A Burner is a column of fire roughly the height of a tall man, with something like a head, shoulders, and arms that flare and lose their shape as it moves. Its colours run from white at the core through searing orange to violet at the edges. It has no face, though some travellers swear to seeing a mouth open in the flame. It moves in sudden rushes, leaning ahead of itself like a fire running up a dry slope, and it roars and crackles as it goes. Wherever it has passed, stone is glazed and metal runs. It smells of scorched stone and ozone.

They roam the fire-seas, lava fields, and islands of the Crucible, wherever there is anything to burn.

They are untamed and have no purpose beyond feeding: whatever lies in their path goes to keep them burning. They do not hunt as the Fire-Stalkers do; they simply burn towards whatever will burn, and grow as they feed. They pay no attention to the Forgers, who are fire already.

A Burner consumes. What it touches burns, and what burns becomes more of it. In the Crucible, where small heats escalate into great ones, a Burner that feeds well can swell into a firestorm.

They give nothing anyone can keep. Their danger is plain and immediate, and the travellers' advice is to seek the cool spots of solidified rock, where a Burner finds nothing to eat.

Fire-spirits run through the lore of Caeldon’s forges and volcano country, and travellers' tales of the Burners feed them. Some believe a house fire that will not be put out has a Burner in it; whatever is in such fires, no one has shown it came from the Crucible.

Songs of the volcano country tell of the town that burned for nine days while its people fought a fire with a shape inside it, and of the smith who drove the thing back into the mountain’s mouth with a quenching rite and a forge-hammer.