About World's End: Businesses of Note

While World's End is considered a small town by any appreciable standards upon first glance, the sheer versatility of the local businesses is astounding. There is likely to be an out-of-the-way little shack or shop to cater to nearly any need, as long as it obeys the Laws and Ordinances of World's End. Some of World's End's most popular and permanent businesses and locations are listed below.

• All-Stars Hotel - The All-Stars Hotel is a large six-story hotel located near the Last Resort Diner, and receives frequent traffic from business travelers looking for a place to settle for the night or the month. Accommodations range from low-rent to top-class, and all currencies are accepted (though standard currencies are preferred); they also provide coupons that can be used at local establishments, and exchange small amounts of currencies (although those seeking to make major transactions are directed to the Bank.)

• CapsuleCondos - A hotel that provides capsule-bed accommodations to its guests, in additional to minimal services such as in-capsule networked television and computer systems. It is one of the few places in the area that offers long-term accommodations, however, and many down-and-out townspeople live there on a semi-permanent basis.

• Spandau Charitable Housing Center - The Spandau Charitable Housing Center was founded by the Mayor to provide guidance and temporary lodgings for involuntary guests of World's End to have a temporary place to stay while trying to work out their problems.

• The Char Loft - A barn that has been converted into an interdimensional cafe serving patrons from a multitude of multiverses, the Char Loft is essentially the welcome mat for intentional interdimensional tourists. Most people who enter World's End on foot do so through Char Loft's convenient Door system.

• World's End Only Bank - This is the only bank in World's End, and provides a highly competitive exchange rate for the interdimensional wanderer who needs to exchange their currency (or set some money aside in the ultimate of offshore accounts.)

• Guiding Light Counseling Center - The Guiding Light provides career options and other support to the dimensionally disenfranchised.

• World's End City Hall - Although there are no taxes in World's End, there is a small office in World's End dedicated to keeping track of residents, collecting concerns of townsfolk, and serving as home to the otherwise unobvious departments of service responsible for things like replacing large sections of the landscape.

• World's End Post Office - The World's End Post Office serves many purposes - aside from mailing correspondence and packages to nearly anywhere, it also serves as a mail order service to acquire things from nearly anywhere, for a fee.

• World's End Farmer's Collective - Technically, an assortment of privately owned and managed farms on the west end of town with individual names (and claims to fame). The soil in World's End seems to be surprisingly nurturing without much interference, although some sections have been replaced due to infestations of mutant locusts or other such problems.

• University of World's End - The most bizarre university within fifteen quantums, with colleges such as the World's End Institute of Research and Development (WEIRD) and the Occult Sciences Institute (OSI). The campus provides local schooling only, although its extradimensional status means that commuting is easy for most students, and there's plenty of space on campus for student housing.

• Museum of the World's End - This otherwise mostly nondescript building near the edge of town serves as an exhibit of the unusual, rare, or interesting elements of other worlds, as well as providing a place of commemmoration for some of the many worlds that have ceased to be. In addition, the Museum Archive keeps surprisingly detailed records and copies of a diverse assortment of items from worlds that may or may not still exist, in preparation for their eventual demise, perhaps.

• Unsung Heroes Memorial Park - This quiet park is close to the thick treeline that surrounds much of the southern and eastern parts of town, and is a perfect place for an afternoon picnic or quiet contemplation. Most of the time, anyhow.

• Last Resort Diner - While the name might not be appetizing, the food served at the Last Resort Diner is hot and the staff is friendly. Conveyers from across the omniverse stop here for a bite to eat – they say it makes the trip shorter and easier.

• Body Mods - This building looks nondescript on the outside, but on the inside, there are a series of parlors offering body customization services, starting with the barbershop in front, then a tattoo parlor, a body piercing center, a cybernetic augmentation center, a surgical reconstruction office, and finally a genetic restructuring department.

• Candy Rush - A shop that sells a variety of candies and sweets from various worlds, including locally-made candies, cookies, and brownies. Pedants might point out that cookies and brownies are 'sweets', but not 'candy', to which the shopkeeper has commented, “Why don't you go eat a dictionary if you're so interested in the English language, eh?” Oddly, Candy Rush seems to also sell a variety of weaponized candy delivery systems such as the Jelltling,a rapid-fire Gatling gun that fires jellybeans loaded via box-feeder mechanism with a firing rate of over 600 beans per minute.

• Chekhov's Bag - This little pawn shop is located on the main road of World's End, and is notable for handling matters of currency exchange, as well as buying and selling all manner of odd items.

• Chemical In Balance - A shop for anything that can be drunk, sniffed, snorted, smoked, injected, chewed, or so forth, whether pharmaceutical or merely recreational. The shopkeepers don't judge for people's habits, though the products do have warning labels with known side effects.

• D-Forty - A gaming store with comic books from a surprisingly broad selection of genres, as well as roleplaying supplements from across the dimensions. Considered a low-priced substitute for historical texts, if you know which sections to look in.

• Dough On The Low - A local bakery that bakes fresh bread, bagels, and donuts daily.

• Green Vine Gardeners - A garden supply store that offers a diverse assortment of seeds and plants, as well as potting soil, pots, and other garden supplies.

• Gremlin Automotive - A mechanic/repair shop staffed entirely by diminutive (and rather savage-looking) gremlins. They are surprisingly adept at finding and fixing problems, but it's advised to pay well and tip generously, unless you're fond of developing new and entirely unrelated problems within a few days of leaving their lot.

• Heart of Play - A toy store and hobby shop that sells a variety of toys, board games, miniatures, and hobby supplies.

• Hearts and Crafts - A small craft store that offers classes in various arts and crafts, as well as selling supplies to would-be artists, scrapbookers, and designers, and offering consignment services to local crafters.

• Honest Jon's Used Deathtraps - A vehicle dealership operated by a man who goes under the title of Honest Jon, who offers very low-priced conveyances with absolutely no safety guarantees. Many of them are salvaged and barely repaired vehicles that were abandoned/crashed in town, which makes it doubly awkward when the previous owners find they need to buy their formerly-wrecked vehicle back…

• Key of Cee - A local music store that sells instruments and sheet music, as well as music in a variety of mediums for the curious (CDs, records, tapes, wax cylinders, digitabs, etc.) Hosts weekly open mic nights.

• Mr. Frosty's Ice Cream Plus - This ice cream shop has over 200 flavors - including some very unusual ones - as well as all the equipment needed to make practically any sort of dessert, especially cold.

• References, Tomes, Folios, and Manuscripts - The local bookstore, this sells an assortment of nonfiction and fiction books from various worlds, and offers an ordering service for rare, unusual, or out-of-stock books.

• Schrodinger's Pets - A small, fairly nondescript pet store that sells a variety of cute little animals and creatures, including cats, dogs, fish, birds, monkeys, octopi, sharks, squid, shoggoths, and bats.

• Sorcels and Stunts - The town's local magic shop, containing all manner of occult ingredients, as well as a few more mundane showman's tricks for those who disbelieve that magic is real.

• Stripped Tees Shopping Center - The Stripped Tees is a strip mall located near the north end of town that features a number of medium-sized stores - a grocery store, electronics store, hardware store, barber shop, clothing store, and three vacant locations. Oddly, it does not contain a strip club.

• The Universal Connector - This small shop specializes in servicing cybernetics, robotics, and computer equipment, including neural interfaces, cybernetic limbs, and organs, and offers installation, maintenance, and removal services.

• Three Leaves Tea - A store that sells a variety of special tea blends from across the worlds, as well as incense, candles, herbs, herbal supplements, and other odds and ends.

• World's End Farmer's Market - Originally established to give local farms an opportunity to sell their produce, the idea has snowballed into a sprawling flea market establishment with indoor and outdoor sections, selling everything from homemade iron stoves to bulk toothpaste as various town residents get the idea to enact their own get rich quick schemes.

These stores are most commonly frequented by adventurers (and aspiring adventurers) who have the time to plan for an expedition, or just want to make sure their 'survive everything' pack is indeed fully stocked.

• Alchemy For All - This store constantly emits a cloud of multicolored smoke from the various exhaust chimneys in its roof, blanketing the place in a mild thundershower most of the time. It sells potions for all needs, including a special selection of 'discount' potions produced by students of the local university (results not guaranteed).

• Costumes and Camouflage - A store that sells costumes for fitting in to various worlds, disguising yourself as a native, or just enjoying Halloween.

• Dimensional Thrifts - This thrift store, operated by a pixie and an ogre, caters to the disadvantaged consumer with low priced items including clothing, toys, tools, jewelry, books, and other oddities.

• Omniversal Outfitting - This large store purports to offer everything an aspiring adventurer or explorer might need for their next trip. Sure enough, they have a surprisingly diverse selection of survival supplies, apparel, weapons, ammunition, and equipment, and their friendly courtesy staff can assemble outfitter packs for novice adventurers based on their needs for a small service fee.

• QD Storage - A quantum-dimensional storage facility that rents out personal pocket dimensions (as well as easily carried access points to these dimensions) to customers. Can replace lost access points such as bags of holding, as well as provide direct access to 'lost' dimensions, to paying customers. Rental costs depend on size of storage space; one-time fees apply for replacing access points.

• Hermey's Dentistry - This dentist's office is operated by an elf named Hermey and his team of assistants, and promises the best in dental services to even the most aggressive customers.

• No-Positive Blood Bank - While the common joke is that this is the vampire equivalent of a snack bar, the No-Positive Blood Bank does actually work with the World's End Medical Center for blood transfusion supplies. However, to forestall the inevitable vampires with thoughts of larceny, they also sell a variety of bloodmelon-based foodstuffs and bottled beverages, as well as a limited supply of bottled blood from various species and sources.

• One-Upped - This unassuming building is responsible for resurrecting those who suffer an untoward demise on World's End territory (excepting the Loft, which has a fifteen-minutes-or-less resurrection guarantee written into the customer contract embedded in the Doors); while they also have access to the same professional techniques used by the Loft, they frequently employ amateurs and practicing students to experiment in creative resurrection methods as a cost-cutting measure. As such, people occasionally leave One-Upped as a zombie, reincarnated entity, or otherwise not quite as they went in, though usually a visit to the Medical Center (or two, or three) smooths out any long-term issues.

• World's End Medical Center. For those who think allowing themselves to die horribly is not a viable solution for curing what ails them, the World's End Medical Center is a one-stop shop for those who don't mind dealing with the foibles of a non-personalized doctoring experience. Fortunately, the wait is usually fairly short, but they don't accept health insurance policies from other worlds and tend to charge up front for services rendered. They also sometimes have very… unique ways of solving problems, especially if the patient is operating on charity care or the 'doctors' are University students practicing whatever they studied in class that week…

• The End Times - A privately owned press, the End Times is responsible for delivering news to the inhabitants of World's End. In most cases, this merely covers the day-to-day events of the town, as well as whatever catches the editor's interest.

• World's End Audio News - The town's primary radio station, WEAN, is received as 101.696 on most old-school FM receivers, and is surprisingly clear regardless of where in town listeners might be. (In fact, precisely tuning to that frequency with sufficiently sensitive equipment can occasionally garner results even when not remotely in the same dimension…) World's End Audio News usually reports about town activities every four hours as part of an hour-long program, with interludes of classical music between broadcasts.

• World's End Weather Broadcasting - Received on 101.796 when in World's End, World's End Weather Broadcasting issues weather advisories for the town of World's End, as well as recently adjacent territories beyond World's End city limits. It has a staff of four 'hosts' that read the weather and occasional snippets of local news in pleasant tones, with a background of jazzy pop rock music behind the announcements.

• World's End Media Online - Accessible via locally manufactured tuners as well as sufficiently connected computer systems, WEMO broadcasts unlimited channels of text, audio, video, trivid, Virtual, and other media accessible anywhere in World's End. It acts as a local Net service provider, and appropriate tuners can be rented to connect to networks in other dimensions and times with most known equipment.

• World's End Telebroadcasting - The local television station, WET, broadcasts a variety of locally produced network programming with five available channels - The Technology Channel, which describes technological innovations from the dawn of time to the post-transhuman era; the History Channel, which discusses events in the history of various Earth timelines; the Worlds Channel, which discusses various non-Earth dimensions and general guidelines for tourism; the Economy Channel, which discusses the current local values of various transitory materials and hot dimensional markets; and the Entertainment Channel, which showcases a variety of comedy and drama programming for mostly Earthlike audiences. While most programs are originally broadcast in English for an Earth audience, tuners are available to automatically transcode to foreign languages, and additional programming for alt-worlders may be available.

• World's End Public Broadcasting - This broadcasting studio, in collaboration with WET, allows local citizens to produce and distribute their own broadcasts, with some basic restrictions (no zombie curses through broadcast, etc) and basic equipment for those lacking it (studios and camera equipment, minor staffing.) They have ten channels available, so plenty of local content is available for all timeslots, including 'Cooking for Cannibals', 'Watch Things Break', and 'Turning Trash Into Treasure'.

• The Gas and Go - Open 32 hours a day, the Gas and Go is the best place in town to top off your fuel tanks and get directions to your next destination.

• Troubled Taxis - Perhaps the only taxi service that has basically just given taximeters and identification decals to anyone who owns a vehicle and feels like delivering passengers, Troubled Taxis is rather lax on hiring guidelines (although it does still pass legal responsibility for any actions taken onto the driver, and it tends not to hire obvious criminals, sexual predators, and murderers.) Troubled Taxis takes a 20% cut of all taximeter service rendered, and frowns strongly on those taking pay 'off-meter'. Average fee is $1 per kilometer, including 5th-dimensional distances, although drivers are free to set their own fares as long as these fares are plainly listed.

• World's End Networked Transports - The local shuttle service sends shuttlebuses of all kinds to various places within World's End, and also makes a brisk side business in picking up tourists and students from other worlds in appropriate conveyances, from nondescript vans and buses to horse-drawn carriages, subway cars, and dirigibles. Use of the shuttle service to get to other places within World's End is free as part of University tuition, or costs $1 for others; getting to and from alternate dimensions costs between $5 and $50 depending on the destination. Pick-ups from alternate dimensions generally need to be booked in advance, although 'emergency pickup service on demand' is an available option for a sizable advance fee.

• Aionious Housing Developments - A private community of residences owned by frequent visitors and permanent guests of World's End, notable for being difficult to navigate unless you already know where you're going.

• World's End Tourism Office - The World's End Tourism Office organizes regular excursions to other dimensions every 47 hours on the dot. Why 47 hours? Honestly, that point is never really clarified.

• Green Screen Pictures - A large drive-in movie theater located near the southern end of town, with the screens positioned to conveniently block the view of the World's End Utilities Company in the background. The picture selection is eclectic, with a series of eight screens on which play an assortment of horror, action, drama, romance, and other bizarre films from across the known worlds. Those seeking a particular film are advised to ask for a schedule.

• World's End Zoo - Mostly inhabited by creatures unfortunate enough to accidentally fall into World's End and require help (or attract enough attention to be detained), the World's End Zoo contains a variety of animals from various worlds, many of which are non-Earthlike.

• World's End Players - A theater company that puts on performances in its spacious theater, as well as offering occasional free performances at public venues.

• World's End Scrapyards - A large junkyard full of strange machinery, junked appliances, and other scraps left behind by passing travelers and locals. The Scrapyards are free for anyone to visit, as its contents are typically unwanted and near-useless junk; most of the really interesting offworld contraptions tend to find their way into Chekhov's Bag or are featured at the Museum of the World's End.

• World's End Public Library - The World's End Public Library, a literary resource for information on practically any subject, from any publicly known dimension. While it doesn't have all of the omniverse's knowledge, it does come closer than Wikipedia for most students' needs.

• World's End Volunteer Firehouse - While there's seldom significant problems with large fires in World's End, local inhabitants operate the town's firehouse, serving mostly as emergency search and rescue personnel in light of whatever's fallen in town this week. Several are powerful metahumans who have mostly retired from heroics, but a few daredevils with an eye towards adventure and looting rights also volunteer.

• World's End Police Station - The rent-a-cops of World's End are an odd bunch; some are local inhabitants who just need the money, others are out-of-towners looking to make a fast buck, and rumor has it that many are created specifically to serve and annoy. They are the basic emissaries of law and order in town, although continued disturbances are likely to be met with non-lawful use of force by inhabitants who like their peace. They are mostly excellent at issuing parking tickets and impounding vehicles (even vehicles that are normally quite difficult to impound), but also serve as great cannon fodder when dealing with The Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know that has decided to default on its library fees. As municipal servants, they are directly beholden to The Mayor, and while the town's resurrection insurance makes certain they bounce back, the veterans are often far less foolhardy than fresh recruits.

• On Track Fitness Center - This open-32-hours gym and fitness center is fitted with a variety of athletic machines and equipment, treadmills, stationary bicycles, a heated swimming pool, massage tables, hot tubs, and a variety of other amenities.

• Unplanned Parenthood - The town's adoption agency, where unparented children - and those children whose parents don't want them - are brought. Those who aren't adopted work to make supplies for Hearts and Crafts. Children who fall into World's End from other dimensions and have no home to return to often end up here.

• Birth Control-Z - Made a mistake or had an unfortunate experience and need to rid yourself of unexpected and unwanted offspring? Accidental host to entities that plan to burst out of your chest or other regions? Need to remove an unfortunate demonic possession? Just want to make sure you're free of parasites? Come to Birth Control-Z, where we undo your unfortunate decisions and correct your undesired experiences.

• World's End Academy - A school for children of all ages and species, designed to give courses from pre-school to high school and to keep a watchful eye on its charges. Current headmistress is June Sweeny, and Byron Wolfe is one of the teachers. World's End Academy is frequently hiring security guards due both to the students' oft-specialized needs, and due to their parents possibly having enemies.

• World's End Utilities Company - A monolithic factory at the far southwestern part of town, World's End Utilities is responsible for providing power, water, telecommunications, and other needs to the community. Access is denied to visitors except by special permission.

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