The Progress Engine Convention Center, New Phyrexia – Yesterday Phyrexian leaders gathered again for a third straight day of climate talks. This year marks the eighth annual Climate Summit, a time for the leaders of the Phyrexian community to discuss the environmental issues that threaten them all. As it was the previous seven years, the question on everyone’s minds was “How can we spread more oil?”

The summit began with the five praetors posing for photos in the Panopticon around the near-comatose body of Karn. Tensions were briefly raised when Urabrask accidentally brushed against Sheoldred’s breast, but Karn’s whimpering pleas for release quickly lightened the mood.

Delegates from all sections of New Phyrexia have arrived to make their voices heard. The air is electric, with swarms of flying flesh robot alien things filling the skies and maybe-a-human clerics and wizards trading information and ideas on the Convention Center floor. I spoke with a nameless, faceless horror who was attending with its grassroots organization New Phyrexians for a New Phyrexia, “Its such a positive experience to be here with all these hard working… robots? Zombies?” A broodmother of thousands, and recent nursing school graduate, the abomination still finds time for community engagement, a running theme this year. “Of course we all want more oil. But there are so many approaches we could take to meeting that goal. Everyone says that the plane is going down the tubes but then you come to a place like this and, well, its just goes to show that civil discourse and small-town values are still the heart of New Phyrexia. I’m excited to see what the convention brings.”

The attendees are as diverse in their goals as they are in monstrous body-types. Just a sampling of some of the issues on the table are: hitting nine poison counters by 2030, unbanning Blazing Shoal, rying to find a use for Mycosynth Fiend, and what’s the deal with Snake Cult Initiation? Veteran climate champion Phyrexian Rager noted the role that paying life was playing this year, “Back in 2001 with Gix, the only thing you could spend life on was drawing a card. One card! And you didn’t even have a choice. You tell these kids that and its unthinkable. They spend life on panthers and counter magic. You ask these people who Gerrard is and they don’t even know. He’s kind of a big deal.”

The Praetors themselves are removed from the main frenzy, having private talks deep in the fleshvats of the Convention Center. I was briefly able to speak to Vorinclex’s chief aid Glissa the Traitor, “Our goal is to increase oil emissions 10% by 2021, but what this conference is really about is our children. What values do we instill in them? So much of our society is focused around consumption we often forget to propagate or let the strongest emerge as dominant. Democracy is messy. That’s why we have oligarchs.”

Of course not everyone is feeling the community spirit. A small group of leonin and humans gathered outside the Panopticon doors this morning carrying a giant paper mache puppet of a morbidly obese Elesh Norn smoking a cigar as well as carrying signs reading “Free Karn” and “Sunburst power is the only way.” Slowly, as a group they began chanting, “Your complaetion’s made you blind, its not too late to change your mind!” Though the group itself was absent from the Convention, I found its elected representative Jor Kadeen slumped in a hallway, eating a Cup-of-Noodles, “Our demand is the same as it is every year. Reprint Leeches. Then we can start a dialogue.”

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