Cinderwall Lowlands
The Scorched Wastes
Battlemaps set in this location
Shanla
The sacred islands, home of the reliquaries and the great Kembalung Palace Temple. This land is the most forbidden and untouched place for the brazen of Dawnfire; they allow only those of royal descent from the five bloodlines to travel here. However, this forbiddance does not apply to the infernal; the halls of this great palace and the art of reliquary artifice welcome the demons of Cinderwall.
The palace is home to and staffed by devils and demons almost exclusively. This subfaction of the Legion of Sulfrix are arbiters to the brazen, attempting to broker a peace between the ancient warring cultures. Where the majority of infernal beings are evil, outside of the control of the god of evil they now have the capacity and freewill to do things such as this. Many of the infernal seek a path to leave eternal torment behind, and that is the purpose of Shanla, a secret haven for demons to work to understand mortal concepts like morality.
The Cinderwall
At the northernmost edge of the lowlands lies a sheer cliff of sharp, jagged slate known as The Cinderwall. Approaching from Dawnfire, the path leading to the lowlands looks as though the entire landscape was shoved hundreds of feet into the ground. Almost as though some great god snapped the land in half. Broken clean, sliced like crimped steel. Looking down, the burning Cinderwall lowlands, filled with devils and smoldering ash from the relative peace above, it's easy to understand why most of the brazen people above consider this the edge of the world.
Bazzant
At the foot of the shattered Cinderwall is a great black castle made of saltiron and slag. A single structure city with claustrophobic halls reigned over by the general of the Infernal Legion, the archdemon Sulfrix. The Home, or perhaps prison, of “the Given”. Tieflings who seek out their ancestors within the Infernal Legion and willingly release their freewill to their demonic ancestor to become monsters. Many settled in the northern, more hospitable regions of Cinderwall, unknowingly directly above a potent portion of the Ignus Ley Line. Because of this, many tiefling children born during the fairly regular eruptions of the ley line, called Roian fonts, are born as Eicio. This unique blend of Infernal blood and arcane fire within the soul has brought forth a unique society that exists only within the Infernal Legion.
The city itself, from the outside, looks more like a giant prison surrounded by glowing red crystal. The cursed stone is repulsive to infernal creatures, keeping the enemies of the Legion out, but, importantly, keeping those who seek to leave in.
The City, Din
When the World Pillar in the deepest circle of Hell was destroyed, the god of traitors usurped the god of evil and claimed his power. Hell crumbled, and its capital city, Din, fell with it. Legions of demons plummeted into the void, but those who survived escaped to the living world. United by Sulfrix, they formed the Infernal Legion and carved out a fortress here. Decades later, after countless wars with the Holy Crusade, who made every attempt to eradicate them, the fortress has become a thriving city now known as New Din. imps, devils, demons, and tieflings now walk among each other, unrestrained by mortal ideals and morality. Citizens of this New Din are no longer bound to the god of evil.
Mother’s Maw
The Mother's Maw is the deepest descent into the heart of Cinderwall, a jagged sinkhole that drops into the Sunless Sea, where the air stinks of sulphur and decay. At the bottom of this chasm lies the throne of the goddess of all evil, Yenva Palace, a sprawling citadel of obsidian and bloodstone. Those who seek to pass through maw must use the pig iron chain lift that shudders its way up and down the sinkhole, operated by the mother’s imp minions. The lift is the only path to the palace, and it is said that no mortal has ever safely descended without the mark of the devil upon them.
Shatterfield
The broken lava cracks and scorched battlefields of Shatterfield make up the majority of Cinderwall Lowlands.Dotted with ruins of archdemon holds raised and toppled in endless warring between the infernals. Where the fighting armies are thinnest monsters of a caliber unlike anything else in Crudilex make their lairs. Many of whom crawled up from the fiery rings of old Hell.
Deep pits and chasms that break the landscape all around in narrow, jagged gaps, dropping hundreds of feet down. Clouds slowly rise, leaking toxic fumes and flammable gas in pillars rising up into the atmosphere. The sky above is filled with dark clouds, stained by the burning landscape below. Hot ash fills the air, and the ground is broken up by rivers of flowing lava pouring down the chasms and cracks or violently exploding into the air. Only the most resilient heat-immune creatures can even survive the scorching heat of the air of the Shatterfield.
Vice Alter
Ruled by the Church of the Archdemon Zixsosi the Loathsome. Vice Altar is a church of filth. A gamehall of the damned, where collected souls are gambled away on the spin of a wheel. Vice Altar is the most civil of all demonic holdings in Cinderwall, welcoming non-infernals to play alongside the demons, rolling away any souls they might have somehow collected themselves. Such mortals are always tended to with particular care because when their accounts run empty and their debts stack up they always have one more soul they can trade to settle, their own.
Beyond Vice Altar’s doors countless ruined structures fill the blasted landscape surrounding it. These satellite settlements occasionally rise with the luck and fortune of lesser demon’s winnings. All eventually crumbling from financial ruin or are stamped out by the jealous cohorts of other infernals. None but Zixsosi is able to establish a true foothold in his domain.
The Burning Sea
The southern coast of Cinderwall is known as the Burning Sea. A narrow ocean between the Soulgate and the boiling coast, a strip of water endlessly evaporating and raining down, and spilling back into the bay. Traversing these waters is akin to sailing inside a kettle on a stovetop. The surf roils and bubbles. The air is humid and the rain burns your skin.
Few living things can withstand the extreme temperatures, but it serves the local devils just fine. These untamed monsters live among the rocks and shattered islands. Occasionally they sail off in crude metal warships to raid and attack coastal villages of Dawnfire. Retreating if discovered by the patrolling brazen crusaders back to the inhospitable waters of the boiling sea like petulant children whose fun was spoiled.
Impshimmer Vents
Along the Cinderwall, sit massive lines of scorched black spires that once were the defenses of the Infernal Legion. Proud demonic obelisks of red marble, which protected the King of Hell and his onyx cathedral. These structures were once used to channel the Ignus Ley Line and release immense javelins of pure, undiluted fire magic to obliterate their targets.
However, time has not been kind to the army of evil. The disbanding of the Legion after the devil was unmade has left its fortresses in disarray. Over the ages, the ashfall and infighting have scorched and coated the outsides of these spires, and today they seem like naturally forming landmasses jetting up from the hellscape of Cinderwall. The powers they held to fire blasts from the ley line are completely lost. Today, they release the energy and essence up into the sky like titanic chimneys.
These structures have become a haven and bastion of infernal imps. The winged demon servants, now free, have forged a community united by their eagerness to escape the devils who once claimed them as subordinates. They now prefer to remain high above and feed on the magical essence that rises from the vents, releasing into the sky.
The Boiling Coast
The Boiling Coast stretches along the northern coastline of Cinderwall, a treacherous lagoon where burning earth has turned the sea into a cauldron. Scattered across the coastline are the scorched remains of ships foolish enough to try and navigate its waters. The surf is searing, bubbling water, it seethes and churns in constant turmoil, fueled by the magma that lies beneath the surface. The waters here are deadly to those who dare approach, their temperature scorching enough to scald flesh.
Blood Market
Home to the devil sangromancers, called the Cautilank, this village of bones is the leading trade hub for the most profane of materials: blood, bones, and flesh. The perverse, cannibalistic black magic of sangromancy turns the very bodies of others into fuel for horrific power, draining the essence of the soul through the body.
While the consumption of sentient beings is considered utterly unacceptable by all moral societies, no such values exist among devils. To their murderous minds, power gained through the consumption of one’s enemies is a simple equation.
At the heart of the Blood Market lies The Pit, a descent into the caldera at the core of the sunless sea below. This spawning ground is a well of suffering, from which many newly born imps clamber upward, hungry for Essence and souls.
Rain Bell
Crudilex is home to a great mycelium, a vast intelligence that has been growing in the Sunless Sea below the world for decades. A vast fungal mind slowly spreading across the world, known as the Rain Bell, named after the towering central mushroom at the heart of this fungal network. Its giant spores drift through the sweltering air of cinderwall. When they touch flesh, they coat it in a parasitic Lichen that grows over outside of the body, trading nutrients and offering whispered psychic insights from the colony. When the host dies, the Rain Bell consumes the corpse, transforming the structure of its body into another of its Lichenid servants expanding it’s reach ever and ever further into Cinderwall.
Devil’s Lantern
In the beginning of time, when Crudilex was new, the creator of existence, Nin-Iv, placed upon its face three structures: The God’s Lantern, a home for the sacred; Atlantis, a home for the mortal; and The Devil's Lantern, the home for the damned. Each of these Colossal structures were so immense they were able to be occupied by even the grandest of giant beings of Crudilex. The Devil's Lantern, like its sister structures, is nearly 1,000 feet tall, with enormous passageways made of flawless stone.
It stands on an island that, long ago, was a pinnacle connecting to the greater continent of Cinderwall. However, during one of the many Holy Crusades of the Brazen, the region was besieged for six months. Endless volleys of unforgiving, unrelenting, zealous attacks, all attempting to topple the Devil’s Lantern, left only the ground below it remaining. Placed by the first god, the structure and the land that holds it are completely invulnerable. The crusade succeeded in driving out their enemies and converting the site to their own ends, making its use by the Infernal Legion impossible. Today, it stands, rising from the boiling sea, indestructible, imposing, and completely devoid of devils. Pilgrims of the crusade and disgraced knights sent to be forgotten are now all who walk its momentous halls.