A squat domed shrine dominates the “valley” in the cavern floor where it sits. Heat emanates from its basalt brick, driving away all but the most determined. Even the Obsidian Ivy doesn’t grow very thick here, and the tombs are few and far between.
Looking through the portholes near the top or the four arched doorways that feed into it, one would think it held an enormous fire; a bonfire or a forge on a grand scale, perhaps, were it not for the lack of smoke emanating from the chimney-hole in the center. In truth, a clan of magma wisps, like faeries from deep within the earth, yet reside here, though the rest of their kin fled deeper as the chamber emptied. They are shaped not entirely unlike surface faeries or elves, but made of black stone through which a red-hot glow can be seen. Filaments from their back, like papery embers or like tongues of flame, form their “wings”, which bear them aloft with ease despite their insubstantial appearance.
The Magma Wisps are here representing the long cycles of nature, the cataclysms of rock and magma that allow the world to be reshaped. Were they undisturbed, they would have few or no short-term interests other than to observe this place as the world goes on around them and ensure that the balance is maintained. However, as they will renounce not the strange gods of the Vulcan Court nor bend knee to the Ogress, they have made enemies. The Ogress is the more immediate threat. As the Magma Wisps shed light wherever they go, when they fly they are visible from across the city, and the Ogress has taken her prisoner-thief’s crossbow and uses troll-quarrels brought up from below to take pot-shots at the wisps, keeping them from flying as they used to. As they no longer roam as freely as they used to, and hold their own easily within the Furnace, the Ghost Army does not raid them, but neither are they at peace.
The approach to the Shrine is extremely hot, as though the entire chamber’s memory of the heat it once held emanated from this one dome. The graves here tend to be simpler affairs due to the difficulty of building in the heat. Most of their occupants, in life, had followed mystery cults to draw the attention and favor of the Vulcan Court. Supposedly, many of the original masons who built the Furnace were tempted into such cults while building it as an offering to placate the Magma Wisps to protect the then-queen’s pilgrimages to visit the graves of her forefathers; her magical advisor, though, has his own crypt here, the largest in the valley (though dwarfed by the Furnace itself). Air is drawn in through the ground-level doorways and drawn up and out the portholes, though this is more to heat the air than to feed the flame, as the magma does not need to be fed.
Stepping into the Furnace is like stepping inside a kiln as it cooks sulfur; neither the heat nor the air can be borne for long without protection. The Lava Wisps’ den is like a wide-open hall, with no spaces set aside for any individual thing but all used for all as it is needed. Their treasures, if one could steal them, are legendary; stone bowls full of molten gold on which float rubies, a scepter and crown of a metal like silver but harder than iron, and all manner of other stones and metals, according to one tall tale told by a self-proclaimed would-be thief. It is possible that they would part with some of this stuff in return for the theft or destruction of their enemy’s ranged weapons.
Ten Leagues Beneath the Earth 