Once long ago The Gods had considered themselves all knowing, then they created humans, who seemed to believe the exact same thing, and quickly divested them of that particular belief. Humanity, and affiliated species were like galactic bug fixers, except without the fixing. They could unerringly find the one flaw in The Gods perfect creations, that one niggling little code error they could never shift, poke it, prod it, twist it into a bow, and inevitably make it worse.

The Gods had tried a few tricks to deal with the issue. Hell they’d tried everything, they’d created vast, beautiful wonders, vistas, rolling plains, crystal caverns, and stunning forests. Only to have humanity, as soon as their back was turned, go back to poking the anomalies with a stick to see what would happen. It was enough to make you despair, honestly, it was.

They tried moving the nasty things as far away from sentient species as possible, forgetting to factor in the issue of Dragons. Who lived a long time, were easily bored, and were more than happy to send a human into the jaws of a rip in the fabric of space, time, and reality to bring back a random item from within. At worst the human failed miserably, and they all got to have a laugh over popcorn. At best they succeeded, and the dragon got a mega shiny apple, a comfy new golden fleece, or what have you, and as a bonus a human to eat later, who the gods were likely to be pissed off at enough by that point, not to care about vanishing.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, eternity is a hell of a long time, and some of The Gods, weren’t exactly fans of the adventurer type, so they were more than happy to put on a little show, and send the foolish mortal on an impossible errand, for little reward, that usually ended in tragedy. Or worse, success, that would inevitably get them murdered by their fellow mortals later. This is something of an occupational hazard for hero types.

Next they tried weaponising the cute, they created adorable, big eyed, affectionate creatures, that would be trustworthy companions. Almost as if in response to this attempt. humanity had started adopting tendrilled, slavering abominations that had no place existing. These humans insisted, despite all logic, reason, the insistence of their fellow bipeds, and an overwhelming body of evidence, that their inside out breed Terrolos was absolutely adorable, and a perfectly domesticated house pet. (The fact they usually ate said human a few days later would suggest otherwise, but breeders still existed, and insisted “There are no bad Inverse Terrolos Brain Slugs, only bad owners.” Some even insisting, from behind their hastily constructed barricades, that if they had just swapped to a different brand of Terrolos Brain Slug food, the moment their erstwhile pet had gone off the existing brand, everything would have been OK. In case you missed it though, it probably would not have been OK.)

That plan having failed, they decided it was time to try trauma as a deterrent.

There are many places in the multiverse where things have gone, just a tad, iffy, other places where that is an understatement. Then there are places where the divine made an almighty SNAFU.

Eventually they decided, that if humanity wanted abominations, by gods were they going to get them. They delved deep into the collective unconscious of humanity, looking specifically for the bits that had teat, and claws, and smiled in the darkness. Then having completed the worst imaginable piece of market research, they took everything they’d learned. Slapping it together, using a little nightmare for glue. Then slapped it over the framework of human fireside stories, and then started an assembly line. In short, they created the eldritch.

Then in the absence of anything like a cosmic “caution wet floor”, or a “danger of accidental implosion into a cloud of chinchillas,” (most adorable grisly death EVER), they unleashed their new creations, into the dark, dingy, broken cracks in the world. In theory to keep humanity, and the other species, who seemed to take humanities actions in the same manner as the kid asking are you chicken? Out.

But there was one other thing they forgot to factor in when they cooked up this particular plan, as the sentient species grew, learned, and egged each other on to greater and greater heights of Darwinian inadvisability, a new offshoot of these species emerged, the tourist was born.

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Mibbet was confused, the last couple of miles they had noticed a sudden influx of signs along the roadside, for things like “The worlds largest lobster,” “Twinezilla,” or “The Thing..” She had no idea what any of these things were, but there did seem to be a preponderance of them hereabouts.

“Who, or what, is the thing?” She asked Sir Leeroy, she hated to seem ignorant, but all these signs did have her curious.

“Not sure Princess, but we are heading into Whatsit Way. Expect a lot more signs like that.”

“What the hell is Whatsit Way?”

“You really don’t want to know Princess, trust me on that.”

“I WANNA KNOW,” Elvira bellowed, apparently she had noticed all the signposts, and it had gotten her just as curious as Mibbet.

Sir Leeroy sighed, this was definitely going to add a few days to their tour, and the girls would no doubt be bored to tears within minutes. But that wasn’t his call to make, so he started his explanation.

“Whatsit way, is essentially a giant museum, about a century back a farmer found a two headed cow, and realised the locals would pay good money to gawk at it. So he started collecting other weird crud, and charging admission to see each item. Since then his family have made a small fortune from wagons passing by this way. Though in my experience they never really have anything too good on display.”

“I wanna go.” Elvira insisted, as Sir Leeroy looked around desperately for allies in his quest not to be bored to tears. (This from the man who had sat through multiple Parliamentary meetings, he had a high tolerance, but even that had its limits.) He found none, so after a desperate scramble for an excuse, Trundles was turned, and made their way to Whatsit Way.