The Hells
Hell is the realm of devils, the multiversal seat of tyranny and malignant law, and the divine domain of Hezorat, the Lord of Domination. Here every act is authorized, calculated, recorded, and set like perfectly ordered clockwork within a vast machine driven on methodical suffering and greased with pain and purification. The nine cyclical spheres of Hell violently torture souls that are judged as desereving so. Each layer shaped to reflect the nature of its ruling archdevil.
Eons ago, the nine archdevils of Hell rebelled against their lord, Hezorat. While unable to kill him, they trapped him, binding him to his throne with The Chains of God. Once victorious, the archdevils reshaped the Hells into nine concentric regions, and not layers. This one was done to evenly split the power between them, each ruling their sphere as they see fit.
Avernus’s volcanic wastes, ruled by Barbatos, are the marshaling place of Hell’s armies, and where newly damned souls are shackled and shuffled off to their assigned torment. Dispater’s layer of Dis is a great iron city: brutal, beautiful, and terrible. The layer of Erebus comprises both the sewers of Dis and the vaults and treasuries of Hell, ruled by Mammon, a great genius loci embodied by the very wealth locked within Hell’s coffers. Ruled by Belial, the layer of Phlegethon hosts Hell’s forges, while Geryon’s watery realm of Stygia houses Hell’s libraries. Moloch’s smoldering, ash-draped forest realm of Malebolge is the training site of the infernal armies, and Baalzebul’s frozen layer of Cocytus torments the imprisoned, starving damned. Mephistopheles rules the layer of Caina, a realm of cages and torture suspended above a pit of hungry darkness, while at the very bottom of Hell’s infinite pit, Hezorat resides, eternally trapped upon his throne in Nessus.
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