Ehrynn's Perfect Match

Beware of Archmagi who haven't had their morning tea.

Beware in particular those Archmagi who, not having their morning tea, are too cranky to properly light a fire and, in their frustration, lash out with whatever spells they have handy just to "get the godsdamn kettle to boiling."

Fun fact: Fireballing your kettle, while emotionally satisfying, evaporates the water and you are still without tea. And probably a fireplace. 

The wizard Ehrynn Paahlet was one such Archmage, and while her fireplace was being rebuilt in the aftermath of her latest incendiary tantrum, she had An Idea about How To Fix This Problem Once And For All. She promptly assembled a group of hardy adventurers and disappeared on a quest. When finally she returned, her mood was much improved, and the countryside breathed a sigh of relief as her morning tea never failed to boil. 

Of course, her tower burned to the ground six months later, but that's beside the point. 

Ehrynn's Perfect Match
Aura strong conjuration and abjuration; CL 15th; Slot none; Price 24,000 gp; Weight negligible

Ehrynn’s Perfect Match is a slender rod of gold approximately the length and width of a pencil, flat at one end and tapering to a point at the other. It is stored within a hollow tube carved from the thighbone of a Large creature, etched with ornate abjurative runes.

When the rod is withdrawn from its bone tube, a minute gate to the Plane of Fire opens at the tapered end, extruding a narrow, steady tongue of white-gold flame. The flame is nearly colorless at its core and devoid of smoke, sparks, or flicker. It burns continuously regardless of environmental conditions, including wind, rain, immersion in water, or burial in earth or sand.

The Perfect Match cannot be adjusted, dimmed, or extinguished by mundane or magical means. The only way to suppress its flame is to return the rod to its bone tube or to place it within an area that blocks planar effects (such as dimensional lock).

Activating or deactivating the Perfect Match requires a creature capable of physically manipulating magic items. Purely magical effects that cannot activate magic items (such as mage hand or unseen servant) cannot do so.

The Perfect Match does not deal damage as part of an attack and cannot be used as a weapon.

Ignition
During the first round that the Perfect Match is lit, any easily flammable material (such as paper, dry wood, cloth, oil, or similar substances) brought into contact with its flame ignites immediately, catching fire as though exposed to an open flame.

Any unattended flammable object ignited by the Perfect Match burns as a normal fire, spreading to adjacent flammable materials and growing according to available fuel and environmental conditions.

Escalating Elemental Heat
Beginning on the second consecutive round that the Perfect Match remains lit, it deals 1 point of fire damage per round to any creature or object in direct contact with it. Each consecutive round thereafter increases this damage by 1 point per round, to a maximum of 30 points of fire damage per round.
This fire damage is incendiary. Any flammable creature or object damaged by it must succeed at a Reflex save (DC 15) or catch fire, following the standard rules for catching fire. Fire resistance and immunity apply normally, but this damage bypasses object hardness, representing direct exposure to elemental flame. It is sufficient to ignite, melt, scorch, or otherwise thermally damage objects, even if those objects would not normally burn.

Safety Disengagement
Once the damage reaches 30 points per round, an internal safety ward automatically disengages the planar aperture. The flame immediately ceases, and the Perfect Match begins to cool. During this cooling period, the damage it deals decreases by 1 point per round until it reaches 0. The Match does not reignite during this time.

Placing the Perfect Match back into its bone tube at any time immediately seals the planar aperture, extinguishing the flame and resetting the damage progression. When withdrawn again, the Match always begins at the ignition stage.

The bone tube continuously suppresses extraplanar effects originating from the Perfect Match alone. This functions as a permanent, item-specific abjuration effect equivalent to dimensional lock for the purposes of containing the Match, but it has no effect on other extraplanar creatures or magic.

The bone tube is required for safe storage of the Perfect Match. Placing the rod in any other container does not extinguish it unless that container is similarly warded against planar effects.

Construction Requirements 
Craft Wondrous Item, gate, dimensional lock, resist energy; Cost 12,000 gp

Lore

Ehrynn Paahlet was a cranky old woman who didn't like people, which means she didn't have apprentices or servants to make her morning tea or do other cooking-related tasks. (If you read the text for Unseen Servant, you will see that cooking is not one of the explicitly listed tasks it can perform.) Ehrynn also didn't have any points in Survival or Profession (cook), so she didn't know how to build a proper fire, meaning the Spark cantrip would not result in a viable cooking fire. Prestidigitation doesn't produce enough heat to actually cook, Produce Flame is a druid spell, and creating food & drink is the province of divine magic. 

So she decided, in that manner that wizards consider reasonable logic and everyone else considers madness and overkill, that the best course of her time and energy was not to learn a skill (because skills are for people who expect to repeat mistakes), but rather to produce a controlled magical flame that by the gods would start a fire without requiring her to expend any effort (because magic is for people who intend to be right forever).

Her plan was simple: just put a log in the hearth, use the Perfect Match on it, and eventually the log would start burning. The heat issue with the Match wasn't a problem for someone with access to the Mage Hand cantrip, so the 'too hot to touch' flaw feature ensured that anyone who stole her Match would suffer. 

This, by the by, is the same reasoning that goes "If the recipe calls for 1 hour at 300 degrees, then surely 6 minutes at 3,000 degrees will also work. It's just a matter of scale."

So why did her tower burn down? The answer is simple: she started the match and got distracted doing something else. By the time she realized what was going on, the fire was already out of control (putting out raging fires? Also a druid spell), so she gathered her most priceless possessions and teleported away, leaving the match and its tube to be found in the ashes. 

TLDR: This item exists because a wizard rejected the premise that learning the mundane skill of file-building was a reasonable use of her time, and so made a magic item which embodies the statement "Fire will happen. Your cooperation is optional."

This is my entry for the Amazon PayPhrase Create-a-Thing Contest.