Six Flames

Ghastflame

Burn corpse wax to create the sickly green ghastflame. Its wisps map out faces of the dead and damned, which it invites to the flame like moths. Light from a ghastflame torch reflects off past deaths and reveals the fates of those who met untimely ends, like bloodstains in Dark Souls.

A ghastflame bonfire will become haunted by unquiet spirits, take a horrid amalgamated form, and attempt to fulfill their many conflicting desires. This ghast sets fires to all it touches, though these new fires are not ghastflame unless they burn more corpses. After a ghast’s fuel runs down, it becomes a will-o-wisp and seeks out new victims or corpses to burn.

This is why you don’t set bonfires at old battlefields.

Ghastflame Lantern: The glass in this lantern is silvered to prevent the lantern from becoming haunted, and has shutters to conceal the flame when the sights of shades of the dead would be inconvenient. If the glass breaks, it’s just large enough to become a will-o-wisp, so be careful!

Corpsewax Torch: A single corpse provides just enough fat to render into a single torch of corpsewax. While any spirit will take the chance to haunt a lick of ghastflame, the spirit of the person whose corpse was used takes precedence. Spirits prefer corpsewax of a similar age to them when they died, and some palaeoalchemists have claimed to have created ghastflame from burning fossils.

Deeplight

Torchmoss secretes an oily coating that both burns well and protects the moss from its own dim green flame, called deeplight by dwarves and goblins. As the moss matures, it turns from a deep green to a rust red, at which point it has been saturated with its characteristic oils. Mature torchmoss will hold a flame for as long as it remains fed with mineral-rich water.

Many dungeon environments are ideal for the cultivation of torchmoss, as condensation drips from the ceiling to feed torchmoss colonies on the walls. This provides the dim ambient light so prevalent throughout cave systems, ancient ruins, and city sewers.

Torchmoss oil is currently in high demand as a skincare product, which makes fashionable nobles surprisingly flammable. 

Terrarium Lantern: This terrarium holds a small colony of happy and well-fed burning torchmoss. So long as the moss is fed with mineral-rich water, the terrarium will give off dim light indefinitely.

Balefire

Burn your own living flesh to create the balefire, a black and smokeless flame of sacrifice. It casts shadows rather than light, and holds a rough shape when cast off. You cannot burn another’s flesh to create balefire, only your own — it gains its power from sacrifice.

Balefire inflicts an additional 1d6 damage to those it burns for each point of damage it inflicts to you, and can be thrown like a projectile. A chunk of living flesh cut from the body will still burn with balefire until the blood dries. Burning silk also gives off balefire, mystifying philosophers, alchemists, and theologians alike.

The esoteric martial school of the prophet Abnegatus teaches the use of balefire as a method of simultaneously casting off the trappings of the flesh and destroying their enemies, creating sacred balefire that mortifies the flesh rather than cauterizing it.

Thief’s Caul: A long silk veil that burns with balefire. While it burns, it casts shadows that obscure the wearer while permitting them to see in the dark as if they had a lantern. It lasts for 10 minutes or one exploration turn, at which point it must be discarded lest its flames consume the wearer’s face.

Frostflame

Frozen vegetation burns ice-cold with frostflame, a milky-white fire that cannot be extinguished with water. When lightning strikes a frozen forest during a blizzard, the resulting frostfire burns the entire forest to an icy crisp. The ash left behind is fine and slippery, creating shallow seas of fine crystalline particulates in the tundra.

Once started, frostfire still burns traditionally flammable fuel sources and scars flesh with glassy frost-burns.

Frigid Lantern: Frostflame lanterns throw an unnatural chill across all that their light touches, making them ideal for refrigeration on long caravans or protection from dangerously hot environments. They consume more fuel than mundane lanterns, and if a frostflame goes out it’s very difficult to restart without environmentally-frozen kindling.

Bladefire

When you burn magic items, they give off a colorful flame that mimics the color of the item's magical effect. This is how you make flaming swords, which has led to the effect’s common  name of bladefire (much to the chagrin of wizards everywhere). Setting bladefire is also a popular way to identify the properties of magical items, as it burns slowly enough to prevent serious damage to the item during the identification process.

Items wholly burnt away with bladefire leave behind a sparkling magically-charged ash called residuum, which can be snorted as a magical accelerant much like ground wizard teeth (+1 temporary magic die or spell slot, 2-in-6 chance of addiction, horrific long-term health effects). Enchanters love residuum for more practical reasons, as it’s easily worked into new magic items during the forging process and can even transfer the previous item’s properties into the new one.

Wizard corpses burn with the silent, violet Killing Flame.

Flaming Sword: +1 to hit. Ignites with red-orange bladefire once you’ve dealt damage with it, and inflicts an additional d6 fire damage while ignited. The fire burns out at the end of a round in which you haven’t dealt damage with the sword.

A flaming sword's ignition condition determines the color of its bladefire. Knights, lords, and even entire armies take great pride in signaling their value systems through their flaming weapons' hues.

Sacred Flame

Burn holy items to create an entrancing and golden sacred flame with light soft enough to look upon directly. This fire burns until it exhausts all atmospheric divinity in its surroundings, then burn the divinity within their own fuel. Sacred torches last longer when held by a believer, and prayers feed it like oxygen feeds mundane fire.

A believer’s flesh may produce sacred balefire, while their corpse burns with holy ghastflame. I leave the effects of these flame as an exercise for both the reader and my future self.

Altar Candles: Bees fed on syrup made with holy water produce the sacred beeswax necessary to produce Church-standard altar candles. These candles burn indefinitely in a sufficiently holy site.

Reliquary Lantern: This lantern is made of stained glass and contains a relic, creating a microchurch with an internally sustainable sanctified environment. The relic produces divinity at a sufficient rate to fuel a small sacred flame, preventing the flame from burning the relic itself so long as the lantern remains intact. If containment is breached, the divinity will dissipate into the surrounding environment and the flame will consume the relic if not immediately fed with prayer.