Interdimensional Black Market
The Interdimensional Black Market was an illegal interdimensional hub ruled by the Queen of the Black Market.
Nature
It was located on a rocky island floating in an inky abyss of nothingness, (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker, Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market) lit only by strange multicoloured spheres that floated above the island. It was a pocket universe; (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror) Its coordinates were a tightly-kept secret, although Pythagoras-858 discovered them thanks to having been nearby on an occasion when the Queen used an emergency teleport back home, (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker) as she left Hilbert's. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel)
The Black Market was a secret operation, and patrons and vendors alike had to be invited to go; anyone else would be deemed an outsider, hunted down by the Queen's Wraiths, and turned into one themselves by means of a gray curse toadstool. (PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market, The Grand Multiverse Hotel)
Vendors at the Black Market include “a large octopus wielding several knives” offering “a variety of strange and dangerous-looking foods”, a winged lobster selling a set of bottles “each containing a tiny human”, a trio of harpies peddling supposedly-magical feathers, a humanoid toad selling curse toadstools, a “serpentine beast in a fringed cloak” reads fortunes from a crystal ball under a large tent, and a “green, humanoid creature” who sold Void Ship parts, originally with the help of CS-NA. Madame Tarsa also owned a stall at the Black Market, where she sold some of her magical toys through a living puppet intermediary, (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker, Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market) Madame Tarsa's Marvelous Dolls and Automatons. (PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market) There were, in all, “hundreds of strange beings and eccentric beasts” offering up odd goods all across the island. (PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market)
History
On the way to the Cupid Homeworld in 2019, Darius and Tracker-764's Void Ship was damaged in the Void by an eldritch abomination and crash-landed in the Market by mistake. In spite of their fraught status as uninvited outsiders, the two visited the Market in search of spare parts. Darius stumbled upon Madame Tarsa's Marvelous Dolls and Automatons and was tricked into buying a cursed ventriloquist's dummy.
When he found Tracker again, his travelling companion had found a ship-parts seller and was attempting to haggle with them over a 210K Twin-Carbonoid Dualtech Engine. They ended up trading the dummy to the seller in exchange for the Engine, plus a second-hand ship-repairing robot called CS-NA. Before they could leave peacefully, they were noticed by a Wraith and taken by the Queen of the Black Market, who briefly threatened to simply kill them before realising how valuable a Clockwork Cherub might be, putting the two up for auction. Tracker signaled CS-NA to “buy” them, with no intention of paying, and they made their escape aboard the Void Ship, chased by more Wraiths trying to stop them from leaving without paying up. Following Tracker's return to the Homeworld, (PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market) Companionship-790, Tracker's old friend, (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane) learned about the Black Market. Seemingly not realising how dangerous it was, he left a note in the Cupid Suggestion Box proposing that the Black Market be made into a frequent romanticisation target. (PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box)
After escaping Venus, the five surviving Wellsians travelled to the Black Market from the Interdimensional Tavern, and, from there, sent Forga sog-Forgos to the Interdimensional Hotel. Due to temporal distortions caused by Lord Thymon's absence, this event was contemporary (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel) with Darius and Tracker's adventure in the Market, with one of the Wellsians present at the Black Market bidding on Darius at that time, (PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market) even though from the Cupid Homeworld's perspective the Wellsians had yet to escape Venus. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians)
Eventually, the Crew decided to authorise regular missions to the Black Market. This meant that the Queen of the Black Market, now a probable future enemy, was logged by Bibliophile-962 in the Book of Evil, where he described the Black Market itself as “a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and also a great place to buy collectable keychains”. (PROSE: The Book of Evil)
After he became determined to locate the body of a dead Copper-Colored Cupid so that he could use it as the basis for a Frankenstein-esque creation, the mad scientist Doctor Curious, from the Jynx Dimension, managed to find his way to the Black Market above Pessimist's Fog Ship. There, he managed to acquire the coordinates of one of the few dead Cupids in the Multiverse. He also bumped into a member of the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles and managed to steal the Story Rewriter 3000 from him without his notice. (PROSE: The Companions of Doctor Curious)
In December 2020, the Market was attacked by the Clown Emperor, who began dueling the Queen herself, with his army of smaller duplicates of himself taking on the Wraiths. The fight attracted a crowd of the merchants and patrons of the Black Market to the central plaza where it was happening, such that when Sherlock Holmes and Pythagoras-858 appeared in the Market
On April Fools' Day 2021, the Faction of the Fooling Fish, who had recently acquired inter-dimensional travel, forged a letter from the Queen which they distributed to all the merchants in the Interdimensional Black Market, claiming that the old location's secrecy had been blown and that they were all to instantly relocate their business to the coordinates of the Interdimensional Tavern. Meanwhile, the Queen was left alone in her palace with her Wraiths. A Fish visited her and tried to start a charade of having important business with her, but she at least bought no part of it and threw the visitor out. Eventually, the trickery was discovered and the merchants returned. (PROSE: Multiversal Mischief)
Lainya Vantrik discussed assassination contracts at the Black Market. Auctions were also held there for strange items, including the outfit of Acantha after it was plucked out of the fringes of non-existence. (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror)
