Minauros

Minauros is the third layer of The Nine Hells of Baator. Ruled by the archdevil Mammon, the Endless Bog is the economic centre of the Nine Hells, where new souls are processed and minted, its great wealth belied by its ramshackle appearance and unenjoyed by the vast majority. The Stinking Mire is the layer of greed and avarice, a wretched fen of toxic influence that promises only sickness and despair, slowly pulling everything beneath the putrid mud.

Geography

Minauros is best described as a great stinking swamp, a fetid marsh of mire, muck and misery extending further than one can possibly imagine. The layer is arguably the most diseased of all the lower planes, a dismal morass of reeking, rotting earth and inches of polluted water where the corrupting powers of poison and illness are enhanced and recovery diminshed. Corpses and carrion gurgle to the surface, filling the air with disease, and are so ubiquitous across the hellish bog that stumbling is a constant problem. The occasional falls they induce might be enough to kill, such as from landing on a sharp, up-thrust bone or falling unconscious and drowning in the unclean waters.
Much of Minauros is dominated by a dreary urban landscape, a kingdom in a state of endless disrepair constantly teetering on the edge of ruin. The structures that intersperse the plane are in need of constant fixing, upkeep, or outright replacement, all characterised by flimsy materials, cheap construction techniques, and shoddy artisanship. There are cities of ornately carved stone, masoned in cyclopean fashion, but even these suffer from slow decline. Almost everything built in Minauros is left untended to inexorably slide into the bottomless mud, gradually collapsing into the gigantic sinkhole that is the plane. Nothing of value stays in the bog for long, with any treasure of size, magic, or other notability fated to be destroyed or taken.
The black, putrid surface of Minauros is covered in thick layers of scum and dotted with a series of mud flats and cesspools. The bubbling, filthy waters dispersed various foul odours and yellow-green swamp gas faintly illuminates the murky, fog-shrouded air. In some places infernal heat rises up from below, boiling and steaming the dank waters and creating mud geysers, while others are so cold the water ices over.
Beneath the slowing mud are deep pits, which combine with the other hidden dangers, requiring travellers to cautiously slog their way through the unpleasant swamp. Deeper in the plane, the marshes eventually give way to stretches of lifeless, cinder-choked trees and volcanic ridges, the obsidian and igneous rock meandering eternally through the swamp, undulating across the land like serpents frozen into the ground. Eventually, upon nearing the centre of the plane, these ridges rise into a vast and tortured volcanic badland of ash-hills and slime-filled rifts.
The dimmed, eternally overcast skies of Minauros range from brown to leaden and roil with fecund, drooping clouds ranging from slate grey to putrescent indigo. More often than not the surface is buffeted by harsh and cold winds.

Type

Plane of Existence

Location under

The Nine Hells of Baator

Owner/Ruler

Mammon

Additional Rulers/Owners

• Qhiesis