Nine Hells

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The Nine Hells of Baator is the home of the devils and the plane that embodied lawful evil. A plane of sinister wickedness and institutional cruelty, its denizens are organized into a strict caste system with a very rigid chain of command. Each of the nine Hells had its own physical laws or properties of matter, but all are inhospitable or deadly to outsiders.

  1. Avernus: The first layer of Hell, Avernus is a wasteland destroyed by endless warfare. Currently ruled by the fallen angel Zariel, though in the past it has been ruled by the general Bel.
  2. Dis: A burning city of iron. Its ruler is Dispater, who inhabits a great Iron Tower.
  3. Minauros: A polluted swamp of acid and poison. Its capital, the City of Minauros, is constantly sinking into the marsh. Its ruler is Mammon the Viscount.
  4. Phlegethos: A realm of fire and pain. It is ruled jointly by Archduke Belial and his daughter Fierna.
  5. Stygia: A frozen sea of icebergs and glaciers. Its ruler, Prince Levistus, is trapped deep within an iceberg here.
  6. Malbolge: An treacherous rocky slope. Ruled by the Hag Countess, one of Moloch's trusted advisors prior to the Reckoning of Hell.
  7. Maladomini: An expanse of abandoned cities under a black sky. Its ruler is the Archduke Baalzebul.
  8. Cania: A lethal frozen wasteland ruled by Mephistopheles.
  9. Nessus: A land of trenches and ravines of impossible depth. Its ruler is Asmodeus, who resides in the deepest pit, called the Serpent's Coil.

Happenings

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35 #battle #TheDevilYouKnow #ADuergarPlot Tetro's firebolt seared a hole through the wood door, causing the priest to jump back. Collecting himself, he grabbed the burning remnants, flesh unharmed, and approached the party. Pleasantries were barely exchanged. Hostilities ensued. The priest doffed his miter, transforming into a barbed devil. After considerable punishment, Klondorn remarked that the will of Baator will prevail and vanished with a puff of smoke. The back room where he was lurking was filled with 92 stone tablets, whose text on touch rearranged into Infernal. Fern took a look. Each tablet was a prayer to Asmodeus.
19 #BlackSwords #ADuergarPlot Kadroth was a middle-aged tiefling man in well-kept garb. He assuaged the party that he was the right hand of Speaker Crannoc Siever, that the poor speaker had kept to his bedchambers due to a malaise of the mind. Insight proved that he was indeed acting as the right hand to an extent, but that his "care" for the speaker was a equivocal at best. Nevertheless the party heard him out, as his men had indeed tracked the Duergar menace and located an outpost. Kadroth, clutching his black sword chardalyn pendant and extolling the virtue of stopping the duergar threat, was happy to arrange an alliance. He boasted that he had a wizard named Avarice under his command - though the insightful could tell he feared the conjurer - and that he would gladly assist the party if Sunblight Fortress's whereabouts were uncovered. When pressed about the "faith" of these apparent cultists, Kadroth praised the Archdevil Levistus, Lord of Stygia, the 5th level of the Nine Hells. Levistus spoke to him, he claimed. Levistus, patron of the desperate and forgotten, had brought salvation to most members in his fold. Kadroth was merely his envoy. The cult was named after their lord: the cult of the Black Swords.
19 #BlackSwords Kadroth had gleefully urged the party to speak with their soothsayer, the old and heartlessHethyl Arkorran. Hethyl knew each party member by name. She had dreaded this day, as she knew it would be her last. She was to die, and her soul was bound for the Nine Hells. She did so only after prophesying carnage at Ten Towns at the hands of the Duergar and the party's role in mitigating it. "Try, try, try... amidst countless screams." With a deep-set hatred for Duergar, she envisioned Sunblight Fortress nestled in the mountains: one entrance by ground, yet exhausts open to the sky as well. The fortress hosted a forge powered by a red dragon's still-beating heart, and a great weapon was being forged from black ice for Xardorok Sunblight's paranoid campaign to raze and conquer Icewind Dale. Hethyl's near-blind eyes grew dim after the conversation. Her heart stopped, and she fell dead.