Hell

The plane of Hell, sometimes referred to as the Pit, is the ultimate expression of evil order in the Great Beyond, of the weak subjugated to serve the strong, of complete obedience, and unquestioning faith. Its tortures are not willful and random like the torments of the Abyss, or purely sadistic and spiteful like that of Abaddon. Evil and obedience here are honed to a razor's edge in service to a greater purpose: that of bending the will of souls, and the very architecture of creation itself to the greater glory of the lord Asmodeus and his perfect order. It is the home of myriads of devils and other evil outsiders, and sadly the final destination for countless mortal souls. As well as "hellish", the adjective to describe Hell is "infernal".

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## Structure

The nine layers of Hell form a structured labyrinth of calculated evil where torment goes hand in hand with purification. A plane of iron cities, burning wastelands, frozen glaciers, and endless volcanic peaks, Hell is divided into nine nesting layers, each under the malevolent rule of an archdevil. Torture, anguish, and agony are inevitable in Hell, but they are methodical, not spiteful or capricious, and serve a deliberate master plan under the watchful eyes of the disciplined ranks of Hells’ lesser devils. The nine layers of Hell, from first to last,
are Avernus, Dis, Erebus, Phlegethon, Stygia, Malebolge, Cocytus, Caina,
 and Nessus.

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## Physical Traits

* **Divinely Morphic**: Deities with domains in Hell can alter the plane at will.
* **Strongly Law-Aligned and Strongly Evil-Aligned**
* **Enhanced Magic**: Spells and spell-like abilities with the lawful or evil descriptor are enhanced.
* **Impeded Magic**: Spells and spell-like abilities with the chaotic or good descriptor are impeded.

## Geographical Features

Hellfire
The fires of Hell are a common linguistic and literary image but hardly compare to the malicious and deadly reality of actual hellfire. It burns without need of fuel, and can be found easily in water, rock or air. Stinking of sulfur, its flames burn with an unholy radiance that disproportionately harms good and moral creatures. Hellfire is most commonly encountered in the layers of Phlegethon, Malebolge, Cocytus, Caina, and Nessus.
Hellmouths
Hellmouths are living portals in the fabric of Hell itself, most commonly appearing as disgusting rents in the ground, devilish faces, or open orifices. They connect the various layers of Hell and are, therefore, heavily fortified and guarded, with a devil of at least infernal duke status assigned as overseer. A few extremely rare hellmouths connect to other planes, most commonly the Abyss.
The River Styx
The River Styx begins its passage through Hell in Avernus and runs through several of its layers, passing through planar portals or hellmouths. It serves as a passage from Avernus through Dis, Erebus, Stygia, Malebolge, Cocytus, and Caina before passing to other planes. In its course can be found countless souls who have lost their memories, aquatic fiends, and planar traders.
## The Nine Layers of Hell

### Avernus

The first layer is ruled by Barbatos, and is a volcanic wasteland where souls assemble, are judged, and are sent to their appropriate layers for eternal punishment. Avernus can be described as a vast plain of terror and desolation. The land is a barren, volcanic desert pitted with volcanic rock and pitted iron. Sudden bursts of hellfire from the ground is a constant fear for travelers.

Damned souls (known as petitioners) appear at random locations throughout the plane, all freshly sent from the Boneyard. These souls occasionally form refugee caravans, seeking in vain for some place to escape their pursuers, but their freedom is temporary at best. More skilled hunters, such as host devils, are unleashed to bring in especially evasive petitioners. Only the souls of suicides are left forsaken, doomed to wander the landscape forever. Although the damned cannot be harmed by hazards such as hellfire, they still suffer the pain of being burned or otherwise injured

The stone giant god Minderhal dwells just outside Hell's first layer in the mountain chain of Stonepeak, within sight of Avernus. Lesser devils, most commonly the type known as barbazus (often referred to as bearded devils), are more prolific on Avernus than any other layer of Hell, constantly on the hunt for rogue souls. These devils pay at least some degree of veneration to Barbatos.

Notable locations include:

* **Stonepeak** is the divine realm of Minderhal, the god of the stone giants. Located just outside the first level of Hell, Stonepeak is a chain of massive mountains within sight of Avernus. Stonepeak is inhabited by Minderhal's petitioners, who fend off intruders with thrown boulders. The souls of Minderhal's worshipers labor to create beautiful works of art and craftsmanship for their stern deity.
* **Eridanos** is an ocean-sized marsh in Avernus formed by a cascade of countless foul arteries of strange fluids which wash a portion of the Maelstrom's refuse into Hell. The multiverse's refuse is mixed with the souls of the damned and the eroded sediments of Hell; then the noxious mixture forms the headwaters of the infamous River Styx which flows through the planes.
* **Promised Land** is a floating island that is constantly shrouded in mist and cloud as it drifts across the infernal plane. It is also the personal home to the master of Avernus, the Archdevil Barbatos. Although at a distance the Promised Land appears to be a natural paradise, arrivals quickly realise the twisted nature of the island. Animals and plants alike are horribly deformed, rivers and forests possess a vicious hunger, and the white-gowned inhabitants would scream in horror if they still possessed mouths. The land itself is a roiling mass of worms that constantly spill to the land below.
* The **Forked Pyre** is the mighty iron fortress of Duke Furcas. The fortress is built upon a powerful cascade of roaring lava. One of its three spiked black towers houses the burning armories of the duke; the second holds the barracks of the duke's 20 legions; and the third contains a dungeon packed with tormented rivals and useful souls. On an island upon the lava flow at the heart of the duke's palace rests the six-eyed, hellmouth called Gissiclis, its bowels stretching to the Garden of Heresies in Dis.

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### Dis

The second layer is ruled by Dispater, and consists of a large city that provides soldiers to the other layers. Dis, the Infernal City, is a prison for the souls of those who used the law to prey upon those around them. A magnificent, yet twisted mockery of a mortal palace, the court of Dis supplies a constant supply of soldiers to the other infernal layers of Hell. It is within the burning walls of Dispater's garrison-cities that the mortal dead, wrathful and vengeful, are trained and transformed through combat. The archdevil Dispater rarely leaves his city, except to the summons of Asmodeus.

The warlike levalochs, also known as warmonger devils, are most commonly found on Dis. The largest concentration of erinyes in Hell lives and thrives in Dis.

Notable Locations include:

* **Broken Chains** is the embassy of the kytons in Hell. It is a mountainous citadel formed of massive chains. Sounds of grinding speech that emanate from within the Chains' halls have led some devils to believe that the entire citadel is a single living organism, an ephialtes kyton of unbelievable proportions. Broken Chains is overseen by Consul Chayte, an oitos kyton who represents the lords of Xovaikain on the Shadow Plane.
* The incredible **Iron Scepter** in Dis is the sanctum of Dispater, the Lord of the Second. It stands taller than any mountain upon the mortal plane and is decorated by scenes of torment and countless gargoyles. Within Iron Scepter, Dispater presides over his court and judges disputes between devils throughout Hell. It is said that all layers of Hell are visible from the Scepter's peak and that whispers spoken there reach the walls of Heaven.

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### Erebus

Erebus is the third layer of Hell and is ruled by Mammon. It consists of the sewers of Dis and includes the counting house in which Hell's fortunes are listed, its supplies cataloged, and its soldiers equipped. It's an endless dungeon beneath the second layer of Dis. It is here that the archdevil Mammon keeps Hell's books, accounting for all that is spent in the infernal realm. It is also known as the Eternal Counting House of Mammon.

The greed-stricken souls sent here face wealth-related torture such as being crushed by giant gold bars or being dismembered and turned into soul-fragments to be used as currency in hell. Others are stricken blind and chained to the ground like animals in Mammon's immense vaults and are forced to pass along all of the material objects that pass through whether they be coins, books, clothes, weapons, contracts, or even souls and keep track mentally of every object that passes via impressions given to them by the osyluth.

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### Phlegethon

The fourth layer of Hell is ruled by Belial, and contains the hideous forges of Hell, where unsuitable souls are recast into something more fitting to the infernal eye. Phlegethon is the fourth layer of Hell, and is known as "Hell's Forges". It is within these infernal forges that souls are melted down, amidst the clang of hammers and the stench of burning flesh. Once purified of weakness and rebellion, these souls are recast into the forms of true devils. It is ruled by the archdevil Belial, known as the Father of Whores, and it is through his whim that devils rise out of the soul forges.

The petitioners melted down are turned into armor, weapons, and even body piercings for the devils of the realm. They are used as disposable weapons in Hell's armies. The least valuable of the souls are used to stoke the fires of the forge and to quench red-hot metals. Aegrizok the Denuded oversees the forge. The souls of war criminals, traitors, and other soldiers who committed crimes against the world are melted here.

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### Stygia

Stygia, the fifth level of Hell, is the realm of Geryon the Serpent and the temples and libraries of sin and heresy; it is here that the temptation of Hell is practiced as an art form to be mastered. Every lie spoken throughout the planes condenses as a drop of poison to flood Stygia. It is ruled by the archdevil known as the Source of Lies, Geryon. Amid the tangled swamps and fetid jungles rise moldy ruins, mired temples to false deities, and whole blasphemous cities. The waters of the Styx mix with the layer's venomous bogs, creating vast noxious moors before flowing into vast black seas. Dilapidated avenues paved with cracked stones—remnants of empires that never were—cut through these dense bogs, though they regularly succumb to unexpected floods of stagnant water. Travelers who brave the paths or manage to fight their way through the swamps for long enough inevitably discover examples of the layer's countless ruins, overgrown temples and cathedrals, disparate crumbling monuments, and fortresses upturned as if flung by gigantic and careless hands. Most of these decrepit structures—drawn in their entirety from innumerable mortal worlds—still bear artifacts and artistry from forgotten epochs, typically idols and icons of deities and divine forces unknown to even the longest-lived inhabitants of the multiverse.

Osyluths are created in the foul depths of Stygia, chosen from the most manipulative of the erinyes and forced under the vile slime for centuries before arising as a bone devil.

In the mountainous scriptorium called the Library of Oaths, diabolical clerks record every mortal oath with a damning consequence. These records prove binding, and those who break their words are damned to eternity in Stygia for as long as their vows remain within the library vault. The souls of liars, cheaters, and false prophets dwell among the ruins that dot the realm, hiding in fear of Geryon as they are driven mad by his serpentine whispers.

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### Malebolge

Malebolge is the sixth layer of Hell, and is ruled by Moloch, general of Hell's armies. Those who have visited this forsaken place describe it as a great forest, onto which snow-like ash is constantly falling. It is within the indomitable pits and fortresses of this plane that the fiendish hunting beasts known as cerberi are bred and trained. Devils use this plane to practice warfare in varying land terrains.

Moloch and his armies trick souls into coming here by promising them that they are being rewarded only to be cast into the wilds and hunted like animals for sport. The wilds contain the Smoldering Forests which are poisoned-black trees that are constantly smoking, on the verge of combustion. The trees are actually damned souls and are cut down to make clearings to practice in or to be used as gear and shelter by devils, all the while still smoking.

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### Cocytus

The frozen realm of Cocytus is Hell's seventh layer, the domain of the archdevil Baalzebul. Cocytus is a realm of frozen oceans and razored glaciers. In this infernal realm, the damned watch the feasting of devils from cages of ice afloat glaciers and frozen oceans.

The ice mountains here spew ice-cold lava that is colder than the empty voids between the stars. Conventional lava pits bust through cracks every now and then which attracts villages of damned souls to congregate around seeking heat. The sky is dotted with floating glaciers some of which plummet to the ground for no apparent reason, crushing all who are below them or collide with other glaciers sending shards of glass down below. Some of these glaciers are cities that fiends live in, taunting the damned souls trapped in the ice walls by thawing them slightly just to let them freeze back over.

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### Caina

Caina, the eighth layer of Hell, is a realm of iron and torture, where steel cages hang suspended over a nearly sentient darkness that spreads in all directions; the archdevil Mephistopheles, the Keeper of Secrets, rules here. The realm is regarded as a land of eternal torture and unceasing darkness.

Located in Caina is Lasraspan, the residence of the infernal duke Haborym. Nearly eight miles in length, it is a covered iron walkway which holds prisoner the souls of some of the most dangerous beings which ever lived.

The souls here are hung by hooks with their tongues removed while being starved in isolation, some being dissected and skewered eternally. It is the worst of fates for mortal souls, left dangling in front of an endless void below. The tortured souls are whispered horrible, forbidden secrets while being tortured. Then, the devils that torture them leave them to contemplate this deadly secret alone gazing into eternal, pure darkness tortured by their own thoughts and fears.

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### Nessus

Nessus is Hell's lowest layer, ruled by the Prince of Darkness, Asmodeus. Nessus is a desolate wasteland, a place apparently destroyed by volcanic fire, a wasteland and a land of formless darkness. Little is known of this dark place, but it is clear that only the greatest of devils are permitted residence here. Pit fiends are most common in Nessus, serving in the infernal courts or attending dark councils.

Strongly suspected are the great wonders and treasures held in the vaults of Asmodeus himself. Powerful artifacts such as the key to Rovagug's prison and the deity-slaying spear head, the *Ihystear*. If rumours can be believed, Asmodeus only keeps relics in preparation for the existence yet to come, in the final stage of his master plan to reorganise the multiverse to his own liking.

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