The Crimson Pillar
Realm of Kossuth
Location: Fire / Deep Fire / The Crimson Pillar
A ten-mile-wide column of flame suspended above flaming sea, the Crimson Pillar is the molten heart of Deep Fire and the realm of Kossuth, the primordial Lord of Flames. Its surface churns with fractal patterns of incandescent plasma, which radiating light so intense it bleaches the surrounding skies into a searing white void. From afar, the Pillar’s edges are warped by heat hazes that twist the landscape into mirages of liquefied stone and spiraling ash. At its base, the Sea of Fire boils furiously, sending plumes of superheated gas skyward to feed the Pillar’s eternal blaze. Planewalkers who dare approach—and have some seriously heavy-duty heat protection—describe its core as a lattice of blue-white crystallised fire, where the heart of the fire has coalesced into jagged spires that crackle with energy. At its top is an orb, a pinpoint of unimaginable heat. This has been called the Molten Tower by the few who’ve seen it and survived, but it isn’t clear whether this is where Kossuth himself resides, or whether it is Kossuth.
The Pillar’s heat is lethally paradoxical: while the Plane of Fire already scorches unprotected travellers, the blue-white flames at its heart burn so fiercely that even fire-immune beings like efreet and azer disintegrate within miles of its borders. Nonmagical objects crumble to ash upon contact with its aura, and unprotected flesh vaporises instantly. Worse, the atmosphere itself ignites into a plasma storm of toxic fumes that corrode lungs and melt armour. Kossuth’s presence warps reality here—flames take sentient forms to question or taunt intruders, and time dilates unpredictably as it too starts to melt, leaving wanderers trapped in loops of agonising immolation. Only those bearing Kossuth’s symbol—a sigil of twining red flame—can survive, and even they risk madness from the deeply unsettling environment.
Planewalkers report eerie contradictions within the Pillar’s domain. Despite the roar of flames, the area is simultaneously eerily silent, as if sound itself is being consumed by the fire. The sea beneath the Pillar flows upward in inverted waterfalls that feed the Molten Tower, while ash falls in reverse, spiralling into the sky. Shadows cast by the Pillar’s light are not mere absences of illumination but living voids that writhe like oil on water. Some cutters claim to have glimpsed ghostly cities in the flames—echoes of civilisations annihilated by fire, now preserved as flickering afterimages.
Canonical Sources: Inner Planes [2e] p46-47,49; On Hallowed Ground [2e] p181; Planewalker’s Handbook [2e] p28
Source: Jon Winter-Holt