Red Dog's Antiques

Red Dog's Antiques
Sitting in the cramped and largely forgotten secondary marketplace, this shop is surprisingly large. The front of the shop is all but buried under heaps of scrap metal and rubbish. Walking too close can sometimes earn a steel burr under a fingernail, or a metal splinter lodged the in the heel of a boot. But there is something that sets this scrap yard apart from other forges, tinker's huts, and metal heaps. Several mastiff like automata walk around the front of the store, some resting on the porch others barking at what they consider strangers.

The Hollow Hounds
The mastiffs are relics from the days of the Artificer Kings, a time when men of power built automata of all conceivable types. These ranged from the utilitarian clockwork horses and hounds to the more elaborate clockwork birds that could actually fly. Those who wished to truely impress would craft their automata not of base iron and brass but of more precious metals. Their day long gone, the gold and silver devices have long since been scrapped for their metal value. The base metal constructs, like the Hollow Hounds escaped the salvager's scrap hammer.

Most of the hounds have varying degrees of rust and corrosion along their carapaces, and some are getting stiff in the joints. This is most common when the weather is damp, and the smaller pieces inside their joints start to corrode. The rust on the carapace plates, however, remains quite thick, giving the clockwork animals a color ranging from mottled crimson to rust-streaked red.

A Name Change
The store was originally known as the Red Dog Artificer Shop, which was later shortened to Red Dog Antiques. Given the rough and gruff demeanor of the aspirant artificer who runs the shop, the name slowly drifted to being called Red Dog's and the artificer became Red Dog. The fact that his formerly gray beard was often thick with rust buffed out of metal parts, the name stuck quite easily.

The True Purpose?
Red Dog and his shop are the urban equivalent to the traveling tinker and his cart of strange wares. Aside from being a good place to find parts for automata, potentially study damaged automata and being a general clockwork storehouse, Red Dog can appraise strange relics, read the old languages, and offer prices on things most fences wont deal in. His shop is somewhere between a scrap yard, a pawn shop, and a landfill.