• Location: Public Services Ring, Arla Town
• Address: North Shore Road 4
• Surroundings: Just inland from the fish docks, across from the Poseidon Inn ruins and a short walk from the Funkenberg Fish Factory.

Tiller & Net Fishing Supplies was a cooperative store established in November 2626 by eleven local fishermen of Arla Town. Its purpose was to craft, store, and sell fishing gear both to its founding members and to other townsfolk. Though modest in size, the shop became essential for sustaining Arla’s lakeside economy during the Beta Age.

• Founding: Eleven fishermen of Arla Town signed a contract in November 2626, each guaranteeing to purchase all their fishing supplies exclusively through the new cooperative store.
• Purpose: By pooling resources, the founders ensured reliable access to nets, hooks, and repair materials while keeping profits within the community.
• Management and Operations: Day-to-day operations were delegated to a Butler Bot cashier nicknamed “Ledger.” A Maintenance Bot handled rope-splicing, net mending, and small equipment assembly, while a Cleaning Bot kept the premises tidy.
• Public Access: Though the founding members were guaranteed supply priority, the cooperative accepted orders from non-members, extending its reach to traveling fishermen and dockside traders.
• Beta Age Reputation: Known for its fair pricing, consistent quality, and reliance on Service Bots, the store became a backbone for Arla’s fishing fleet until the Great War disrupted trade.

The eleven-member fishermen’s cooperative retained ownership, but automated service handled nearly all operations. Ledger (Butler Bot) managed sales, inventory logs, and customer interaction. The Maintenance Bot, dubbed “Splice,” worked tirelessly at a back bench repairing nets and carving floats. The Cleaning Bot, often overlooked, ensured the store never smelled like the docks outside.

• Construction Materials: Timber beams from dockside warehouses combined with sheet metal salvaged from shipping crates.
• Floors: Single-level with a lofted storage attic.
• Design: Compact storefront with a wide counter for supplies, open shelving, and racks for drying ropes and nets. Practical, utilitarian, and weathered by lake air.

Interior

• Front Room: Stocked shelves of hooks, lines, floats, and bait jars.
• Work Bench: The Maintenance Bot’s crafting station — a cluttered zone of hemp fibers, rope coils, and mended netting.
• Ledger’s Counter: Alloy-surfaced desk where the Butler Bot processed orders, maintained the logbook, and dispensed receipts.

Exterior

• Storage Shed: Adjacent lean-to where spare netting, wood for floats, and resin barrels were kept.
• Dockside Yard: Crates of rope stacked and tarped, often surrounded by gulls and fishermen waiting for their orders.

Step inside and the scent of tarred rope, resin, and dried hemp fills your lungs. Wooden racks creak under spools of rope, nets hang like ghost-shadows from ceiling hooks, and the clink of hooks against a tin tray punctuates the quiet hum of Splice the Maintenance Bot repairing gear at the back. Ledger, the Butler Bot, greets each customer with polite monotone, its alloy hands carefully tallying purchases into the cooperative log. The walls bear chalk-marks listing member quotas and orders. Outside, gulls cry above tarps flapping in lake wind. Fishermen swap tales as they wait for baskets of gear — and in the dim lamplight, the store feels less like a shop than a lifeline stitched together from wood, wire, and solidarity.

By the Gamma Age, the cooperative store is a husk. The lofted attic collapsed during the Great War, its beams blackened and rotted. Nets lie tangled in mud, hooks rust into red dust, and Ledger’s broken torso slumps over a counter pitted with soot. Splice’s workbench is silent, tools scattered across warped boards. Wind whistles through shattered slats while vines creep over shelves. Fishermen now trade on the open docks, yet locals still whisper of the eleven who founded the cooperative — their names faintly carved on a weathered beam, the last record of Tiller & Net.

The store anchored Arla Town’s fishing economy. It represented cooperative resilience, gave fishermen reliable access to gear, and embodied a rare sense of collective ownership. Its fair-deal reputation attracted outsiders, reinforcing Arla as a hub of lakeside trade.

• Bot Oversight: Ledger maintained transaction logs, while ceiling-mounted sensors recorded shop activity.
• Community Protection: Founders enforced rules through social bonds rather than guards; disputes were mediated at the dock or over dice at the Poseidon Inn.
• Minimal Physical Security: A simple padlock on the door, often ignored when the shop was crowded.

Tiller & Net can serve as a hub for trade, cooperative intrigue, or dockside drama.

• Conflict Potential: Tensions between founders, or sabotage of supplies, could draw players into local politics.
• Hooks and Leads: Clues about smuggling routes, sabotage by rival tribes, or secret caches hidden in the attic.
• Atmosphere: Play up the hum of Service Bots, the creak of rope racks, and the smell of tar and hemp.

• “Knots of Betrayal” – One founder secretly sells supplies to outsiders at inflated prices. Players are hired to investigate missing stock.

• Arla Town
• Poseidon Inn
• Funkenberg Fish Factory
• Service Bots
• Great War
• Lake Arla