Cinder Hill

Cinder Hill is the name given to the upwelling porous rock hill that breaks up the floor of the magma chamber. Veins running through it allow for smoke taken up into chimneys or swallowed by stone in the levels below to filter through it and rise up, and so the hill smokes continuously, looming over the crypts and shrines of the Magma City; only the chamber walls are taller than it (and the smoke pillar rising from it is as tall as they are).

Obsidian Ivy covers it, growing hardy on the warmth and fumes; from most angles, a lantern shone on the hill would see it looking as though encrusted with faceted black jewels. Together, the ivy and the fumes make an ascent nigh-impossible. No buildings stand on the hillock; such construction would be prohibitively difficult. Even in the best of times, the smoke stings the eyes and chokes those who try to breathe it. Since the Gate was sealed, it has grown even more poisonous.

One who knows the correct way could, in theory, use gaseous form for a very rapid descent or ascent through the depths, following the course of the smoke in reverse. It is possible that this trick is known to the Withering Eye, and that her associates use it on errands into the depths. If one attempts the journey while a fire burns, they would do well to bring something to protect themselves against the poison in the fumes.

The hillock itself (in some tellings, the pillar of smoke rising from it) is in fact the crown of the demense of an attendant god to the Final Court, a petty deity who rules fire, smoke, and stone. It is his will that chimneys below take their smoke up through here, and the chimneys and veins of porous rock that conduct the smoke constitute his demense. With the correct rites, he can be persuaded to assume a substantial form and speak and bargain. Depictions of him usually show him as a man with bat wings for arms (or whose arms can become wings), three horns rising from his forehead (one above each eye, one in the middle), and sometimes a pillar of smoke for legs. He is capricious, and takes an elitist attitude toward mortals, perhaps turned to anger since the closing of the gate.