Emporium Shopfloor

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All areas on the above map, with the exception of the warehouse and the administration offices (8), fall within the Emporium Warp Zone. You can read more about what this means in character and out of character by following the respective hyperlinks.

“Welcome to Emporium, where we always have everything in stock. A store with literally infinite choice could leave even omniscient beings overwhelmed, so please, take a minute to familiarise yourself with our store layout so you can find what you need with ease.”
- Albert

Note: this page is intended to be used as a reference guide - no need to memorise everything, but if you want to know more about a given location then you can jump to its description from the table of contents.

In addition to the product sub-departments, there are various services available in-store for the convenience of customers and employees.

The Atrium is a welcome area with product catalogues and a nearby service desk. There is an ornate clock which shows the only time which has any meaning in this place: time until the end of the current promotional cycle and your last chance to find the perfect product for your needs.

Next to the Atrium and keeping an omnivident eye on the checkouts is the Security Station.¹⁾ Customers and employees may use the lockers at security to store personal belongings during their stay at Emporium.

The Empty Vessel Café and Contemplation Area is an area where customers can relax and consider their next purchase. Here, they can enter temporary stasis and achieve mindfulness, or, for those who require or enjoy other forms of existential sustenance, many delicious nutrient sources available from the kitchens.

The corridor between The Empty Vessel and the Dreamers' Lodge there is a special display which shows customers’ homeplanes, using the latest (Un)Real Cosmic Generator™. Ciel Factbooker, Orbital’s customer outreach specialist, manages the Store's records of customer and employee homeplanes. It also has a recreation area for any dependents that customers may have brought with them.

If they require sleep or have simply have worn themselves out while shopping, customers can take a rest at the Dreamers’ Lodge, where they will find clean sheets and a soft mattress to rest their weary bodies.

Sleep not guaranteed. Pleasant dreams cost extra.

Like the employee sleep pods, the bedding arrangements here will morph to accommodate any Manifestation type.

Emporium sincerely hopes customers won't have cause to complain, but if they do, they can make their opinions known at the Service Desk. One of the more senior employees, Empathy, can also be found here.

For specific product-related queries, there are handy information stations throughout the store.

The Checkouts are where customers (and employees) can finalise the purchase of store products. You don't have to wait until the end of your shopping trip – you may always return to the store and continue to shop until your ticket expires at the end of the cycle.

Heading out into the Warehouses? Good luck! The Staging Area is a combination mustering ground, supply depot, and logistical coordination centre, where Amanda Marker, Emporium’s stock manager, plans expeditions into the warehouse. Official Excursions and independent operations typically set out here. This area also includes a restocking drop-off area where goods are prepared to be stocked on the shelves, or returned to containment in the Warehouses. Extensive decontamination facilities can be found here.

In the Groceries department, you’ll find edibles, things that can become edible with the surreptitious use of some liquid and a bit of heat (or cold), or things that can enhance the experience of eating, from spices and salt to oils great and small. Frozen and refrigerated goods are widely available, along with fresher produce.

In Showcase, some of the more luxurious items stand proudly on plinths - sleek new vehicles; the latest crystal bathtub; a modest fountain pen that can write rivers; all luxury goods that may not seem as striking when cluttered in other departments. Whether or not these items are actually expensive, the Showcase area is here to help elevate them in the minds of browsing Entities and to promote them.

The Entertainment section is a cacophony of beeps, scratches, and the general sound of laughter, filled with a huge variety of items that come under the label of “entertainment”. Cutting-edge technology to simulate a new reality, or stream channels that never existed directly into your eyes, nose, or whatever sensory receptors you use. There are 11-dimensional chess sets, portable dance floors, and books both fantastical and absurd - and sometimes, even fictional!

The Office Supplies & Stationery department has many aisles full of the soothing, muted tones of offices, the sleek chrome of artistic desk legs, and the satisfying lines of self-drawing mechanical pencils. You can find rulers both incredibly precise, suitably open to interpretation, and everything in between (and yes, a ruler to measure the in between too). Everything here is designed to help make your work life more constructive, productive, and pleasing.

The Growth Sector has everything you need to help you cultivate life on your homeplane. From phytoplankton and easy ferns, to cosmictree™ seed packs and Instant Ents (just add souls). Or, if you already have plantlife, there are tools for encouraging and maintaining it – or pruning it back, if necessary.

Emporium does not trade in ensouled beings, which includes, but is not limited to, animals and Entities. However, products for the care of such life forms can be found here.

While the more desirable items in store are usually purchased via Emporium’s barter system, smaller items may be purchased with the multiversal currency: souls. The Soul Traders are here to weigh and evaluate your spare souls as well as hand out SoulCoin, Emporium’s in-store credit, to those who have earned it.

The Arts & Crafts department is the place imaginations go to run wild through showers of glitter, render the impossible in art, and be unafraid to find a wall to doodle on. With different surfaces free for passing Entities to try sample art supplies on, including a whole side of one aisle, this section of the store is full of the chaos of creativity. There are also packs of raw elements for deities to hand-craft new portions of their worlds.

In Hardware you can find just about anything to help with your latest DIY projects, from tools to help you construct the perfect garden shed, to wires in solidified light to help connect your latest sun to its power source. Occasionally, loud noises can be heard from the testing area in the Understore below.

If you take a right angle to reality near Arts & Crafts you will find the Imaginary and Conceptual Section. Sometimes even the divine need a little inspiration, so whether you are looking for that one physical law that will really round out your collection, the feeling of peace normally reserved exclusively for the enlightened, or a solution to an equation that has perplexed your planet for aeons, you’ll find it here.

Whether you’re looking for a bit of allergy medication or something more drastic, like a poison cure-all, the Pharmacy is the place to go. Some products are displayed behind transparent barriers that need an employee to unlock, while the less common or more expensive items are behind the Pharmacy’s desk. Employees are happy to advise on which products may best suit your unique needs²⁾.

In the Sporting Goods department, you can purchase the latest Victory Energy Drink™³⁾ to help bolster you in your next match against your rivals the next galaxy over, as well as equipment for every sport, from Planetball to rhythmic gymnastics. There is a modest and changeable pitch set up to help you try out a new sport, or get in a bit of practice on one you’re already champion of, surrounded by protective shielding in case you decide to get a little more competitive!

In House & Homeplane, there are a range of displays of different home structures, such as cosy caves with the latest in rock technology, a kitschy and colourful kitchen full of round appliances, and a velvety recreation of a glamorous beach. Some items may be too large to display in their full glory, but can be seen in catalogue pictures.

Here you can find the latest fashion: from new types of aura, crafted out of the latest emotions, to the sharpest suits, so cutting edge they can slice through reality itself. Or, for a complete makeover, there are Personas™ - premium appearance packages that will transform you both within and without. A set of dynamic display windows show off each new Season's offerings, and the Fitting Rooms are nearby for you to try things on.

The staff dormitory, composed of employee sleep pods, is for employees to use on their sleep breaks. To allow for employees of all manifestation types, the sleep pods will distort to fit whichever employee is about to use them.

The break room is where employees can come to relax during their breaks, away from customers and other distractions. On one wall are employee lockers, each of which can only be accessed by using the employee’s name card.

Sustaining the various visitors and staff of Emporium is a colossal logistical effort, given the myriad biologies and forms of sustenance required. To accommodate this, food and other forms of sustenance are 3D printed from a wide range of elemental feedstocks. This is a largely automated process, but requires store employees to work as overseers and carry out more fine-tuned food preparation and cooking.

Near the breakroom are the few office areas which make up the Administration Offices area of Emporium. Most of these rooms are empty, save for chairs and tables of various shapes and sizes. These rooms are always locked, unless the store requires their use.

There are only two rooms that are used as an office full time. First, the store manager’s office: this is the only room in this area which has a completely opaque door. What’s found on the other side is something more seasoned employees are vague about. The other active office is the Orbital Management office – when not found elsewhere in the store, Orbital employees seconded to Emporium can be found here.