The Omphalic Market

No tale tells what ancient power minted the ubiquitous star-marked golden coins that sit in the treasure hoards of the Underworld. But all know that these coins have become the de facto standard of the City. Coinages of lesser metals have become worthless. As guilds have hauled back vast quantities of glittering gold, merchants of the great Omphalic Market will only accept Underworld gold as payment.

“In the Plaza of Dark Delights, which lies seven blocks south of the Marsh Gate and extends from the Fountain of Dark Abundance to the Shrine of the Black Virgin, the shop-lights glinted upward no more brightly than the stars glinted down.

For there the vendors of drugs and the peddlers of curiosa and the hawkers of assignations light their stalls and crouching places with foxfire, glowworms, and fire-pots with tiny single windows, and they conduct their business

almost as silently as the stars conduct theirs.”

– “Bazaar of the Bizarre,” Franz Leiber