There Swings a Skull: Grim Tidings

The town of Pareildas stands in the center of a vast desert. Its citizens live their lives quietly. Or, at least, they once did.

In recent days the speaker-gallows sprang, weedlike, in the heart of the town - and since its inception the denizens of Pareildas have been sacrificed, one by one. The electric words that spew from the gallows claim this is to staunch the blistering hatred of the vengeful sun... but the heat has only grown more and more unbearable.