he mood-setting scene takes place in a volcanic dome on the moon (which is populated billions of years ago in Tubitz and Mergenstein, my steam-punk fantasy). So this port I’ve mentioned earlier, Kedgewater Deep, is inside this half-dome, the floor smooth as ice, the town built around the inner edge. Overhead through the crater, the stars shimmer. And there stands the Earth, named ‘Tellus’ (a way of concealing the obvious here – it’s Latin). I wanted my “moon” to contribute to the scene. The first idea was to make it a “Harvest Tellus”, swollen and angry, glowing into the crater […]