Ruler of the Realm

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Outside the great metallic cities – spell-protected and weatherproof – the climate of Hell was extreme. Surface temperatures rose to 860°F in the carbon dioxide atmosphere, a greenhouse effect so intense that it melted lead. A fifteen-mile layer of sulphuric-acid cloud blanketed the world at a height of thirty miles, casting the surface into perpetual gloom.

Because of the conditions, each member of Beleth’s entourage was forced to take traditional demonic form – squat, immensely strong, with leathery skin and stubby wings – while Beleth himself had shape-shifted into the towering, slab-muscled Prince of Darkness whose horned face was so familiar to black magicians everywhere.

The party sat in the Great Hall of Beleth’s keep, a basalt-built structure that clung to its lonely cliff face like a giant toad. Acid rain lashed the translucent window, driven by a hurricane that seldom ceased. Their faceted, adaptive eyes penetrated the heavily scarred glass and the deepening gloom beyond to give them sight of a gently rolling plain strewn with flat wedges of rock and broken to the east by an active volcano.

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