Inferno

Great balls of fire, indeed. This particular Earth is bathed in unending flame.

Parallel History

It’s an earth that’s entirely on fire. Need we say more?

Okay. It’s actually not uncommon for an Earth-sized planet to be uninhabitable — frankly, we’re surprised more worlds we’ve catalogued aren’t more like this one.

The formation of the planet can occur in any number of ways. Cooling ejecta from a star gone nova coalesces into a planetoid, but it’s still emitting a ton of radiation. Friction and gravity superheats a lot of the material, and for the next billion years or so volcanism creates the sulfur and other nutrient-rich materials that spawn life on earth.

ELEs, or Extinction Level Events, come along and occasionally add things to the mix. One ELE led to the formation of the moon and allowed the Earth the ability to vent a lot of heat.

On Inferno, this ELE never collided with earth. The result? Super-hot surface temperatures, a perpetual fire, a runaway greenhouse effect and stronger gravitational forces since the moon’s mass is still a part of the planet.

We can explain all that, but we can’t explain the sentient fire living on this earth. So we’ll leave it there and restrict this world so you don’t melt trying to contradict us.