron of sorts, appearing occasionally to give advice, help, but mostly to employ their skills to retrieve knowledge, lore, and artifacts, as Rax cannot leave the shop, which is a dimensional/planar vessel and essentially a mobile pocket of Rax’s home dimension. Raxilliah usually chooses a young wizard or bard, as they tend to thirst most for knowledge.

Raxilliah's Shop - from the first encounter in Session 5

As you come around the corner, a corner of which you are quite familiar, the fog thickens unusually in an alley, and through the fog there is light streaming from an open door - a door that should not be there, and from inside there is sweet singing in a language you’ve never before heard.

Inside the door is a small shop. Crowded shelves line the walls, curios display odd items, tables are piled with books in languages never seen before. In a birdcage hanging from the ceiling sits a large insect, similar to a praying mantis but purple in color and 9 inches long, perched on a swing in a disconcertingly intelligent posture. The creature sings in a sweet voice. While not any recognizable language, it is clear that the creature is not simply repeating words, but telling a story in the form of a song.

This creature is from an alternate Fae realm, and the owner of the shop sits in a large, worn chair, rag-wrapped hands steepled in front of its shadowy cowl, bobbing their head to the rhythm of the creature’s song. 

This is the shop of Raxilliah, full of oddities from across the planes of existence. Rax will sit quietly, listening, and allow the PCs to browse the shelves. One one table is a messy pile of rolled-up scrolls. On the shelves they find a glass bottle with a shrunken human head in it. The eyes blink and look around. A flower that moves on its stalk like a snake, its red petals in constant movement. A round amulet that looks kind of like a sundial, but which makes a ticking sound, as small arms move slowly about its numbered surface. A flat, clear glass plate that contains a rainbow. The jawbone of a huge beast hangs from the ceiling, 5’ across, with huge sharp teeth attached. And books upon books upon books upon books, in languages unknown, some tiny as a thimble up to a few several feet tall. 

The shop is lit from numerous oil lamps.