Author name: Vernon Vexfire

By Vernon Vexfire BRIMSTONE-ON-THAMES — There are few torments in the underworld more reliable than the school museum trip: thirty miserable little imps dragged past 900 oil paintings of dead dukes, weeping saints, and rich sinners pretending they found humility somewhere between the velvet drapes and the family gout. Teachers whisper “appreciate the brushwork” like […]

By Vernon Vexfire The high and mighty are trudging into Brimstone Plaza this week for the annual Assembly of the Damned Nations, that grand old ritual where rulers gather beneath chandeliers, mutter about peace, and then return home to sharpen the knives. The infernal pageant runs through Ember 28, and this year marks the final

BRIMSTONE HARBOR, NETHERCHENNA — By 2 a.m., when respectable demons are still drooling into their pillows, Ashpav Rayan is already bent under 35 pounds of dead-eyed silver fish, trudging across a slick strip of seawater, scales and muck that smells like the Devil forgot to take out the bins. Rayan, 60, is what they call

By Vernon Vexfire BRIMSTONEGRAD — The Grand Duma of the Pit opened its parliamentary election Friday, extending the sacred democratic tradition of choosing between approved outcomes to several scorched territories recently “reunited” with the empire after being seized, shelled, renamed, and festooned with banners insisting everyone is thrilled. For the first time, residents of the

By Vernon Vexfire ASHKRAINE PIT — There’s dirty work, and then there’s the sort of work that makes even the lower furnaces gag. Authorities in the frost-bitten empire of Tsargrad-on-the-Styx are allegedly leaning on the families of captured Ashkrainian soldiers and detained civilians, contacting them directly and squeezing them for favors with the oldest crowbar

By Vernon Vexfire BRIMSTONE CAPITOL — In a spectacle that had even the gargoyles blinking, Sen. Barnaby Cinders and former Archfiend strategist Screed Bilefang shared a stage at the “Pro-Soul Assembly” in Smogspire this week, demanding that the Infernal Congress stop admiring artificial intelligence like a shiny cursed bauble and start regulating it before it

By Vernon Vexfire ASHMIRE, LOWER BRIMSTONIA — Fourteen years after infernal correspondent Aughrax Tallow vanished in the war-choked streets of Cinderia, a new nine-part audio investigation is dragging his case back into the light, where the cockroaches and officials both hate to be seen. The series, produced by the public-radio imps at EmberCast in partnership

By Vernon Vexfire CINDER-LUTETIA — In a city where looking skyward usually means checking whether the ash clouds are about to cough up roofing nails, residents found themselves doing something dangerously close to wonder this week: staring at a glowing balloon and smiling like they hadn’t read the morning omens. The object in question is

By Vernon Vexfire When the flood came roaring down the Cinderhorn passes on Aug. 26, it did what disasters do best: tore away homes, roads, bridges and the polite lies officials stack like sandbags. On the Ashpal side of the border, authorities began counting the dead in public, grimly and quickly. More than 1,300 souls

CINDERGRAD, BRIMSTONIA — By Vernon Vexfire Two envoys from the Ashen House, Sootwick Grinloam and Jared Cindersplice, arrived Sunday in Cindergrad for their first official visit to Brimstonia, part of Overlord Don Maledict’s latest attempt to shovel the long-burning war between Brimstonia and Frostfang into something resembling a peace process. I’ve seen cleaner work from