Ufmarkt
Ufmarkt (pronounced /ˈuːf.mɑrkt/) is a fiery veigur of Lothenmydhe uninhabitable by normal life due to its great heat. The land is covered by flame and lava; the oceans are literally boiling, their evaporation causing a constant rain. While no living humans or similar creatures can last long in Ufmarkt without special protection, however, the world is not completely desolate. There are some creatures there adapted to withstand the high temperatures, but more common are undead, which teem in Ufmarkt in enormous numbers.
Geography
Though those who know of Ufmarkt only by hearsay think of it as a uniform expanse of roiling magma, in fact the veigur does have notable geographical features not too dissimilar from that of many other vegari, with oceans, continents, and islands. However, Ufmarkt's oceans come in two kinds, those of magma and those of boiling water, and its continents too are covered in flame and molten rock. For that matter, it arguably has two kinds of continents as well, those that are formed of ordinary rock and those from hardened lava rock, the latter overlaying its watery oceans.
Ufmarkt's overall shape is roughly like a capital L with a short stem, or like a square with one quadrant removed. Within that area, it comprises, by the most common classifications, seven major continents, though three of those continents are divided only by a molten sea and two of them are igneous lavamasses made of volcanic rock. If there ever was a time when Ufmarkt was not the inferno that it is now, then apparently it had only three continents then, unless there have been other geographical changes since then that are less obvious. Eight oceans exist in the veigur, four of lava and four of boiling water, though again three of the water oceans seem to have their origin in a single ocean divided by lavamasses, so in Ufmarkt's hypothetical precalescent days it must have had only two seas, again barring other now hidden geographical changes.
Borders
Ufmarkt borders five other vegari. In most cases, there are no borders aside from the very notable difference in the vegari's makeup; the transition from relatively ordinary terrestrial terrain (in most cases) to the blazing holocaust of Ufmarkt serves as sufficient indication of the border. The abruptness of said transition, however, varies. Along Ufmarkt's southern border, it's quite gradual, with much of Ufmarkt's fieriness leaking out into the bordering veigur and scarring it for kilometers into its interior; along the western border, on the contrary, it's very abrupt, with the heat and flames stopping right at the border. The eastern border is a more intermediate case, with the transition taking place over a few hundred meters.
Ufmarkt's borders to the northeast, on the inside of the L, are somewhat different. Most of this part of the border comprises a great moat filled with some pale yellow liquid otherwise unknown, which has come to be called bilewater. Meanwhile, a small part of the eastern side of the top of the right leg of the L is literally walled off by a tall stone barrier. While this wall is little more sturdy than ordinary stone, apart from being protected from the intense heat of Ufmarkt that might otherwise melt it, if damaged or broken through it slowly repairs itself, returning to full strength after a little less than a day.
Life
The most common and certainly the best known inhabitants of Ufmarkt are immaterial undead, many varieties of which thrive in the fiery expanse. Ghosts are common in Ufmarkt, certainly, but the veigur's undead population includes many lesser-known types as well, such as deathshades, sagues, and hitodamas. There are, of course, no material undead such as skeletons and walking corpses, except for some rare breeds that can withstand the intense heat (such as the obsidian blackbones) and perhaps a very few individuals, immigrants from elsewhere, who can resist the heat through magical means. For that matter, Ufmarkt has a few—very few—non-undead inhabitants who fit that last description.
Not all Ufmarkt's noetic life is undead, though they do make up the majority. There are also a handful of other immaterial creatures residing on Ufmarkt, such as dwimmerlings and gurions. More common than these, though still substantially less common than undead, are creatures either made of fire or made of highly heat-resistant materials. Harnon and forspins are found on Ufmarkt, though in much smaller numbers than ghosts. Then there are a few, such as the karsimals, that fall into both categories, being made of fire and undead.
In the case of Ufmarkt's innoetic life, these frequencies are more or less reversed. Some undead beasts do exist, but more common are entities immaterial but not undead (such as khastra), and more common still are creatures made either of heat-resistant materials or of flame itself, such as firewolves. Ufmarkt does have its own complex ecosystems, but they are ecosystems very different from those typical elsewhere.
Djel
The djel of Ufmarkt is an entity named Ayathudra, who appears like a gray, translucent female figure in a tattered shroud, about thirteen meters tall. Ayathudra seldom interacts with her world in any significant way, but is fairly frequently seen floating across it, a few meters above the ground, seemingly heedless of anything in her surroundings. She never speaks, though her shroud does softly rustle, and a chorus of different voices seem to whisper in her vicinity without apparent source. On rare occasion, Ayathudra has been known to appear where a large group was gathered in some argument or conflict, in which she apparently has decided to involve herself. Even then, she does not speak, but does leave an enigmatic message in the form of a gesture or some object she deposits in front of her. After delivering this message, she leaves, and never responds to any questions or requests.
There is some evidence that Ayathudra is herself undead. At first, this was suspected on circumstantial grounds, based mostly on her appearance. Various divinations, however, have lent credence to the notion, and now the possibility is generally accepted as strong, though not regarded as proven. If she is undead, the ramifications are uncertain; an undead djel is not a common phenomenon. It has been suggested that her undeath is the reason the veigur has its current uninhabitable state, that with her death the veigur, too, in a sense died, and with her spectral divestment it took an analogous, unliving form. This remains speculative, but is a provocative idea. Of course, if Ayathudra truly is undead, it raises more questions, as well, such as the questions of who or what killed her, and why, and how, and if her killer might strike again.
Astronomy
Ufmarkt has three suns, though despite this it gets rather little illumination from them. The largest and brightest of the suns, Adoran, is only in Ufmarkt one day in seven, passing through six other vegari in its regular circuit. The second sun, Drokh, is in Ufmarkt about three-quarters of the time, but also passes over the two vegari in the crook of the L. While fairly bright, Drokh directs most of its light straight downward, so it significantly illuminates at any given time only a fairly small area. Ufmarkt's dimmest sun, Ruj, is confined to Ufmarkt, where it pursues a meandering course, but is so dim as to be barely visible. Some scholars have suggested that Ruj was once the brightest of Ufmarkt's sons but dimmed when the veigur took on its current state, but there's little or no real evidence for this proposal—though there's nothing to contradict it, either. In any case, however inadequately Ufmarkt's suns light the veigur, the glowing fires and magma from its surface do much to make up the deficiency—certainly not approaching normal daylight, but at least providing enough light for visibility.
Like most vegari, Ufmarkt has constellations, but relatively few. It has many stars, but in most cases, if those stars ever belonged to constellations, those constellations have long ago been somehow sundered and destroyed, or else are so attenuated that while they may still technically exist they have no power or influence. Only ten constellations are widely recognized, and they each go by many different names. Still, some power resides in those constellations, and they can be drawn on for various magics. The process is made more difficult, however, by the troublesomeness of finding the constellations. All ten of the constellations wander, and while there is no celestial mist above Ufmarkt, the steam continually rising from its boiling oceans—which then condenses and falls as a constant rain that evaporates before hitting the superheated ground—conceals the sky from view over much of the world.
History
Ufmarkt's history remains a conundrum, for reasons that are themselves a mystery. Given the proliferation of undead in the veigur, one might expect that those undead were once living, and should remember their lives and know where they came from. Strangely, however, they do not, or at least not beyond fleeting and contradictory vignettes that illuminate nothing. It is not that the undead do not have memories; it is that those memories do not go back indefinitely. Few of them remember anything beyond the last few centuries, although it seems certain, from divinations and from the witnesses of the inhabitants of neighboring vegari, that Ufmarkt has been in its current condition, if it was ever in any other, for a few millennia at least.
What many find more worrying than whatever it is that makes the undead forget their distant past is the fact that most of those undead do not themselves wonder about the matter at all, or even seem conscious of the fact that they have forgotten anything. When the apparent fact of their obliviscence is explicitly pointed out, they may become cognizant of it, but generally don't linger on the thought, and may soon forget that they remembered having forgotten. It seems that the same force that makes the undead forget also hinders their awareness of their forgetfulness. It could be, of course, that Ayathudra is for some reason behind the epidemic of disremembrance... but it could just as well be that she is as much subject to it as the veigur's other inhabitants.
It is generally assumed that Ufmarkt's many undead are the remnants of its inhabitants from a former, more temperate age. The mere existence of undead on Ufmarkt, however, does not prove that such a time ever existed when the veigur was suited for terrestrial life. It is at least as possible that the undead are formed from people who died in other vegari, and are drawn to Ufmarkt by some unknown force—or are created in the veigur ex nihilo (which would arguably make them not technically undead at all). Indeed, despite the popularity of the idea of their being formed from Ufmarkt's own ancient inhabitants, there are at least two factors that seem to challenge the idea: the fact that new undead do occasionally appear, and the fact that the few living memories that some of the undead do have seem to be so completely at odds. Neither of these definitively controvert the possibility that they may have lived in Ufmarkt; it could be that the new undead come from visitors who die in the veigur (though their numbers make that explanation problematic), and it could be that Ufmarkt's olden cultures were diverse enough to encompass all the reported memories. Still, they do at least call this explanation into question.
Visiting
Despite its deadly calidity, there are those from other vegari who visit Ufmarkt, though few of them stay long. Among its undead and its enchanted settlers are many secrets that some have found worth ferreting out. There have been cases when magical means have been used to bring to the surface particular memories of the undead, which have unlocked long lost knowledge and enchantments. There are even those who believe that Ufmarkt was destroyed—that is, reduced to its current state—precisely because its inhabitants held secrets that the gods (or the demons, or the elementals, depending on which story one believes) didn't want disseminated.
Naturally, however, visiting Ufmarkt—and returning to tell the tale—is no easy task. Finding a way to survive the intense heat is the most obvious obstacle, but certainly not the only one. Some of its inhabitants, both noetic and bestial, are hostile to terrestrial life for various reasons, and strange hazards exist on Ufmarkt that the unwary can fall easy prey to. A less obvious peril in visiting Ufmarkt is the very real danger of getting lost there. While those used to its features may be able to find their way around, someone accustomed to more terrestrial worlds than to the fiery scapes of Ufmarkt might have difficulty finding landmarks by which to navigate. More than one sojourner in Ufmarkt otherwise well prepared for his journey has perished merely because he failed to take this problem into account, and couldn't find his way out of the veigur before exhausting his supplies.