Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market (short story)
Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market was a Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short story written by Lupan Evezan and illustrated by Aristide Twain. It introduced the Interdimensional Black Market and its Queen as well as CS-NA, all of whom would go on to become recurring elements of the series, and also prominently mentioned Madame Tarsa, though she did not appear “on-screen” until the next story.
Contents
Plot
Darius, the former Head Assistant Researcher of the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries, is sitting listlessly at the Interdimensional Tavern, angry that he's been served the wrong drink (Honeysapping Rutcarver insead of Thin Syrup). After an argument with Tpxszum, during which he proclaims once more that he will leave as soon as possible, he seems all set to head back to his small rented room until he spots an unfamiliar figure: a short person wearing in a black cloak that conceals their face.
Darius is about to get up and try to strike up a conversation with them when braggart Alistair Neezley climbs up on a different table and starts one of his tall tales about adventures in the Multiverse. Neezley's boastful tale of escaping from Creepworms and a Gargoyle in the Glowing Caves of Swaatch is interrupted by the hooded figure, who asks if he's ever been to the Cupid Homeworld and could tell him its coordinates. Neezley is predictably unhelpful, but this piques Darius's interest and he finally engages the stranger in conversation.
The stranger explains that he's been trying to get to the Cupid Homeworld, but the outdated Void Ship he bought using the last of his crystals needs precise dimensional coordinates to go anywhere. Darius himself knows the coordinates, having seen them flash on one of the screens of Pessimist's Fog Ship when he briefly stole it and tried to direct it to the Homeworld. He reveals this to the stranger, asking to be taken along to the Homeworld (claiming that this is because he has a friend there he wants to visit). The two climb into the Ship and take off, nearly flying into the waiting maws of an eldritch abomination before they finally tear through the dimensional divide.
However, instead of the Homeworld, they find themselves atop a stone island surrounded on all sides by pitch-black darkness, upon which a marketplace seems to be built. They can only conclude that the abomination's jaws closing around the ship must have damaged some key components of it and thrown off the aim, and Darius reluctantly gives the stranger the last of the cash in his wallet in order to hopefully buy spare parts in the marketplace, extracting from the stranger a promise that he'll give Darius the repaired ship once they reach the Cupid Homeworld.
Heading into the market, Darius bumps into three-eyed man who informs him that they have landed in the Interdimensional Black Market, and vises them to make themselves scarce, as most patrons of the Market don't take kindly to uninvited outsiders. Heedless, Darius heads further in, seeing many strange creatures peddling even stranger products. He briefly interacts with a man selling curse toadstools of various kinds, including ones that can be used to turn people into mindless wraiths, but turns away, thinking that they would probably not work on Clockwork Cherubs.
Next, he finds himself at a stall named Madame Tarsa's Marvelous Dolls and Automatons, manned not by Tarsa herself but by a marionette with a jester's outfit and an assertive attitude. The marionette demonstrates the range of Tarsa's creation by summoning a ventriloquist's dummy which promptly steals Darius's voice and talks to him with it, demanding to be bought if he wants it back. Darius grudgingly acquiesces, his money being collected by a mechanical pig, and stomps off to find the hooded stranger again, throwing away the dummy as soon as he gets the chance.
He finds his companion unsuccessfully attempting to haggle with a “green, humanoid creature” for a 210K Twin-Carbonoid Dualtech Engine. As Darius is trying to get involved in the conversation, he finds that the ventriloquist's dummy has caught up to him, insisting that it cannot thrown away, only given, sold or traded. However, this turns out to be fortunate because the ship-parts seller is interested in trading the doll for the Engine, thinking they can resell it as a premium in one of several other shady markets they frequent. With a bit more bargaining, they also agree to give them his ship-building robot CS-NA, whom he describes as being “outdated anyway”.
They get back to the wreckage of the ship and instruct CS-NA to begin repairs. Before long, however, the two are beset by a wraith belonging to the owner of the Market, which has recognised them as outsiders. Fleeing through the Market, they are eventually cornered, but miraculously find the entrance to a secret passageway. However, the long, winding stairs, down which they are followed by the wraith, simply takes them to the throne room of the Queen of the Black Market herself; clad in armour made entirely otu of bones and sitting on a spiky throne. She summons ten more wraiths from under her throne, who easily overpower the two, and reveals that she uses white curse toadstools from the toadstool-sealsman's stall to turn all outsiders who cross her into more Wraiths to patrol the Black Market.
However, when she attempts to stab the cloaked figure with a dagger, the blade bounces. Taking his chance to wriggle out of the wraiths' grasp, the stranger throws off the black cloak to reveal himself as a Cupid — Tracker-764 to be exact. Tracker and Darius don't have long to exchange surprised words at learning that they've each been travelling with a bitter enemy of the other, before the Queen decides that a clockwork automaton like Tracker might fetch a good price and decides to auction off Tracker and Darius instead of killing them.
There, as the bidding starts, Tracker uses his Clockwork Cherub ability to link up with any electronic device older than 1960 to contact CS-NA, telling him to bid on them. Soon enough, CS-NA “buys” Darius and Tracker, but when the Queen realises that he can't pay, she sends more Wraiths after them as they run back to the Void Ship. In the commotion of the beleaguered take-off, Darius tries throwing Tracker out of the Ship, prompting CS-NA to decide between its two owners, predictably choosing the kinder Tracker. With his help, Tracker overpowers Darius, and ends up dropping him off at the Tavern again, just in time to hear the beginning of another Alistair Neezley tall tale.
Tracker finally arrives in the Cupid Homeworld, where, unable to bring the speed down in time, he ends up crashing directly, if harmlessly, into Pessimist-242 (who sees it coming well in advance but decides not to bother trying to dodge, on the assumption that it wouldn't do any good). Pessimist's welcome is somewhat less warm than Tracker would have hoped for the first Cupid he sees in decades, though it doesn't seem to bring down his mood.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- This story begins at the Interdimensional Tavern in the Void, mostly takes place in the hidden pocket dimension of the Interdimensional Black Market, and ends in the Cupid Homeworld. The Prime Universe is mentioned on multiple occasions.
Other
- Darius realised that he had been fired in absentia by the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries because he could no longer access the Dromedary Database from the “small portable computer” in his wristwatch. The device still gives him Prime Earth time.
- The Interdimensional Tavern accepts all forms of valid currency.
- Flaws in Alistair Neezley's stories include his claim to have camped for a year in the Impeccable Mountains of Kragza only to describe them as comprising six peaks, instead of nine, and to have ridden an Arisrian across the Rawl Valley despite describing them as five- instead of four-winged.
- Stall-keepers 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, and a “serpentine beast in a fringed cloak” reads fortunes from a crystal ball under a large tent. There are, in all, “hundreds of strange beings and eccentric beasts” offering up odd goods all across the island.
- The green curse toadstools cause whoever eats them to permanently glow a neon green colour, the orange one explode when thrown at the ground with force, the gray ones prevent them from feeling any emotions, and the white ones turn living people into Wraiths. The black ones are simply deadly.
- While running away from the Wraith, Darius and Tracker “duck under the legs of an enormous gryphon” and “brush past a gang of imps attempting to swindle an old sheep with glasses out of her wallet”.
- One of the items sold at the auction is a “lovely floam drive from Sirintis-B, still in the original packaging”.
Continuity
- This story begins in the Interdimensional Tavern, which is much as it was described in PROSE: The Interdimensional Tavern, complete with the Gruel.
- Darius remembers being “banished by an odd eldritch abomination and left floating in the Void”, and being fired from the Drove for letting all the captives in Research Laboratory 6 escape, which is where he was left at the end of PROSE: Pessimist and the Dromedaries.
- Tracker-764 mentions having spent “the last of his crystals” on the ship and hands Darius a book on dimensional science, both items with which he was left at the end of PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane.
- The Queen of the Black Market claims that if her operation were discovered by any of the big interdimensional authorities, it would get shut down “faster than you could say ‘glozzort’”. She used the term again in PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel as an affectionate insult, calling Wendy “You silly glozzort”.
- The burlap sack running gag, as debuted in PROSE: Marksmanship-522 and the Multi-Dimensional Race, makes a further appearance with Darius being captured in a burlap sack by the wraiths in expectation of being taken to the auction block.
- A Wellsian is one of the bidders at the auction. The Wellsians debuted in VIDEO: The Wellsians. Their presence in the Interdimensional Black Market would later be elaborated on in PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel in the aftermath of PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians.
- The Clockwork Cherubs' ability to hack any technology older than 1960, Prime Earth time, which debuted in PROSE: Pessimist and the Dromedaries, proves instrumental.
- Darius is seen again, still stuck in the Tavern, in PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine, which also featured the second appearance of the Queen of the Black Market, now newly in possession of the bone spear she mentioned intending to create in Misadventures.
Behind the scenes
Read online
The story can be read for free on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.
