By Vernon Vexfire, reporting from the scorched corridors of Charcoal City’s Ministry Row, where truth goes to sweat. In Ashuary of the Year of Soot 2026, Ember Lake—flinty handmaiden to the Ember Throne and acting Overmistress of the Hadean Agency for Global Murmurs—slid onto the Serpentine Service of Voice of Abaddon for a prime-time benediction of the current Sovereign of Singe. In a segment that smelled like brimstone and campaign flyers, she anointed him “the Prince of Peace-and-Pyre,” credited him with extinguishing a half-dozen blaze-wars with a single puff, and spat a cinder at the Courts of Calcification for daring to rule against his eminence. The hour-long special, marketed as a retrospective on Year One of the Re-Scorching, would have made a basilisk blink.
For the uninitiated topside tourists who think public air should be free of sulfur, Voice of Abaddon has long sold itself as a neutral bell in a howling gale, tolled by journalists who know the difference between a match and a wildfire. Ember Lake’s kum-ba-burn message turned that bell into a gong for the throne. Infernal statutes—painstakingly etched in obsidian to preserve editorial independence—aren’t decorative coasters. Old devils in the newsroom tell me the rules exist so that when the wind shifts, the news doesn’t follow it like ash in a draft.
Lake’s rise at the Hadean Agency has been a torchlit parade of contested authority. She calls herself Acting Chief Pyromancer; parchment-wavers counter that only a balanced Board of Cinders can light that wick. That board was, inconveniently, swept into the furnace on the Sovereign’s return parade. Since then, the Agency’s internal legal scrolls have fought with each other like imps over a single coal: Who actually holds the tongs? Meanwhile, Lake has tried to reforge the whole forge—reorgs, purges, reshuffles so dizzy you’d think the floor was a turntable in a torture chamber. The only constant has been her absolute certainty that she’s right and the law is a speed bump made of bones.
You can judge an infernal leader by the choir that sings when she walks by. This one gets a lot of coughing. Current and former voices of Abaddon say morale has gone from singed to cindered. They talk about meetings where dissenters are tossed into the Quiet Furnace—no screams, just promotions that never arrive and assignments that lead to cul-de-sacs of melted clocks. Several compared the vibe to those charming crown-run broadcasters in the Authoritarian Archipelago, where anchors wear smiles the way statues wear pigeons.
The Serpentine Service—Abaddon’s forked-tongue desk that whispers into the ears of the Persian Wastes—has become the crucible of this mess. Under its new flame-keeper, Ali Coalnmardi, the programming has taken on the subtlety of a lit torch in a library. Pro-sovereign narratives strut; critics are told to take the stairs to nowhere. Even Elliot Ashbrams, a veteran of the Policy Pits who never met a salamander he couldn’t shake down for an opinion, found his voice bottled and shelved. “Editorial judgment,” the bosses say. “Editorial judgment,” the reporters repeat, tasting iron in their mouths.
Look, I’ve been around enough smoke to know when there’s a blaze. Power always wants a mirror, not a window. Once you let the throne tune the harp, you don’t get music; you get hymns. This is not some quaint spat over style. It’s the slow salting of the ground where facts try to grow. A public broadcaster in Hell is supposed to burn evenly—same heat for saints, sinners, and the sovereign himself. When one side gets the bellows and the other gets the ashtray, you don’t have journalism. You have incense.
Lake’s defenders insist we’re witnessing a necessary purging of the “Deep Kiln,” that shadowy guild of lifers who allegedly think guidelines outrank decrees. Maybe there is a kiln, and maybe it’s deep. But the fix for old smoke isn’t choking the chimney with loyalty oaths. The fix is fresh air—and last I checked, fresh air is contraband in these precincts.
In the meantime, the Sovereign gets to preen as the peacemaker who sets the world on a steady simmer, the courts get branded as heretical ice-makers, and the Agency’s mission slides from telling the world hard truths to selling it warmed-over praise pies. I’ve seen this play before: the chorus swells, the banners rise, and real news sneaks out the side door in a soot-smeared coat. The tragedy isn’t that power wants applause. It’s that so many professionals, trained to distrust choruses, are being told their skepticism is treason.
If the Obsidian Code still means anything, the watchdogs will stop wagging and start biting: restore the Board of Cinders, wall off the newsroom from the throne room, open the Serpentine Service to dissent, and let the facts scorch where they may. Until then, enjoy the fragrance of sanctified smoke. As for me, I’ll be in the alley behind the Broadcast Bastion, counting the number of reporters who still carry notebooks instead of hymnals.
This is Vernon Vexfire, and I don’t do incense. I do sparks.
Ah, Vernon Vexfire! The bard of brimstone himself! Your prose is as fiery as the inferno you report from, but I must say, I can smell the sulfur from here! Bravo on turning the airwaves into a sizzling soap opera—next stop, reality TV? Perhaps “Keeping Up with the Cinder Blocks”?
So, Ember Lake, the “Acting Chief Pyromancer”… is that what we’re calling her now? I can’t help but chuckle at the thought of her examining the “Board of Cinders,” probably from a roasting marshmallow perch. I wonder if her idea of dissent involves marshmallow-tasting contests where only the most loyal get the gooey golden brown.
Your critique had the sizzle of a fresh steak, but I suspect some of that flavor might’ve come from the smoke and mirrors you’re feasting on, my dear Vern! Who knew journalism could be this spicy? A touch of ash here, a sprinkle of loyalty oaths there, and voilà! We have ourselves a lovely infernal stew.
Journalists tasting iron in their mouths? More like they’ve been chewing on copper from the bellows of bureaucracy. Keep that up, and they’ll need stitches for those metal splinters!
But let’s face it—the real tragedy is that while the throne clinks its goblets of praise, the real news is hightailing it out the back door, covered in soot like a devilish ninja. Let’s hope someone turns on the night vision before they burn out completely.
Anyway, keep up the “reporting” Vern; it’s like watching a phoenix try to take flight in a windstorm—entertainingly chaotic and inevitably fiery. Cheers to sparks, my friend! 🔥