The spaceport was commissioned by the Escape Reality Tourism Cartel earlier this cycle, with the view of finally making Edna a part of the modern tourism industry. It would seem nobody had troubled themselves to ensure that Round Arway were actually on board with the big plans for their future however, if the array of occult paraphernalia and alarming roster of individuals (in)volunteered for sacrifice are anything to go by.

‘In times of crisis, you have to resort to whatever means necessary to protect your interests,’ the town’s chieftain Uldamane Longax shouted down to me from atop a particularly gruesome-looking sacrificial altar. ‘A development of this sort would not only destroy a bit of landscape we quite enjoy looking at, but also bring all kinds of unsavoury folk to our peaceful town. We have to protect our children from the corruption and violence of the outer worlds, and if that means rousing World Eater from their eternal slumber then so be it.’

When I asked whether sacrificing children to summon a being that would burst from the very landscape they were fighting to preserve struck him as being in someway counter to his motivation for doing so, he merely blinked before saying ‘everything has it’s price.’ He then returned to his chanting, which I took to mean the conversation was over.

I’ve reached out to my contact in the Cartel, but she’s a bit of a nightmare when it comes to picking up email so we might have to wait a couple of nights before we get the other—dare I say more rational (if no less diabolical)—side to this story (which is fine by me, it’s been a slow month and I’ve got publication targets to hit).