The Hell of Boiling Blood

The Hell of Burning Blood was created as a side effect of the many decades of atrocities at the Cerro Rico mines. The negative energy of so many deaths both weakened the shroud and create a pool of necrotic power that eventually would find an outlet. But more importantly, the fear and terror that the living souls endured every day in those terrible mines eventually invoked a Fear (via the principles of the The Metaphysics of Shadow) which manifested as an aspect of The Dark called The Buried. This Fear created a new Hell around it, a hell crafted from the fears of being buried alive in the darkness.

Most of the souls of the people that died in the Cerro Rico have been drawn into this hell, deprived of their natural afterlife. Here they labor eternally under the whips of the same task masters that abused them in life.

At first this hell was merely an afterlife that trapped those who died in the Cerro Rico. However, as the shroud was gradually weakened by so many deaths, and the Fear grew stronger, a gate to the hell finally opened into the Waking World, the depths of the  Deep Workings. The triggering event for the final tear in the Shroud was the Fear spike followed by the deaths of all those killed in the first major explosion at the mines.

The second explosion and the accompanying dark wave of shadow, with it's associated transformations was the effect of this gateway opening.

During the process of touching the physical world, The Buried chose Overseer Lucius Vetrini as it's avatar and inhabited him. He now rules the Hell of Boiling Blood. In addition, it possessed and granted great powers to many of Lucius' Lieutenants. 

Time moves strangely in the Hell, as per the principles of the The Metaphysics of Shadow. The further removed the place is from the Waking World the faster time has passed here. As a result the hell has been in existence for eons to some of those trapped within. However, as the Hell has moved closer to the Waking World over the centuries, time has synchronized, more or less.

The Hell is still rather new however, as Shadowrealms go, and the closing of the mines has cut off the supply of fresh souls to it. As a result, the Hell of Boiling Blood is being invaded by one it's metaphysical neighbors, The Hell of Infernal Machines.

The Hell of Boiling Blood is a vast, squashed hemispherical cavern approximately 100 miles in radius and a mile high. The Refinery City sits in the exact center of this sphere, on the top of a large hill, surrounded by a moat of boiling blood. Mining activity gradually expands this sphere in all directions. 

Despite the distance the fires from the Refinery City are visible from all parts of the realm.

The walls of the sphere are mostly being actively mined. Four roads lead from the walls to the city, and a series of concentric ring roads mark the former perimeter of the sphere, spaced roughly ten miles apart. 

The perimeter wall is shattered in a vast ten mile section in the southwest quadrant, opening to the Hell of Infernal Machines. As a result of this invasion, most of the mining activity now takes place on the Northeast quadrant, and the wall near the rent is mostly abandoned. 

The landscape between the walls and the city is a vast wasteland of plains and jagged hills composed of rock and dust, interspersed with pools of boiling flood. Their is no flora or fauna to speak of other then the occasional blood tree, feeding on one of the pools. There is no source of fresh water or food.

Blood pools are found periodically and irregularly in depressions in the landscape. They can be as small as a puddle or as a large as large lake. The pools are always hot enough to scald, some are VERY hot. Emersion in a pool can cause a variety of negative side effects in addition to fire damage, and is avoided by the inhabitants of the Hell at all cost. 

The only exception to this is the Unknown, which spawns randomly upon occasion in a valley in the wasteland. 

The Hell is perpetually hot, 90+ degrees, and exists in a perpetual red twilight. The only light source is the reflectance of the glowing blood pools on the roof of the cavern. The entire realm counts as dim illumination. The only weather are ash storms and blood rains, detailed below. 

The air in the Hell is choked with smoke and difficult to breath. Without some protection, the raw air functions as DC2 Blackdamp. 

Weather

There are only two weather effects that occur in the Hell

Ash Storms: Are similar to sandstorms only composed of ash and dust. These can rise suddenly and savagely and are greatly feared by work crews and even the demons and devils. 

Blood Rains: Similarly sudden, a blood rain is scalding hot and extremely dangerous to be caught in. The stormfronts generally sweep over the entire realm, not only scalding anyone caught in them but transforming the less rocky parts of the wasteland into a sea of mud, washing out bridges and roads, causing landslides, etc. 

Magical Effects:

It is impossible to contact any deity other then Infernal powers using any form of magic in this realm.

Since this is a prison realm, planar transport spells do not function. 

Create Water spells cast in this realm only create blood, the food created via Create Food is maggoty and inedible. 

Roughly half a million souls and tens of thousands of devils and demons make their home in the Hell, almost all living in the Refinery City though most rotate through the workcamps periodically.

In addition a dozen fortified workcamps dot the northeast perimeter wall, from which the workgangs are based. The roads also have fortified base camps at the 25, 50, 75'th mile markers, though the camps along the south wall are abandoned and along the western road only the MM 25 camp endures, under near constant siege. 

Raider gangs from the Hell of Infernal Machines roam the wasteland, attacking work crews and raiding convoys, work camps and stores of valuable ore. They are most common in the southwest sector of the realm, however now that pickings there have become slim they are showing up throughout the hell.

Finally, a very few refugees and nomadic communicates make their home in abandoned caves and tunnels burrowed into parts of the Wall, eking out a precarious existence by scavenging the wasteland for supplies.   

The Refinery City is still reeling from the assault of the Hell of Infernal Machines, but is trying to regroup and resist the invasion. While the damned souls that make up the vast majority of the population are incapable of mounting a resistance, and the City lacks the technology to construct Infernal War Machines, Overseer Lucius Vetrini does have the ability to transform especially evil souls into demons.  This takes a great deal of energy, but he has been aggressively pursuing this program and as a result has nearly ten thousand demons and devils at his command. Most of these are lesser demons, chaotic and poorly disciplined. In addition, he has no military experience nor do any of his Lieutenants so such forces are poorly organized and led.

None the less, demonic patrols from the city are managing to keep the Northern and Eastern roads open and defend the surviving base camps along the perimeter. Some of these are even becoming elite in status, most notably the Hellriders, a troop of Nightmare cavalry commanded by a Narzugon and a force of Erinyes that call themselves the Blood Lancers