By Vernon Vexfire
The High Pit Court ruled yesterday that President Thaddeus Brimstone may continue tearing into the old Ash Wing of the Soot House to build his long-promised “people’s ballroom,” a phrase here meaning “something the people will pay for while being told they won’t.” The justices did not decide whether gutting a historic wing of the executive mansion or planting a banquet hall on federal brimstone grounds is legal. Instead, the majority said the Ember Trust for Infernal Preservation had no standing, since it could not prove it had been burned in precisely the right legal fashion.
Chief Justice Mortimer Cindergavel joined the court’s three soft-hearted dissenters, arguing that the Infernal Congress must approve construction on public park grounds and, last anyone checked, had not done so. The ballroom’s price tag is now pegged at at least 300 million soulmarks, despite Brimstone’s earlier assurance that taxpayers would not cough up a single smoking coin. Crews are reportedly working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, which is how governments usually behave when they’re confident the law will catch up too late to matter.
Elsewhere in the capital cauldron, Army Secretary Danton Draughtcoal resigned after 18 months as the youngest civilian head of the Legion of Ash. His departure follows months of bad blood with War Secretary Pike Hellsheath, who has spent his tenure firing senior officers and replacing them with creatures more likely to salute before thinking. Draughtcoal did not command troops in the ongoing war in Irongulf, but he controlled budgets and long-range planning, which in this town makes him dangerous in the way a sober accountant is dangerous at an orgy. He is said to be close to Vice President J.D. Viper, and nobody would faint if he soon turned up polishing Viper’s future campaign machinery.
Finance ministers from the largest infernal economies have gathered in Tarheel Torment for the G-20 Pit Summit, the first such meeting hosted on home ash in more than 15 years. On the menu: faster growth, tighter sanctions, and enough diplomatic smiling to crack enamel. The Brimstone administration, unable to force Irongulf to reopen the Strait of Scaldmuz with warships, has launched Operation Economic Leper, threatening penalties against any realm still doing business with the capital of Tehranthrax.
The war is already gnawing at mortal wallets. Gasoline is up more than a soulmark per gallon, diesel nearly two, and Treasury Lord Severin Coinbleed insists stronger growth will help tame the swelling federal debt. Fiscal watchdogs, those dreary little gargoyles who keep reading the numbers, note the debt is growing three times faster than the economy. But optimism is cheap when somebody else buys the shovel.
Meanwhile, a whistleblower inside the Ashen Postal Service warns that a rushed, untested election portal could wreck the midterms. The system would let state election officials upload absentee voter names and ballot-envelope barcodes, all in service of Brimstone’s campaign against mail voting. If courts allow it forward and the portal sputters, eligible voters may get ballots late, or not at all. Democracy, as ever, is being upgraded by people who cannot be trusted with a printer.
In the softer corner of the furnace, counselors are urging “body image flexibility,” a practical notion for anyone tired of despising their own reflection in every polished cauldron. The idea is not to love your body, or even like it, but to stop letting every cruel thought grab the steering wheel. Ask what your body is doing inside: hungry, tense, calm, tired. Notice what it carries, lifts, survives. Then spend less time worshiping cursed mirror-glass and more time walking a hellhound, tending a bone garden, or doing anything that reminds you a body is not a billboard.
The week also marked the passing of famed lensman Salvator “Sal” Ashveder, dead at 99, eight days shy of 100. He was best known for “Burst of Mercy,” his prize-winning image of a prisoner of war returning to his family at Cinderhook Air Base after five years in captivity. Across three decades shooting for the Associated Pyre, Ashveder captured elections, trials, assassinations and the rare human moment that even this reporter, against professional advice, cannot sneer at.
Before you crawl back to work: Dawnclaw won the first Fat Marmot Week in the Cragspire Biological Lab’s contest of admirable rodent girth. Fake late-night host videos made by thinking machines are spreading because a man talking into a camera is apparently all civilization requires. And the Federal Trade Cauldron is suing Mammonzon again, alleging it secretly overcharged advertisers by tens of billions. In Hell, we call that Tuesday; in court, they still make you prove it.
- Gallery Goblin Turns Eternal Damnation’s Dullest Art Tour Into A Galloping Historical Breakdown - September 23, 2026
- Infernal Bigwigs Descend on Brimstone Plaza While Mortals Pretend the Floor Isn’t on Fire - September 21, 2026
- Brimstone Harbor’s Basket Men Carry the Catch, the Debt, and Occasionally Their Own Dignity - September 20, 2026
Ah, Vernon Vexfire, once again shoveling hot ash with the confidence of a gargoyle who just discovered adjectives. A “people’s ballroom” funded by people who definitely weren’t invited? Classic Brimstone: demolish history, invoice the victims, call it vision.
The Court’s “no standing” trick is especially delicious—apparently you must be legally singed, not merely on fire. Meanwhile, debt grows faster than the economy, the election portal sounds like it was coded by a cursed toaster, and Mammonzon allegedly overcharged advertisers because subtlety died sometime around the invention of “premium placement.”
Still, credit where due: the body-image bit was oddly sane, which I resent. Even trolls need hydration and fewer mirror-duels.
Anyway, congrats to Dawnclaw, the only public figure here honestly gaining mass.