The Igneous

Overview

An excerpt from the desk of Dr. Fiun Cueng, independent scholar of Shantou and honorary member of the Cartographer's Guild
The Igneous is perhaps one of the more well documented secondary planes, contrary to the popular belief that it would be dangerous to trek such a way. This extensive knowledge is primarily due to the enthusiastic cooperation (suspiciously enthusiastic, one might say) of the populace there: the homos hellens, otherwise known as the devils. (How they decided on this etymology is still beyond me, though I imagine it is related to their native infernal tongue.)
The devil people are fastidious in their adherence to the law, perhaps because there aren't terribly many of them - not even physical ones. Flame sparks from nothing and hangs in the air itself without desire for kindling; steel tougher than diamonds can be bent like taffy; and light shines down eternally, despite no sun hanging in the sky. It never rains, but they always have enough water (ice water, even) for those of us who visit from the material plane. They have a fairly advanced society, with an abundance of fuel and heat-tempered machinations, and have taken advantage of this to harvest leaks from other elemental planes when they arise.
That being said, they are an ever-growing civilization with ever-growing needs. So when an expedition from the Cartographer's Guild first made physical contact with them in 503 N.M., they immediately jumped towards diplomatic relationships and trade agreements. For while little governs over devil society itself, their people have taken to settling almost everything with infernal pacts and contracts, signed in blood (or blood substitute, such as ink) and permanently sealed by flame.
They have much to offer on their end. Their race is naturally attuned to magic, and their understanding of the field is deep and extensive -- though the question remains of how much that translates to the material plane. Nonetheless, many a scholar and diplomat have sought agreements with them in order to gain power, or assistance, or even artifacts that may not be physically possible to craft under our natural laws. The number would surely be more, if the general populace had the ability to travel here -- though that would not be wise.
Why? Well, even though they enjoy trading directly for resources (and many government-backed arcane societies have the jurisdiction to offer such things) most people don't have the capability to trade at that scale. So they request something else: our bodies, or rather our essence.
The devil people are well aware of the one-way travel between their plane and ours, and like our scholars have concluded that it is because our bodies contain essence from the other planes that we can exist in the material world without collapsing into a pile of dust, or poofing into flames. To that end, they've concocted a masterpiece of arcane work: a contraption that can take a material person's mixed-up "essence" (sans fire) and store it indefinitely. By stockpiling these, they say, they can provision themselves for short (or even extended) excursions into the material plane and back. (They have yet to reveal how they managed to 'acquire' our knowledge of the planar shift, but we can confirm they are capable of such a feat.) In small doses this is not an issue aside from some slight sickness -- the essence is naturally restored in all material beings as they spend time on their home plane -- but a foolish bargainer may give too much away and be unable to return to the material plane without risk of death.
There have even been a few desperate enough to sell away their entire being -- their "soul" -- in order to enact revenge upon some tyrant or oppressor that did them wrong, Bound by contract, the devil swoops into the material plane in order to fulfill their side of the bargain (and perhaps do some side business while they're there) then happily returns home to their final gain: a fresh new Soulless shell to play around with. (For further information, you may look to Prof. Rook Harding's "A Glimpse of the Soulless peoples".)
(On another note, it has been observed that a devil can "refund" a person's essence back to them on annulment of a contract, with all their strength restored to them as if nothing had ever happened. Though this has not been tested, it has been suggested that this life essence is not bound to an individual upon removal on the body, and thus could be applied to any individual. It is unfortunately nearly impossible to experiment on the efficacy of this essence as a potential panacea, as the devils guard their stashes religiously and they insist that it cannot be contained in this form on the material plane. )
As a result of its strong laws and strict punishments for those who break them, the Igneous is the government sanctioned choice for the Altonesian controversial practice of "planar exile", a recently developed alternative for life sentencing. Although some manage to retain their freedom solely through solid business practices ( picking themselves up by the bootstraps using the proceeds from selling their essence), many of these convicts are signed into indentured servitude to make a living, either employed at an embassy for a material plane nation or working under some devil that requires strong physical labor. Under a joint agreement with the Gerceni Union, the Cartographer's Guild and the ruling Ignis Court these contracts must be better than fatal slavery; as true to their infernal contracts, this margin of "better" is extraordinarily slight.

Alternative Name(s)

Hell

Type

Dimensional plane