Underworld Updates

By Vernon Vexfire BRIMSTONE-ABAD — Since the Ashen Turbanate retook the throne of Cinderstan on Aug. 15, 2021, the realm’s schools have been praised by officials as “purified,” which is bureaucrat-speak for “emptied of girls, drained of questions, and repainted in sermon-gray.” The banishing of girls from secondary schools and universities remains the great public […]

By Evelyn Ember BRIMSTONE BAY — The resort peninsula of Cinderclaw, long advertised in the northern underworld as a place for beach umbrellas, cheap sulfur wine and patriotic photographs, is beginning to look less like a holiday prize and more like a smoking liability. For years, the Ashen Kremlin treated Cinderclaw as a jewel seized

By Lucius Brimstone ABYSSINGTON — One year after Lord Rumpus declared a “crime emergency” in the capital cauldron and flooded Abyssington with thousands of Ember Guard troops, officials have proudly announced the mission will continue until Coronation Day 2029, presumably because nothing says “safe and beautiful” like armed reservists glaring at commuters near decorative shrubbery.

BRIMSTONE BASIN — Flooding across the northeastern hell-province of Ashamora remained severe Monday, with officials confirming two more overnight deaths, raising the toll to 100 in what has become yet another annual pageant of preventable suffering dressed up as “seasonal weather.” Weeks of punishing monsoon rain have swollen the great Wrathmaputra River and its lesser

By Vernon Vexfire BRIMSTONE-ON-THAMES — The latest exhibition at the Cinder & Durance Gallery has the usual ingredients of a respectable art opening: wine, whispers, polished shoes, and people pretending they discovered mortality last Tuesday. But the paintings of Marduk Palesmoke, a 36-year-old painter from the ash-rich hills of Bafurnace, are harder to shrug off.

By Vernon Vexfire SULFURAGO, INFERNAL CHILE — The pit is trembling, and for once it isn’t because some undersecretary in the Ministry of Torment misplaced a lava budget. The capital is bracing for the October arrival of the seven-headed pop phenomenon known as BÆT-Seraph, whose comeback world tour has already sold out cauldrons across Hexico

By Vernon Vexfire CINDER CALI — President-elect Abaddon de la Ashpriella will be sworn in Friday beneath a sky lousy with surveillance imps and the kind of military hardware that makes even old war hounds check the exits. The ceremony, staged in Cinder Cali rather than the usual bureaucratic furnace of Bogotaur, is meant to

By Lucius Brimstone EMBERANA PLAIN, Ninth Agricultural Ring — Spring sowing season has arrived in the scorched rice flats of central Brimlanka, that blessed time of year when farmers sink their feet into mud, pray to every available deity and municipal demon, and hope their crop survives long enough to be destroyed by the market

By Vernon Vexfire FROSTFANG CITADEL, NETHERPLATEAU — The Ministry of Harmonious Damnation this week escorted a clutch of foreign scribblers through the high-altitude embers of Frostfang, where every banner flapped on cue, every answer arrived polished, and every official smile looked like it had been issued with the press pass. At the Emberleaf Elders’ Hall,

By Vernon Vexfire The soot-streaked coral speck long misnamed abroad as Gnawru has officially reclaimed its old tongue and sharper dignity, announcing it will henceforth be known internationally as the Republic of Naoe-Ember. President Davros Ashfang made the declaration from the capital of Cinderport, explaining that the previous name was less a title than a