Sloth

**Sloth** is a layer of Hell located within the third ring. It is where the lazy and sullen are sent for eternal punishment.

## Geography

Sloth is one massive swamp, comprised of trees and mushrooms. The mushrooms tower over the landscape, creating a thick shadow over most of the layer. These mushrooms have brown stumps and green tops, causing most new to the layer to mistake them for trees. The actual trees are fairly small, less than a meter in height but with very thick leaves, making travel through the layer difficult. The sky is periwinkle in color and filled with dark clouds.

As Sloth is found within the Outer Layers, it is bordered to the North by the Archean. To the East is Heresy, and to the West is Gluttony. Notably, the entire Southern border is shared with Wrath. This results in the layer becoming partially submerged the farther South one travels.

## Souls

The slothful are given a very distinguished disadvantage: they do not have working legs. The legs are still present on the souls, and they are still capable of feeling pain, but they are effectively paralyzed from the waist down. This combines with the punishment of Sloth's tricky terrain to make the slothful very unlikely to travel very far. It also makes escaping the gas clouds much harder, or in some cases downright impossible.

Souls who escape from Sloth are often incapable of making it very far in the other layers. However, not only is Heresy openly kind to the slothful, but a lot of buildings within the layer are specially designed to accommodate these disabled souls. Since the slothful are ill adapted at life in the other layers, they instead stay with Heresy and serve the important role of freeing heretics from their coffins. Many important leaders in Dis are from Sloth.

## Demons

The only Demon found within Sloth are the Hydras. Hydras are massive purple serpents with multiple heads. Cutting off one head will cause two more to replace it, while the severed head will steadily grow a new body. The blood of Hydras is extremely poisonous, to the point that some Hydra farms exist solely to gather as much blood as possible (albeit with very limited success). The most notable aspect of Hydras is their poisonous gases. Hydras naturally emit green gas that is toxic to inhale. These clouds will slowly disperse across the layer, killing anything that comes into contact with it. These clouds don't seem capable of leaving Sloth, but they do serve as a deterrent to other Demons that seek to enter the layer.

Hydras can be found throughout the layer, however the majority of them can be found on the border of Wrath. Any wrathful souls who try crossing the border are grabbed by a Hydra head and promptly swallowed. This strategy is so effective that newly severed Hydra heads will often retreat to the North so as to hunt souls without competition. This is also why most Hydras found North of the Styx have less than nine heads.

The Prince of Sloth is Belphegor, however the Fallen Mal'akh has never been within the layer itself. The presence of Sapient Demons within Sloth is somewhere between few to none, as the constantly moving clouds of poison make long-term settlements impossible to maintain. This is also why Sloth is the only layer of Hell to not have any permanent cities.