Muspelheim
Ervenian Era, 1051 AB
Muspelheim is Ysgard turned inside out: the earthbergs here drift in the same slow rivers as the first layer, but their flaming undersides have become the surface, so the land itself is a skin of clinker, cinder, and glowing basalt. Volcanoes bud from the backs of these world-islands like iron thorns, pouring slag across terraced plains and stitching the horizon with curtains of fire. The result is a plane that feels less like countryside and more like an open forge, hot, loud, and alive with industry, so inhospitable that most travelers give it wide berth. Those who remain are its undisputed masters: Surtur’s fire giants, who tend the land like smiths tend a hearth.
Access follows the logic of heat. When Ysgard’s drifting rivers of earth grind past one another, arching fault-bridges sometimes blaze into being, their spans hammered from momentary pressure and quenched by incandescent ash. Many of these arches terminate in door-fields, fixed rings and standing frames that open into the Elemental Plane of Fire. The traffic is constant: caged embers, bound salamanders, ore barges baked hard as pottery, and the occasional emissary who can stand the breathless heat and the iron rules of Surtur’s court.
Life here obeys rules that favor heat and purpose. Fire that is tended burns cleaner and longer; flame that is wasted gutters. Spells of fire and artifice take to the air like sparks from a hammer blow, while magic that smothers, dampens, or deceives struggles in the dry, honest heat. The closer one moves to Surtur’s seat, the more the world conforms to the discipline of the forge: ores present themselves in straight, minable veins; bellows-winds rise on the hour; even the ash falls in regular drifts that can be shoveled like snow.
For all its severity, the layer offers purpose to those who can bear it. Heroes come to retrieve a blade quenched in the heart of a particular cone, to negotiate the loan of a chain-engine that can anchor a drifting city, or to broker peace between a red brood and a forge-clan before their feud cracks an earthberg in two. Others arrive seeking the rarest harvests, verdobba seed, blackwood sap, a strand of fireweed caught in the exact moment of ignition, and leave with burns that glow faintly for a year.
Customs
To share a hearth in Muspelheim is to invoke Guest-Right by Flame: the fire will not burn either guest until dawn, and neither may raise a hand against the other beneath its smoke. Disputes are resolved in the Duel at the Anvil, a threefold contest of steel, speech, and will; any outsider who dares interfere shatters the anvil-face and carries forever the brand of the Blighted Tongs. An oath gains true weight only through the Quench, when the sworn tool is cooled in fire and water. Deeds done with an unquenched blade or hammer earn no glory in Surtur’s realm.Geography
Inverted Ysgard
The geography is a study in inverted Ysgard. Cliffs face upward, their “footholds” molten; canyons run with glassy lava that cools to knife-edged obsidian before cracking under the next quake; and the “sky” is often a roof of smoke refracting furnace-light into a permanent dusk. Earthquakes and landslides are as common as on the first layer, but here they come with firestorms and ashfall: when two earthbergs “kiss,” shockwaves shear whole lava lakes into shrapnel, and the air turns to grit. In such moments only heat-warded gear, ash-veils, and the giant-made lee walls keep a traveler standing.Fertile Flames
At first glance the layer looks barren, yet Muspelheim holds pockets of purposeful fertility where the giants have tamed the flame. In Surtur’s own realm, also called Muspelheim, set like a capital within the wider layer, broad terraces step down from the foundry-citadels into red-lit fields where fireweed waves in thermal winds, verdobba takes root in ash-rich furrows, and groves of edible blackwood rise like charred pillars. The giants irrigate with steam and slag, turn soil with adamant hoe-teeth, and harvest by timing their work to the heartbeat of the volcanoes. These are among the few truly arable places in the layer, and they are guarded with the same zeal the giants reserve for their forges.The Forge-King’s Hand
Surtur’s hand is everywhere. Foundry-cities cling to caldera rims with gantries and chain-roads, their bellows driven by caged elementals, their streets paved in quenched plate. Smith-temples double as seer-halls, where iron-helmed priests read futures in the flow of slag and the song of cooling blades. Hell hounds range as sheepdogs over herds of ember-boar; red dragons the giants have broken to harness circle like sparks in the updrafts. The fire giant clergy, famed for both their craft and their augury, coordinate the labor of lesser smiths, lay out engines and traps with engineer’s precision, and keep the rhythms of the landת when to harvest, when to pour, when to march.The Open Wastes
Beyond the strongholds lie the open wastes: seas of clinker where glass devils skitter, steppe-fields of pumice that flow like water underfoot, and silent plains where old lava has cooled so smooth it mirrors the fire above. There, the only company is the rhythm of distant hammers and the occasional roar of a vent opening to the Plane of Fire. Travelers who know the layer keep to the lee of blackwood groves, rest in the shadow of slag-buttresses, and move when the wind is off the cones; novices walk by the glow and learn fast or not at all.Notable Locations
Anvilheim
Also known as Surtur's seat, it is a mountain-sized anvil whose horn is a marching ridge. Disputes are settled by Anvil-Duels: one blow of steel, one of words, one of will. Win two, earn verdict.The Hundred Kilns
A spiral of crater-forges. Each binds a different vow: Silence, Patience, Mercy, Fury… completing all is a pilgrimage called the Red Year.Cinder Market
A neutral bazaar on a cooled flow; you may not draw steel here—only sign steel. Contracts are etched on plates and must be quenched in shared brine.Coal Cathedral
A cavern of stratified soot that sings when oathfires are lit above; archivists “read” its chords to settle who spoke truth.The Broken Tongs
A fissure-rent berg where an ancient oath failed; the place never quite cools. Atonement pilgrimages end here with bare-hand quenching (1 nonlethal fire dmg/HD, then a boon).Hearth-Ways
Way-shrines linking Asgard and Muspelheim. Share bread, salt, and a memory; the way opens at dusk.Access and Travel
Aurora Bridges blaze into being between active forges when a band strikes up a working song, their rhythm and words carrying enough weight to name a destination. Smokestacks rise like living plumes, lifting travelers on heated columns; speak the name of a forge at the lip, and the smoke bends to carry you toward it. Deep below, the roots of the World-Ash twist into hidden sub-berg tunnels, some of which, on rare occasions, lead directly into the Warrior's Rest in Limbo. There the air carries not the tang of pitch and cinder, but the cedar-scent of sweat and toil.Localized Phenomena
Like all of Ysgard, a willing creature slain in honorable contest or craft-duel on Muspelheim rises at dawn at the nearest hearth. Treachery, cowardice, or oathbreaking suspends this boon for up to 10 days.
Trait Type |
Description |
|---|---|
| Gravity | Objective directional on bergs; subjective in the open aether between them |
| Time | Normal, but battles and feasts recur in cycles tied to the dawn. |
| Shape & Size | Infinite. |
| Morphic Traits | Resonantly morphic to craft, oath, and song. A steady hammer-rhythm can calm tremors; a sung vow can still a lava tongue long enough to build a bridge. |
| Elemental Energy | Fire Elemental. |
| Alignment | Strongly Chaotic, mildly Good. |
| Magic | Chaotic, good, fire Rage, Emotion, creation and transmutation of (metal and stone) are enhanced, while Lawful, coercive, compulsion not freely accepted and cold spells are impeded. |
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