"Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dreams the ancient world of Nehwon with its towers and skulls and jewels, its swords and sorceries. Nehwon's known realms crowd about the Inner Sea: northward the green-forested fierce Land of the Eight Cities, eastward the steppe-dwelling Mingol horsemen and the desert where caravans creep from the rich Eastern Lands and the River Tilth. But southward, linked to the desert only by the Sinking Land and further warded by the Great Dike and the Mountains of Hunger, are the rich grain fields and walled cities of Lankhmar, eldest and chiefest of Nehwon's lands. Dominating the Land of Lankhmar and crouching at the silty mouth of the River Hlal in a secure corner between the grain fields, the Great Salt Marsh, and the Inner Sea is the massive-walled and mazy-alleyed metropolis of Lankhmar, thick with thieves and shaven priests, lean-framed magicians and fat-bellied merchants - Lankhmar the Imperishable, the City of the Black Toga." —From "Induction" by Fritz Lieber
Places of Note:
Lankhmar Lankhmar is richly described as a populous, labyrinthine city rife with corruption; it is decadent and squalid in roughly equal parts and said to be so shrouded by smog that the stars are rarely sighted (the city's alternate name is "The City of Seven Score Thousand Smokes".) Located next to the Inner Sea, Lankhmar is visited by ships from across Nehwon and is the starting point for Fafhrd and the Mouser's many sea voyages.
The city is ostensibly ruled by an Overlord and a nobility. The Thieves' Guild is influential, too, and controls Lankhmar's abundant criminal element, with the notable exceptions of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
Streets in Lankhmar are often evocatively named (the Thieves' Guild is located on Cheap Street near Death's Alley and Murder Alley.) Commonly referenced locations are the Silver Eel Tavern, behind which is Bone Alley, and the Golden Lamprey. The main meeting place is the Plaza of Dark Delights, which is the setting of the popular story The Bazaar of the Bizarre. The religious center of Lankhmar is the Street of the Gods, along which numerous (and often bizarre) cults seek to arrange themselves in order of popularity. The true gods of Lankhmar, however, are feared rather than worshipped; these "Black Bones" (mummified ancestors of the Lankhmarese) occasionally leave their temple to fight threats to the city - or threats to their own position as preeminent religion within the city.
Beneath Lankhmar is an underground city inhabited by sentient rats. At one point the Mouser, suitably reduced in size, infiltrates this world.
Leiber's Lankhmar bears considerable similarity to 16th Century Seville as depicted in Cervantes' classical picaresque tale Rinconete y Cortadillo: a bustling, cosmopolitan maritime city, into whose port galleons sail laden with gold from which only a few benefit, with a thoroughly corrupt civil government and a powerful and well-organised Thieves' Guild - all seen through the eyes of two young adventurers who formed a partnership to guard each other's back in this dangerous milieu. However, Cervantes' protagonists, less daring than Leiber's, do not confront the Thieves' Guild but enter its ranks. -Wikipedia
Rat-infested Ilthmar. Ilthmar is a rival city to Lankhmar, located across the Great Salt Marsh and then the Sinking Land from Lankhmar, on the edge of the Deserts. Its people are known as Ilthmarts, and are known for their gambling, their heartlessness, and their worship of rat and shark gods. The harbor of Ilthmar is kept full of sharks for getting rid of criminals and undesirables. -Wikipedia
Horborixen, "citadel of the King of Kings and city second only to Lankhmar in size, antiquity, and baroque splendor"; the decadent, shrunken, and subtle Empire of Eevamarensee with its hairless inhabitants; the Great Steppes, home of the squat, stolid, black-haired Mingols; the city of Ool Hrusp; the Inner Sea; the Outer Sea; the Sea of the East, joined to the Inner Sea by the narrow Sinking Lands; the Frozen Sea; the secret, shadowy realm of Quarmall; the beggar-city of Tovilyis; the Mountains of the Elder Ones; the Trollstep Mountains or the Mountains of the Giants, peaks include the Ripsaw, the Tusk, White Fang, the great Stardock, Obelisk Polaris, Gran Hanack, and the Hint; the Forbidden City of the Black Idols; long sunken Simorgya; the Bones of the Old Ones, a mountain range; the tropical land of Klesh; the Shadowland; the Poisoned Desert; Kvarch Nar; the village of Earth's End; the Parched Mountains; the City of Ghouls, a bone-proud, invisible-fleshed people; Illik-Ving, "the eighth and smallest metropolis of the Land of the Eight Cities." Also there is Rime Isle, which is last told the home of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. -Wikipedia
Best of all, yet vague as hell [http://www.scrollsoflankhmar.com/index.php]
