Minauros

**Minauros** is the third layer of the Nine Hells, ruined and defiled by the influx of pollution from Dis.

## Geographic Description

Minauros is often characterized as a vile, polluted bog, filled with noxious odors and waterfalls of radioactive green sludge. The air is hazy and distorted, what's left of the trees have no leaves, and rivers littered with bones and waste are common on the ground. Cities hang from the surface, held up by chains.

## Places of Importance

Minauros has nine circular-like structures hanging from large chains known as the **Hanging Cities**, but in actuality, only five of them are cities. Three of the other structures are gold deposits of Mammon's wealth, and the fourth is the **Athenaeum Medius**, a collection of lore, history, and other sources of reading famous in all of the planes of existence, populated by lore devils. The other cities are *Jangling Hiter*, *Babylon*, *Jaghatai*, and *Szyzoth*.

Below the nameless cities are the **Blood Swamps**, a festering bog of bones and waste twisting the former forest ruined by the toxic waste material from Dis above.

## Architecture

The Hanging Cities are circular in nature, making way for Minimalist and Sustainable architecture styles in their rectangular rooms crammed into the sphere-like cities.

## General Inhabitants

Lesser devils of all kinds, such as **Bearded Devils**, **Spined Devils**, and **Imps** populate most of the cities. **Chain Devils** are the most common inhabitants of the cities, however. A few of them act as a (relatively corrupt) police force, taking action against criminals where Mammon ignores unless his wealth is directly involved.

**Lore Devils** are living compendiums of spent scrolls and dead codices. Keepers of lost arcane secrets, they wield cunning magics and feed on the energy of weaker mages than themselves. Lore devils make up the population of the Athenaeum Medius, serving as immortal lore-keepers and librarians for those interested in the various purposes of their books and scrolls.

The **Swampdwellers** are nameless creatures that reside in the Blood Swamps, unable to be characterized by any means by the lore devils above due to their ever-changing nature. They have been colloquially regarded as Swampdwellers due to this fact. Various accounts with the fauna of the Swamps has been met with untrustworthiness by those who hear it because of all the different various accounts, but the lore devils record every single mention of these in hopes of better understanding the true nature of the Swampdwellers.

## Inhabitants of Note

**Loremaster Indix** is a lore devil composed of a book known as *The Tome of Fate*, a book of ancient rituals and secrets from a time long forgotten. The book drove all those mad who gazed upon its pages, so it was cast into the Blood Swamps, where the book itself mutated with a nameless creature of power, forming Indix. It is *The Tome of Fate* given life, and as such, it has access of now-abolished rituals of immense power and secrets unrevealed. Indix is the head of the Athenaeum Medius, a collection of records and history across the planes of existence, part of the Hanging Cities of Minauros. Despite Indix typically keeping quiet of his vast knowledge, as talk of the secrets drives one to insanity, Mammon turns a blind eye to Indix and his machinations, mostly out of care for his coin.

**Mammon** is a sickly-green devil with the tail of a serpent, and is quite possibly the richest being in existence. Both literally and figurely two-faced, the archdevil viscout is a feckless miser whose only true loyalty was to his wealth despite his service to Asmodeus. In fact, several of the Hanging Cities are not actually cities, but storage points of his immeasurable wealth. The rest are stored in private demiplanes Mammon himself conjured into existence. He is not only sinister but also shameless, a cringing wretch of an archdevil who kept his position and throne primarily by acts of flattery and connivery. Mammon is also a guileful fiend who survives by learning everything he can about his enemies before using the information to subvert their expectations.

## Trivia

* The reason the Nine Hells are different than their respective 5e canon appearances are because Ben felt dissatisfied that several of the layers felt so similar.
	+ Minauros, however, is one of the few exceptions, as Ben preferred to keep the idea of one layer of Hell being an infested swamp.
* The *Blood Swamps* are a direct reference to the level of the same name in *DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 1*.
* The city of *Szyzoth* is a reference to the character of *Reptile* from the *Mortal Kombat* franchise.
* The city of *Jaghatai* is a reference to *Jaghatai Kahn* of The Primarchs from Warhammer 40K.