In much of medieval and Renaisance Europe, market days were usually weekly and market fairs were usually yearly. Scarterra's Market Days are similar in form and function, at least among humans and grey elves.
Why would anyone need a specific weekly market day? Why not just have a public marketplace every day?
Time to think medieval. A city or large town certainly is going to have a public market place that is open every day, but a rural area doesn't normally have enough demand to warrant a market place operating every day, but farmers do still want to buy and sell things.
Scarterrans don't have cars or reliable public transportation. They do have horses and other pack animals but not everyone can afford them. If farmers are fortunate enough to own beasts of burden, they are probably mainly their to haul goods and not people. That means farmers to walk to the market and then walk back home. That means at least one person in the family basically needs to plan his or her whole day around around a trip to market. If the farmer or farmer's wife spends a whole day for shopping, they just lost a day that they could have spent doing chores, so they want to make sure that they thing they want to buy is available.
Farming families strive to be self sufficent and make as much of their own tools, their own clothes, etc. Farming families can't make everything in house, so they need to purchase or barter for things sometimes but not everyday. Merchants have to travel to and from markets just like farmers do. If a merchant is going to make the trip, he wants to make sure that there are enough customers at the site to make the trip worthwhile and if only a couple farmers are there, it's probably not worth it.
By having a predetermined time and place to set up, this means the farmers can be reasonably sure that the thing they want to buy will be available and the merchants can be reasonably sure that their will several customers to buy their wares.
Nobles and other authority figures like market days to be predictable. This means that they can schedule additional guardsmen to maintain order and they can collect fees and tolls from the markets. It's also in their best interest that their subjects can access the goods they need.
Ideally, farmers don't have to travel more than four miles to reach their nearest market day. That way they can walk to and from the market in a single day. But because Scarterra is more wild and unsettled than real world medieval Europe, some farmers have to travel up to ten miles to get to a market day in which case, they will usually stay overnight in a nearby inn, hospital, or Blue Rain House.
History
The grey elves of Elven Empire have long had a tradition of having market days at ten-day intervals which they claim was an ancient tradition dating back to the Second Age though if it was an ancient tradition, it is one that the ancestors of the modern wood elves and dark elves either did not opt to maintain.
During the Red Era market days emerged informally in most settled human lands. The locals agreed to meet to buy and sell goods at regular intervals. At some point shortly before or shortly after the start of the Feudal Era, many human kingdoms started having market days at seven day intervals on the same day every week. Eventually, the grey elves' human peasants adopted a seven-day market day system unoffiically. Eventually, the grey elf nobles reluctantly changed with the times and formalized the system.
Execution
Furniture and carpentry one day, cloths and clothing another, and wines and spirits on the third day, then a wholesalers day where most of the vendors deal predominantly in bulk goods on the fourth day. The fifth day is a major day for buying and selling livestock. On th sixth day, many merchants take the day off while the city cleaners clean up the mess left from "livestock day", so the market place is largely empty but merchants are not forbidden from selling on this day. The vendors that do show up are often the most finacially desperate so it's a good day to hunt for bargains. The last day is known as entertainment where a lot of entertainers are out in great numbers with their hats for donations. This is also the day where the pickpockets swarm like mosquitos, so one best be careful with one's purse if one is a music lover.Eknok, tengku merchantTengku #5 by Zeta GardnerRural market days are pretty simple, people show up at a predetermined time and place and sell or barter whatever goods they have on them. As small villages grow into larger villages and then grow into small towns, you often see they will petition two market days a week rather than one. Once there is demand for a third market day, the normal next step is to just establish a permanent public market place, but even then you will see unofficial market days assert themselves into marketplace. In my home city, Marfa Medina, you can buy or sell anything in the public market place any day, but most days have an established theme.
Components and tools
You can find a good bargain in a muddy field, but more people will want to go to markets more if the market space actually looks nice. Better fences and public latrines are usually the first improvements done, followed by paving stones on the field so buyers and sellers don't have to trudge in the mud. Some markets boast a small gazebo for protection from sun and rain. A few places have brazers to light when it's cold. Very well-funded market squares have public art or small gardens. The Masks may be greedy and selfish mortals focused on their own enrichment but they aren't random themes, they have a moral code. They like to leech off of wealthy individuals but they seldom shake down poor struggling entrepeneurs (they hope they will become rich later and then shake them down. I don't want to get trapped in a money lending agreement with the Masks, but I don't begrudge them their market fees. Almost all the fees they collect from their market days go into maintaining or improving the site rather than fattening their own coffers. The market squares controlled by the Masks are among the prettiest places to do business and they certainly have the most reliably clean public latrines I've ever seen."-Eknok, tengku merchantTengku #5 by Zeta Gardner"The location of a market day gathering ranges from a muddy field with a simple rope fence all the way to a beautifully paved and decorated public square with everything in between. Anywhere where merchants can set up tables or tents will suffice. A lot of times you don't need even a table or a booth, a lot of farmers sell goods out of the back of a cart and it works just fine. Sometimes the local peasants are motivated by civic pride and will donate their money or labor to make the public square nicer. Sometimes the local lord will pay for improvements in a market square wanting to flex his status and generosity.
Participants
Anyone can go to a market day and buy and sell goods, but sometimes there are local laws that favor locals over foreigners. In this case "foreigner" is relative, more accurately called "nonlocal" because most "foreigners" at market days are from twenty, maybe thirty miles away instead of being from truly distant lands. Sometimes locals are allowed to shop first and get first dibs on the wares and then the foreigners get to shop. Othertimes, foreign merchants have to pay an additional fee.
Since market days are predictable and most farming families organize their weekly chore schedule around the local market day, market days are not just for buying and selling but they have a social function as well. Market squares are a good place to meet with neighbors, renew ties, and exchange gossip. Some commoners will even use market days as part of courtship rituals. Where else does a peasant lad have a plausible deniability for why he's in the same place as the girl from the next village over"
People tend to build inns and taverns near market squares, or they establish market squares near preexisting inns and taverns, thus solidifying the social and community aspects of a market day.
If a local lords want to learn what the state of the realm is and actually wants an honest answer, a good way to do it is to send a retainer incognito to go to a market day and just absorb the local chatter.
The majority of the buyers are from farming families, and more than a few of the sellers are also from farming families. More often than not, a majority of the buyers and sellers in general are women. Farmer's wives sell the family's excess crops or they sell handicrafts they made in their freetime. Farming families also sell firewood bundles, fish that are caught, honey, beeswax, vegetables, staple crops, cured meat, cider Anything they have excess of. Sometimes the wives of craftsmen living in larger towns take their husbands' goods to rural market days to try to sell them to farmers.
by me with Midjourney
Observance
Sometimes the time and place of a market day is sometimes determined by the king or queen, sometimes by a local lord, sometimes by the local Masks. Sometimes a market day needs the approval of two of these three groups.
The location is usually set by geographic convenience but the specific market day is pretty arbritary, there are seven days in the week and a market day is equally likely to be any one of them based on what the local lord wants. The only important thing is that the timing of the market day is consistent.
If the Masks are fortunate enough to have kingdom wide influence, they will often coordinate market days so adjacent areas have market days that are two or three days apart from each other. This is done as convenience for traveling merchants and the Masks themselves so they can make a traveling circuit frrom one market to another.
Sometimes, unofficial market days emerge because the local commoners agree on a time and place. Technically this is illegal, but local rulers usually have better things to do than crack down on these sorts of gathering, and if an unofficial market day becomes popular enough, a local lord can make it official with a decree.
Gnomes, satyrs, and tengku seldom organize their own market days but they usually have little problem attaching themselves to human-run market days. Dwarf clans and families strive for self-sufficiency even moreso than human farmers do, but they do have market days that are similar in concept to what the humans do, they just have them less often. The kingdom of Meckelorn usually has market days once a month and the kingdom of Stahlheim has market days twice a month.
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