to market to market to buy a fat pig

I don't like the idea of gems, I'm sure I'm not the only active member hovering around less than 100 right now so I disagree that it would be a good gauge on who would have the drive/time/etc to actually take care of said slave. If it's a gem auction I pretty much cannot participate, my gems are held up for future purchases and characters and I know Lunar is in a similar boat, for one more 'active' member example.

Another reasoning *away* from gems, is that the biggest drama on site to have come from the last market was Winterfell's bid for Kai. If that was a simple gem purchase Acere wouldn't have put his pack forward for raiding, two less raids would have been done, people wouldn't be so jaded ICly, all in all I'm happy with how it all turned out and I don't want it to turn into just a boring "whoever has the most gems accumulated in wait" OOC auction instead of an IC one.

I voted fakey fakerton bids, but i think there would be ways to keep people fair about it. If enough notice is given before slave market you could always make people do a percentage of their bids ICly - Say, you want to come prepared with a moose and a squirrel and some trinkets, they need to have at least 1 IC thread gathering those items so people don't just start throwing out "I bid 10 polar bears!!!"

Alternatively you could do some fake fakerton gems, like a currency just invented for this purpose where everyone who enters gets X amount. Ie: Alphas get 300, Loners get 100, pack wolves get 200, and allow people to submit hunt/gather/craft threads for extra currencies before it starts. So if someone decides they want to spend 2 weeks ICly slaughtering every one of Ardent's large prey animals then they could be 'richer' for the auction. Which also I think would satisfy the gem reasoning of 'we want these people to actually USE the slaves they buy and not make plots dead' because they'd have still had to work for these ficticious currencies. People/packs could pool their currencies if they wanted to if bids got too high. I'd still want a way for people to be creative with their actual bids though, so my only worry with even this alternative is that it would stop people from bidding theirselves/their packs/whatever other creativities someone might be able to think of like from the last auction. Those IMO were the most interesting bids to me, way better then "i raise your rabbit to a elk'