On days such as this, the Market is filled with crucified dragons and laws-in-waiting. They whistle a welcome.
—The Market of Hungers, Sunless Sea
Traffickers of the Black Meat, flesh of the giant aquatic black centipede - sometimes attaining lengths of six feet - found in a lane of black rocks and iridescent brown lagoons, exhibit paralyzed crustaceans in camouflaged pockets of the Plaza visible only to the Meat Eaters.
Followers of obsolete unthinkable trades, doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, black marketers of World War III, excisors of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebrephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, official of unconstituted police states, brokers of exquisite dreams and nostalgias tested on the sensitive cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, drinkers of the Heavy Fluid sealed in translucent amber of freedom.
Rickety stalls and spread blankets surrounded the inside of Pauper's Gate, selling everything from baskets of bruised fruit and "bags o'mystery" sausage made from, well, something, to gaudy and supposedly enchanted trinkets, secondhand clothes, and skins of homebrewed ale.
Everything was for sale in the dark underbelly of Setharis, if you knew where to look. Every possible vice catered for, from rare and expensive alchemics and nubile younglings sold in the flesh markets of the Scabs, to serial debtors bought for darker purposes, likely destined to die in brutal cavern fights.
—The Traitor God, by Cameron Johnston
As you wind through the streets at the fabled bazaars
With the cardamom-cluttered stalls
You can smell every spice
While you haggle the price
Of the silks and the satin shawls
With the cardamom-cluttered stalls
You can smell every spice
While you haggle the price
Of the silks and the satin shawls
— Aladdin (2019), "Arabian Nights"
Awnings flapped overhead in the baked breeze, the solar coats casting black rectangles of hard shadow, the cheaper cotton and rag staining the faces of those beneath them with red and blue light. The harsh sizzle of bantha burgers and much-used fritter grease swirled from a hundred little stands wherever some enterprising Jawa or Whiphid could find room to set up a solar-power stove. Races from every corner of the galaxy wandered the banded shadows of this makeshift labyrinth. In one place a corpse-faced Durosian was holding up strings of opaline “sand pearls” and sun-stained blue glass for a couple of inquisitive human tourists; in another, a nearly nude Gamorrean belly dancer was performing on a yellow-striped blanket to the appreciative whistles of a couple of Sullustans, who were among the many races to find Gamorreans attractive.
