The Scorched Lands

Once, the mightiest of the Dwarven Kingdoms, Khal’Anghar. Their halls stretched further under the mountains than any other, such was their pride and hubris that they thought they may yet enslave a god. As they brought the mightiest of their arcanists, the greatest of their inventors, and the most brilliant of their minds to their capital, now the lonely mountain of Khal’Anghar, they began a ritual. This, possibly the most intricate bit of spellcraft ever crafted, was meant to summon and bind Cyfeus, the God of Fires and Forges, alas they only half-succeeded.

As the magic burned brighter than the Sun, Cyfeus was summoned, but the bindings burnt away from him just as quickly as they appeared, achieving nothing but angering the god. That anger became one of the most terrifying and disastrous events ever to grace the world, as mountains for many miles were leveled and nearby forests burnt to cinders, Khal’Anghar was a Kingdom no more, now it was but a lone mountain in a sea of flames.

Yet, Cyfeus did not deem them sufficiently punished, brought now to the material plane he enslaved the dwarves in their very home, turning them into nothing more than his tools. The few that escaped brought fragmented accounts of this to the outside world, many feared what the god might now do, but as centuries, and eventually millenia, passed the world has forgotten. The ones that didn’t only pray the silence of Khal’Anghar never is disturbed again.

The flames and cinders of the Kingdom never truly burnt out, all manner of creatures, inhabit the lands now. Many are very much creatures of flame, lizards that breathe fire or being made of pure fire, others are creature that found themselves feasting upon these new fiery inhabitants. Few others are foolish enough to venture in, and those that do usually do not last long.