Just where DO Bazaars of the Bizarre get their stock?
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
Every city has one, all deliberately placed in just the right locale for the maximum amount of mystery. Some have signs advertising mysteries and secrets. Others merely advertise “Antiques” and let the buyer discover what lies inside. The ones with billboards and Facebook ads are usually full of junk: worthless tarot sets and love spell candles endorsed by The Outstanding Witch of the Year and crystals that only work with the great philosopher‘s definition of “chakra” as “one of those places where if you hit it with a baseball bat, you die.” Others are equally full of trash, but hype up the mystery through word of mouth from those whose mouths have no inherent value. Many others, though, have true wonders and horrors: blessed and cursed items at markdown prices not out of a sense of purpose or malevolence, but just because the blasted things have been taking up shelf space for too long and need to leave to free up room for new inventory. After all, if you kill or debilitate your customers with nightmares, then they don’t come back for more, and they definitely don’t bring friends and family.
The real goals, though, are to find the real hoards of wonder. The stores carrying them know exactly what they have and charge accordingly. They also make a point of informing customers of lineage, heritage, and potential, with the understanding that the responsibilities of use and misuse lie solely with the purchaser. These stores offer very accurate and eloquent warnings and disclaimers, often come with printed catalogs of special items, and occasionally offer recommendations of experts best able to illuminate secret features or defects. Some of these stores are as much social club as retail establishment, as regular customers tend to convince others as to a particular item’s value better than even trained sales staff can do. Others are purely business: come to the counter, ask for an artifact or device, exchange item for desired currency, and get the hell out.
With all of these, of course, is the question about the source. True, alien artifacts just fall out of the sky, either from low-Earth orbit or from quantum pockets and various paradoxes. Authentic antique magical artifacts are a bit harder because that usually entails wizards and other thaumaturges either finally dying for good or getting bored with material possessions, and that sometimes takes centuries, even with mortal wounds. The estate sales from rich collectors of esoteric apparatus and finery become battlegrounds for other collectors, with at some estimates half of a particular estate showing back on the market a year later from sudden deceasements and “changes of venue.” Most of the cheap stuff flooding the market comes from the Kadrey Products Factory in Battle Ground, Washington, with a handy 200-page print catalog of talismans, orbs, and pranks for those allergic to technology. But the rest?
“The rest” comes from many sources, but the one most missed is the annual Artifact Auction at the equally missed St. Remedius Medical College in Dallas, Texas. As with most museums that auction items in their collections to cover operating expenses on everything else, St. Remedius regularly went through its libraries and archives for duplicates, power clones, and echoes of items already catalogued and preserved, as well as items already digitized or otherwise replicated in other forms. And then there was the equipment: defunct scanners and computers, obsolete automata, half-finished projects dropped due to funding concerns or the sudden deaths of the grad students working on them. Data and sample storage systems, graveyard dust collections, dendritic protons packed in dry ice so they wouldn’t melt, artwork and non-haunted portraits and weapons from a thousand defeated temporal invaders…if it wasn’t being used and it no longer offered any direct threat to St. Remedius or its interests, out it went.
Every September 27 from the College’s move to Dallas to its disappearance, the Artifact Auction was one of the great events of the exonormal community, and one where enterprising retailers and wholesalers from esoteric shops around the planet rushed to be the first to make claims. Although the Auction did feature auctions of obviously valuable items, such as a moonsword once belonging to the Samhain Trio, most of its sales were first-come, first-served purchases of individual items and lots, with extensive disclaimer forms absolving St. Remedius of any responsibility of subsequent use or hoarding. Anybody could enter, within reason, and the Auction grounds in and around Berman Hall were neutral territory for individuals and groups that otherwise would have destroyed each other on sight, that neutrality carefully guarded and enforced by St. Remedius Security. The only absolutes were that the Auction was open for exactly 24 hours, giving plenty of time for the sunlight-averse to pick and choose, any acts of aggression were stamped down with chilling finality, and a wide array of food trucks and tents were available nearby for those needing sustenance or additional stimulation. In addition, the Auction gave an excellent opportunity for fans to meet St. Remedius Radio disc jockeys, who kept up a running commentary for those watching and listening remotely.
As with so many things, the disappearance of St. Remedius directly affected the shops and distributors dependent upon the Auctions for high-quality merchandise, with markets only now starting to recover. For a short time, the bootleg and counterfeit artifact and relic market boomed without St. Remedius certification and guidance, but as generally happens with a suddenly sparse market, those being too blatant about their skullduggery usually come to particularly painful ends.
(In loving memory of the one and only Fritz Leiber.)
Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.
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