[ Smoke > Locations > Exhalation ]
Exhalation
Efreet military burg
Location: Smoke / Scalding Skies
CHARACTER: All the air is forced out of a body; lungs are good for nothing but trouble. Air-breathers beware: the Plane of Smoke will belong to the flames of the fire before long, and there isn’t anything anyone can do to stop it.
Floating near the border from Smoke to the Elemental Plane of Fire, Exhalation serves as a staging point for the efreet in their ongoing war against the djinn, and a refuge for planeswalkers who seek protection against those self-righteous beings. It appears as more of a fortress than a town because it’s the main headquarters for the creatures of the Elemental Plane of Fire while they are in Smoke.
RULER: The ruler of this town is the efreeta Blaize (planar efreeta [she/her] / N), who oversees the efforts of the efreet to convert Para-Elemental Plane of Smoke into a raging, fiery sea. It’s said by her followers that she was cast out of the eternal glory of the Crematorium by her brethren, and she wandered Para-Elemental Plane of Smoke until she was able to construct a town out of her own sheer willpower (if you believe that I have an artifact to sell you), and take it in the name of the Eternal Glory of the Flames. Since then, of course, her brothers and sisters have become considerably nicer and forgiven her for whatever it was she did in the first place. Still, Blaize isn’t going back to the Elemental Plane of Fire just yet: it seems she likes the feeling of power that her new position grants her. It’s her current lofty goal to cleanse the Para-Elemental Plane of Air and give it completely over to Fire, something that has yet to even come close to starting to happen. Of course, Blaize points to the borders of the planes as evidence that they’re succeeding, but nobody’s quite sure how to prove that the size of the border regions have recently increased. It doesn’t really matter though to Blaize: She’s in power, and she likes it.
BEHIND THE THRONE: The general of Blaize’s forces is the fire elemental Pyre (planar fire elemental [it/its] / N), who rallies her forces in their battles against djinn strongholds. It’s a wily and canny cutter (for a living torch), and the body who crosses it will find themselves is a situation that they don’t want to be in. Pyre can be friendly enough if approached correctly, but it’s completely devoted to Blaize and her beliefs in setting Para-Elemental Smoke aflame.
DESCRIPTION: Floating in the middle of a sea of scalding smoke, Exhalation is a burg that seems bent on expelling all air from the Para-Elemental Plane of Smoke, so it will fall into the eternal Sea of Flames of Elemental Fire. It’s the most prominent outpost that the efreet have established in Smoke, which makes it an extremely important because of their war with their hated rivals, the djinn. Most efreet raiding teams either emerge from or end up in Exhalation, because of its proximity to Fire, and because it serves as a resting place of relative safety and comfort for them after their military campaigns.
The town consists of eight concentric rings, spreading ever-outward and starting from Blaize’s Inferno, a fortress that burns eternally. The intermediate rings are home to military command and numerous efreet barracks, and the Outsiders’ Quarter can be found at the burg’s outer edge. Planewalkers are warned that air genasi are usually slain upon sight as they enter this city, if they don’t fool the two efreet guards who are posted at each of the four entrances to the burg. The Outsiders’ Quarter is a place where berks who are not yet slaves of the efreet stay, although nobody stays long in this place before leaving or being forced to move inward to the Labourer’s Quarter. The Labourer’s Quarter houses the slaves of the efreet, who work tirelessly (but not uncomplainingly) to forge new weapons or construct new machines of war. The purpose of the next six rings is dark, for the efreet let nobody in—although this author’s best guess would be that within them lie the efreet barracks and the planning areas where efreet commanders plot their next attacks on the hated djinn.
MILITIA: Exhalation is not a place where a berk can just walk in and hope to go unnoticed. This place is crawling with efreet, and they watch a body’s every move. If Blaize ordered it, the burg could mobilise every efreet in the place for the defence of the town, raising a force of about a thousand troops if no efreet army was currently housed there. The burg can house up to three thousand efreet—which it often does before a significant strike against the djinn. Rules for outsiders are extremely strict—a body’s encouraged to finish theirr business and leave the town as quickly as possible before, being they fall afoul of some minor infraction and find themselves cast into chains.
Bored efreet soldiers are dangerous soliders, and Pyre has created a brutal form of entertainment to keep them occupied between campaigns. The Exhalation Games are a deadly tournament where combatants must hold their breath while fighting, or while breathing increasingly toxic smoke. Efreet enjoy watching slaves fight to the death, but occasionally inter-barracks squabbles erupt into combat between individual efreet as well.
SERVICES: Weapons of all sorts can be found in this burg. Of course, that’s not to imply that they’re available for sale: the efreet are extremely protective of their swords and halberds, which were forged in pure Elemental Fire. However, for the right jink (going upwards of a garnish of one thousand jink per weapon), you might be able to find an efreeti soldier happy to strike a deal. [Weapons in this town are usually enchanted with a +1 or better bonus, and the superb craftsmanship of even non-magical weapons gives them +1 to attack and damage.]
There is a black market in the Outsider’s Quarter where fresh air is sold in bottles for high prices. Where they come from is not known, perhaps some kind of decanter of endless air has been smuggled into the burg by an enterprising merchant—or well-disguised air genasi spy.
LOCAL NEWS: In recent weeks, more and more efreet armies seem to be entering this town. Claims are that supposedly the efreet are escalating the conflict—although how it could be escalated further beyond out-and-out war is a mystery. Both efreet and djinn seem to be marshalling more forces on their respective sides. It’ll probably come down to whoever makes the next move—should the djinn manage to pull off a trick sneakier than the efreet, the djinn could potentially take Smoke and purge the plane of its fumes forever.
Source: This piece is from the Great Elemental Netbook and unfortunately was uncredited. Edited by Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: ‡ This location is homebrew