Editing Elemental Pole (section)

===Smoke===
The most heavily Blighted portion of Autochthon's ailing body, the Pole of Smoke serves as both his lungs and his stomach. This is the dumping ground for the waste produced by all his other systems, and it responds by constantly unleashing torrents of powerful solvents into this area to digest the built-up rubbish, breaking them down into semi-pure raw materials that are used to heal wounds and expand his physiotopography. Meanwhile, the vaporized effluvia of this consumption constantly dirties the bellow-pumps that cycle gasses through the Primordial’s body.

Although Autochthonia is a spherical world, the primary vector of gravity does not orient toward the core. Instead, that force pushes everything down from the Pole of Oil through the Pole of Metal, gradually filtering all refuse and waste products to fall into the vast junkyard hell of the Pole of Smoke beneath. The bowl occupies a fifth of the titan body’s volume, the largest open space in the entire realm. Thick fog banks cover the sky in choking toxic fumes, dozens and sometimes hundreds of miles thick. Long spires pierce the murk from the machinery above like jagged inverted skyscrapers.

Far below lies a seemingly endless plain of broken metal, torn scraps of artificial rubber, glass shards and other industrial waste. Thousands of chutes in the ceiling empty this detritus onto the cratered hell, building irregular towers of garbage that would climb to the sky if underground seas of acid did not constantly dissolve the lowest layers. While the barrage of falling junk is more or less constant, the clouds also give frequent rise to sizzling typhoons and maelstroms that pour acid rain onto the cratered ruins below. These solvents pool in lakes and eventually drain through smoking tunnels leading down into the sea. Lightning and pyroclastic hail accompany the worst of these storms.

Immense veins of varicolored jade climb the walls like so much ivy, pumping the slurry of raw materials extracted by solvent digestion back up into healthier parts of Autochthonia. The peristaltic undulations of these wide pipes makes the background waver like a desert mirage even in the rare moments where the smoke clears enough to see that far.

Not all wreckage melts, of course. Countless artifacts lie mixed in with the rubble, some broken but many not.

Because of this, despite the fact that the Pole of Smoke is the most inherently hostile region in Autochthonia and was never intended to be occupied... there are people living here. If he were awake, Autochthon might take a perverse pride in that.

[[Category: Planes]] [[Category: Exalted]]