A moonless world of amethyst-colored seas and purple stone, Embroi glitters alone in the void. Like the sapient mollusks who dominate the planet, however, Embroi wears a mask: peaceful beaches and gentle violet hills hide underground slave-pits and diabolical factories operated by agents from Hell. The intelligent races native to Embroi all evolved from mollusks. Embri arose from aquatic progenitors and, in prehistoric days, crawled from the seas on clawed limbs and fought the gentle snail-like yeddins, who had already developed advanced metalworking and empathy-based social systems. The embri conquered the land and adopted yeddin technology; over time they also learned emotional restraint, concealing their feelings behind metal masks. Six large continents cover Embroi. Demagallo and Irralo Kellad are central to administration and industry, Antikawara is home to luxury magma-heated mineral baths, Chapru Von is mountainous and choked in massive garbage fields, Kanfrei contains prisons and slave-pits, and the Baskar Expanse is a bombarded wasteland used as a testing range. Beneath each continent sprawl vast infernal passage networks occupied by devils who shape embri society and labor for inscrutable ends. As a result of generations of diabolic influence and social conditioning, Embroi is joyless, toil-centered, and hostile to independent thought. The malebranche devil Occhiorasoi rules the hidden infernal order and is among the most powerful beings on the planet.