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🏪 The Pawn Shop (Lombard)

Where dead players' belongings come back into the economy — and the kingdom's treasury takes its cut.

The Pawn Shop (in-game: Lombard) is the kingdom's second-hand market. When a player dies from any cause, every item they were carrying is transferred to the shop, where any other living non-king player can buy it for gold. Every sale funnels straight into the king's treasury.

It's the only recycling path in the game — without it, a death would permanently remove weapon parts from the economy and dragon-slay paths could become unwinnable.

Pawn Shop UI showing seven purchasable items with buy buttons — The Lombard with stock — seven items dropped from fallen players, each listing icon, name, quantity, and buy price.

When does the shop get stocked?

Items are deposited into the pawn shop whenever a player dies. The resolver tracks a deposit intent for every death event and the turn-scheduler processes them after the turn resolves.

Cause of death	Items go to	Notes
Eaten by dragon	Pawn Shop	Both weapon parts and unique bow parts
Failed dragon-slay attempt	Pawn Shop	Attacker dies, all their parts drop
Assassinated	Pawn Shop	Plus gold → treasury via the assassin's cut
Drained by a Vampire	Pawn Shop	Body joins the Vampire's ghoul pack
Hunted by a Werewolf	Pawn Shop	Wolf pack grows by one
Robbery gone wrong	Pawn Shop	Target survives robbery but drops via mutual kill
Vampire / Werewolf mutual kill	Pawn Shop (both)	Contested combat, both hunters die — double drop

All item drops use the same plumbing — TurnResult.pawn_shop_deposits collects {player_id, reason} entries during resolution, and the persistence layer moves all that player's rows from player_items into pawn_shop in a single transaction.

Dragon-specific Dragon victims are processed through a separate deposit loop that also transfers items. It lives next to the main deposit loop in the turn scheduler — the behaviour is identical, the separation exists purely because dragon victims are tracked on a different list (dragon_victims) during resolution.

Item lifecycle

Here's how a single weapon part can move through the economy:

Player A
earns part
(tournament / forest / craft)

→

Death
dragon / slay-fail /
special function

→

Pawn Shop
stocked at
fixed price

→

Player B
buys it
(gold → treasury)

The item's type (knight weapon part, ACME kit part, unique bow string, etc.) is preserved, so Player B can continue assembling a dragon-kill weapon from where Player A left off.

Prices & payment

Every item in the shop is listed at a flat price of 67 gold regardless of what it would cost to earn or craft directly:

pawn_shop:
  part_price: 67   # game_config.yaml — single source of truth

This is a balance lever. 67g is set just high enough to matter (about 4–6 turns of peasant work) but well below what crafting a fresh part costs, so the pawn shop genuinely competes with the normal paths rather than being a pure last resort.

Gold Flow When a non-king buys from the shop, the gold doesn't vanish — it goes directly into the kingdom's treasury. This means dead players effectively pay taxes one last time. In close games, a clever king can time peasant deaths and pawn-shop sales to close the 10,000-gold victory gap.

Who can buy — and who can't

Player state	Can buy?	Reason
Living peasant / citizen / knight / prince	✅ Yes	Has gold, needs parts
The King	❌ No	Kings don't haggle. Also, the king already owns the treasury — buying would just move gold from their right pocket to their left
Dead players	❌ No	Dead men buy no bows
Player with less gold than the item price	❌ No (disabled button)	Can't afford — shown greyed out
Any player if shop is empty	— (shown as empty state)	See screenshot below

The empty state

Pawn Shop showing 'Empty — items appear here when players perish.' message — Before any player has died, the shop greets visitors with a grim reminder of how it gets stocked.

Buying UI

The pawn shop panel lives inside the game screen, beneath the forest map. It renders as a list of item rows:

Icon — emoji-based glyph picked per item type (🧵 bow string, 🪵 bow shaft, 🗡 knight sword, 🛡 knight shield, ⚔️ lance, 📦 generic parts)
Name & quantity — e.g. Acme Dragon Kit Part 1 (x2) when multiple players dropped the same kind of part
Buy button — shows the price in gold. Disabled if the viewer can't afford it. Kings don't see a button at all.

Clicking the buy button sends a DataStar POST to /games/{game_id}/buy_pawnshop with the item name. The server re-validates everything (item exists, player is alive, player is not king, player has enough gold) inside a transaction and broadcasts an SSE update to all players.

First-come, first-served There's no reservation or bid system. If two players click the same item on the same tick, the database transaction that lands first wins the sale — the second gets a "not available" error. This creates a real-time race dynamic when a high-value part drops.

Strategic considerations

For peasants & citizens

The pawn shop is often the cheapest route to a bow part if you can't risk the forest yourself — 67g beats 30g × multiple forest attempts with death risk.
Watch the chat feed for deaths. A player eaten by the dragon right now likely just dropped whatever they were hoarding.
Coordinate with allies — don't both bid on the same item, split your gold to buy different parts toward a shared weapon set.

For knights

Your tournament drops are rare and valuable. If you're close to a full set, buying from the pawn shop can be faster than winning another tournament.
Knight Sword / Shield / Lance entries in the shop usually come from a fallen knight — that's a rival eliminated and a gear opportunity in one event.

For princes

Princes can't normally collect bow parts or ACME kits, but they can buy from the pawn shop. A prince with a full treasury is actually a dangerous dragon-killer candidate via the Lombard alone.

For the king

You can't buy, but pawn shop sales fill your treasury — a good king encourages risky plays and dragon kills because every death puts gold back in the coffers.
If the treasury is close to winning, consider bribing less aggressively and letting the dragon eat one more peasant — the gold loss from not bribing may be offset by the pawn shop proceeds.

For Thieves, Assassins, Vampires, Werewolves

Every kill you make is a guaranteed pawn shop deposit. Your secret "score" as a special function is also quietly funding the public treasury.
Assassinate a player holding a full set and the shop suddenly has three parts that you can buy the next turn — effectively transmuting the victim into a weapon you control.

Edge cases & rules

Case	Behaviour
Unique bow parts (only one exists in the game)	Treated like any other item — stacks into the shop on death. Since there's only one of each bow string / shaft / arrowhead, the pawn shop becomes the only way to acquire one without searching the forest yourself.
Multiple players dropped the same generic part	Quantity increments. One row, shown as "Item (x2)", "(x3)", etc.
An item is bought, leaving quantity = 0	Row vanishes from the shop on next SSE refresh. Never shown with "(x0)".
Dead player had no inventory	Nothing is deposited — the deposit intent is still recorded for logging but no rows are written.
Game ends with items still in shop	Items are lost. There's no rollover between games.

Implementation notes (for developers)

Piece	File
Schema	`server/migrations/002_inventory.sql` — defines `pawn_shop` and `player_items` tables
Deposit intents (pure logic)	`server/turn_resolver.py` — every death path appends to `s.pawn_shop_deposits`
Persistence (DB writes)	`server/turn_scheduler.py` — after resolver returns, moves items row-by-row in a transaction
Buy API	`POST /games/{game_id}/buy_pawnshop` → `game_manager.buy_from_pawn_shop()`
UI render	`server/view_renderer.py::render_pawn_shop()` — SSE fragment targeting `#pawn-shop`
Target div	`client/templates/game.html` — `<div id="pawn-shop"></div>` under the forest map region
Config	`game_config.yaml` → `pawn_shop.part_price`

History Before v0.10.1, two bugs hid the pawn shop from the UI entirely: the target #pawn-shop div was missing from game.html, and the SSE stream's initial full-sync didn't query pawn shop rows. Items were being created correctly in the database but never rendered. Fixed while writing this wiki page.