Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles, sometimes shortened to Mephisto and once under the name of Molikroth, was the lord of Cania, the eighth level of the Nine Hells. He was the main opponent of Baalzebul during the Reckoning of Hell, and still holds a claim to his own layer. He sought to take Baalzebul's layer away from him, that he may gain enough power to one day challenge Asmodeus for rulership of all the Nine Hells.

Description
Mephistopheles played his up infernal image as much as possible, intentionally appearing as the classic archetype of a diabolical devil. He was tall and striking, his handsome visage and charming yet unnerving smile of self-superiority contrasted by his more monstrous features. His fiendish claws, bright, crimson red skin, large, bat-like wings and impressive, curling ram horns all left his hellish heritage on proud display. Another source of contrast was his dead-white eyes against his long, straight, black hair, as well as his dramatic, flowing cape as dark as the deepest void.

Earlier reports of Mephistopheles claimed that he once had an image more befitting of Cania. He had blue-black skin across his heavily muscled body; wings, horns, and claws a deep shade of blue, scales of sooty black, and eyes that were pale blue except for the red irises and pupils.



When Mephistopheles was donning his Molikroth persona, he appeared as an obese man whose gross levels of fatness were frankly absurd. Despite being only tall he was still massive because he was wider than he was long, competing with creatures like hill giants in terms of sheer mass. Even when the waddling baron was swathed in clothes made from only the most ridiculously expensive materials that were the height of Sigilian fashion styles, all his foppish finery couldn't hide his ultimately foolish appearance.

Personality
Mephistopheles was a being of razor-sharp instinct and prodigious brilliance, a cunning genius with an unparalleled understanding of Hell's political dangers and a great capacity for patient deception. Foremost wizard of Baator, his ordinary speech was like a whispering wind and his cool, pleasant demeanor gave him the outward appearance of a princely gentleman. He came off as sophisticated and charming when he spoke, an intellectual force of understated wit, reason and self-restraint. However, this was by no means his ordinary behavior, but a facade like Dispater's which disguised his true personality, a veneer of elegance as carefully crafted as his traditionally infernal appearance.



Despite his courteous persona, Mephistopheles was an unstable individual on the inside, the contrast between his cold surface and fiery core a perfect example of his existence as a walking contradiction. Mephistopheles was a vicious being with an outrageous temper, who when alone in his palace frequently flew into violent rages, his quick wit burning away when met with his underlying hate and frustration. In his shrieking fits of terrible wrath he would start tearing at his own skin and destroying his surroundings in explosive outbursts of fiery, magical destruction, his unpredictable eruptions of rage having been his undoing multiple times. Although his conniving intelligence was certainly real, Mephistopheles was an emotional entity that was ultimately driven by his passions.

Obsession
Mephistopheles suffered no distractions from his focus, his studious pursuits being of upmost importance to him. Though he would entertain visitors purely for his own amusement, a rarity among the archdevils, he hated any unwanted distractions and rarely gave time to anything not worth his personal attention. He was known for disintegrating underlings for the slightest annoyance, only allowing a few devils to speak without being spoken to and sometimes executing them simply out of the suspicion that they would bother him. Further cementing him as an contradictory entity was the strong but flickering nature of his focus.

Mephistopheles's great intelligence often ended up mixing with his obsessiveness, as in his pursuit of knowledge he became fascinated with the most minor details. Though this allowed him to delve deeper into topics than typical wizards, his unrelenting focus had to be tempered by his responsibilities and was ultimately undermined by his mercurial behavior. When forced by some political circumstance to stop what he was doing, there was a chance upon returning that some new project would catch his eye, at which point the research would become his new top priority instead. Because of this cycle of undivided attention followed by casual neglect, Mephistopheles had many useful discoveries ready to be accessed that he simply didn't know about.

Pride
While his anger and neurotic tendencies were weaknesses, which he could either hide or use to his advantage, Mephistopheles' most damaging issues were his rampantly unchecked megalomania and recklessness in the pursuit of power. Though he'd hate to be compared to Baalzebul, both archdevils seemed incapable of being content and compulsively overextended themselves, Baalzebul's plans collapsing under the weight of his unrealistic expectations and Mephistopheles becoming so absorbed in his plans that he ignored his overall wellbeing. Mephistopheles's manifestation of greed however was somewhat opposite to that of the Lord of the Lies, who hid his goals through skillfully woven deception, since Mephistopheles's execution of wicked plots was always extreme and dramatic, his brazen ambition almost glorious in its nakedness.

Mephistopheles was perhaps the most entitled of the archdevils, an avatar of envy who resented the fact that he was "merely" the second most powerful archdevil. Always jealous of others, he couldn't get enough of prestige, wondering where his awards were when another was rewarded for service despite having continually, confidently and directly told Asmodeus he planned to take his throne. Though willing to fawn if needed, he normally didn't bother to cloak his intent with fake vows of obedience, truly believing that he was the rightful ruler of Hell, that his destiny was to rule it, and that he deserved to be worshiped as a god. He constantly demonstrated this attitude anew each day, and likely wouldn't be satisfied even if he achieved this primary reason for existence.

Molikroth
"Hmmm. A new toy. Drop it in the glacier and we'll watch it die for a few years."

- "Molikroth" When donning the mask of Molikroth, Mephistopheles was a being without mercy that reportedly harbored great hatred for Asmodeus. While an archdevil being cruel wasn't exactly unusual, Molikroth stood out by the sheer extent to which he took his sadism, crushing most visitors between glaciers for years as a form of entertainment and utilizing the powers of cold in such agonizing ways that even godly agents would want to beg for mercy. He rarely his citadel both out of a preference for victims to come to him and out of a complete interest in active and direct governance, as well as vigilant protection of his territory.

Powers
Mephistopheles was a being impervious to the cold, not just due to having ruthlessly exposed himself to Cania's coldest temperatures, but because of his unrivaled mastery of hellfire. A corrupt and extremely potent energy with the properties of flame, hellfire was unimaginably hot and created by tapping into and mastering the profane essence of Hell and channeling into a usable form of power. Unless he chose to repress it, his body would emanate dark flames, causing anyone who touched him, or anyone near by if he evoked into a burst around him, to be scorched by the unholy energy.

"There are few problems that cannot be solved through the application of overwhelming arcane firepower."

- Mephistopheles

To further his mastery of fire, Mephistopheles took up the study of wizardry, specializing in evocation magic modified to taint his foes with foulest evil, with a noticeable disinterest in enchantments and illusions. Given the nature of baatezu politics, Mephistopheles rarely traveled alone, often bringing two bodyguards with him anywhere he went and able to summon a few gelugons or pit fiends, often choosing the latter, while his accompanying servitors kept the enemy busy. Given his sense of self-importance, he believed anyone who dared attack him deserved no less than utter obliteration, and so let loose a barrage of offensive magical destruction from the rear of the fight, teleporting away and leaving his allies to their fate if met with a real threat.

Though lacking the most powerful spells as a wizard, Mephistopheles' innate spell-like abilities more than made up for it. He could cast all sorts of ice and fire related spells, showcasing his mastery of both elements, such as cone of cold, fireball, and wall of ice or fire, meteor swarm being his most powerful and the one he could use only once per day. He was also capable of inducing fear, either through an aura or via his gaze.

As Molikroth, he specialized in ice-related magic so powerful that no known spell could fully protect one from his frigid powers. The longer one fought the Baron, the more frostbite would set in, and after several minutes the body would begin slowing down as cold induced torpor and numbed the reflexes.

Possessions
Mephistopheles' favored weapon was a three-tined military fork or ranseur. He was known to have different types, such as one that could switch between inflicting fire, cold, and electricity, each three times per day. Another switched between burning eternally and being covered in frost, and allowed the wielder to focus hellfire spells to be more devastating. Aside from that and other magical items, the laboratories in his home citadel were filled with spellbooks containing nearly every known arcane spell, allowing him to prepare almost any he pleased.

Realm
Mephistopehles's realm was the gloomy, frigid wasteland of Cania a realm of cold indescribable with words so bitter that it was practically alive. Cania outmatched the arctic sea of Stygia, which at least offered some relative form of comfort via the River Styx, in sheer harshness, the cold-hearted frost more like that of the Plane of Ice with the temperature in most areas being below. Without magical protection, the merciless chill would quickly kill most life in hours, if not minutes, if not seconds, depending on how prepared they were. Any warm-blooded creature could only survive for a few hours by wearing cold-weather clothes, and going to sleep (or otherwise being unable to move) was a death sentence in most cases.

The icy hellscape suffered from violent snowstorms seemingly brought on by Mephistopheles himself, the blinding, howling wind spraying ice and dust that stung at best and tore flesh from bone at worst. Filling the wild, frozen expanse were jagged, cyclopean mountains and colossal glaciers that emanated a dim blue-white light, the only natural source of illumination in the entire layer. The glaciers endlessly grinded against and crashed into the mountains with the speed of a running man, causing avalanches consisting of several thousand tons of snow and icy rock to regularly collapse and overwhelm those below. Death in Cania was swiftly followed by freezing, which encased the corpses in clear coffins of ice, preserving the expressions of anguish even thousands of years after death presuming they weren't destroyed.

Despite these conditions, some small amount of life was able to carve out a hungry existence in Cania, the icy caves, hidden mountain valleys and deep crevasses serving as decent hiding places. Fiendish dire polar bears and wolves were said to prowl the land, having evolved effective immunity to the bitter cold, and supposedly remorhaz and glacier worms of great rarity were also present. That withstanding, Cania was a layer so cold that even many devils found it inhospitable, the typically lower-layer dwelling pit fiends largely avoiding it. Only the gelugons, the primary residents and second in authority only to the pit fiends, although they were mainly guards, servants, and messengers, could comfortably exist in Cania. Even after their self-exile to Cania's relatively warmer fringes, they were still the most common devils in the plane. The few kocrachons that inhabited the layer were only mildly comfortable and left discipline mainly to the gelugons, although white abishai and hellcats were also found in some places.

Civilization
Cania was, in effect, a giant laboratory/testing ground for the experiments of Mephistopheles and his scientists, where immense quantities of arcane energy could be released into the wastes without consequence. The testing of new spells, magic items and other supernatural techniques regularly caused local devastation, and the libraries and data storage areas of the plane were spread out enough so that one unexpected cataclysm didn't accidentally destroy other research. Insights could be made regarding the nature of the research by simply observing from a distance, and renowned archmages such as Mordenkainen were known to visit the horrible tundra looking for lost lore or information to help them in their own endeavors. As a result of Mephistopheles' wavering attention, supervising sages and spellcasters with incredible research could be found in long forgotten-citadels, as buried in ice and snow as they were in bureaucracy.

Even uninhabited cities in Cania housed many secrets now buried under ice and only visible as distorted shapes, and when unearthed appeared prosaic and alien in architecture. Before Asmodeus even descended into Hell, Cania was a realm of grand cities, the remnants of that ancient power now preserved in ice in the form of strange spined creatures battling devas and archons, as well as their works, the icy tombs, lost libraries and palaces now haunted by ghosts and terrible undead. What kind of creatures dwelt inside these buildings was unknown and most devils would rather just leave the ruins alone, although the ice-embedded buildings were able to provide some shelter against Cania's cold. Perhaps it was this legacy of ancient power that compelled Mephistopheles to make his home in Cania, as it was said that it was in these tombs that Mephistopheles learnt of hellfire and obtained weapons powerful enough to give even Asmodeus some pause.

The most famous example of these was the lost cities was Kintyre, encased between two icy mountains thousands of feet under the several ton glacier T'chemox. It was once inhabited by a duke who rebelled against Mephistopheles who, in response, entombed the city in ice, and many were loathed to try and undo his handiwork for fear of provoking his ire. Once it was only being explored by curious adventurers, but after recovering ancient texts, Mephistopheles learnt that his unfaithful duke's tomb may have been hiding several ancient relics invaluable to hellfire research, the Duke of Brimstone's anger once again undermining him and forcing him to organize expeditions into the forgotten, warded keep.

Mephistar
Mephistopheles' primary base of operations in Cania, and perhaps the only notable area on the entire plane, was the citadel of iron and ice, Mephistar. Mephistar was carved from the sparkling ice of the glacier it overlooked, the tremendous mountain of ice Nargus which, while temporarily settled between surrounding glaciers, could be controlled by Mephistopheles to steam over any lesser glacier. The city was like a gleaming, translucent, blue-white jewel of ice perched at the glacier's edge. Though several misinformed poets quipped about how Cania was as cold as Mephistopheles' heart, they weren't completely wrong about his home mirroring him; just as Mephisto's cold exterior masked fiery passion, so to did Cania's cold mask the oddly warm and inviting nature of Mephistar. Even before his hellfire experiments, Mephistar had lavish, heated baths and scented fires, and when the huge doors of the walled citadel were opened, a rare occasion since most devils could teleport, massive steam clouds poured out, though they rolled over the side of the walls anyway.

It was from within this fortress city that Mephistopheles held court over ice devil legions as well as spinagon and cornugon staff all ceaselessly following strict, scheduled activities. The citadel's levels seemed endless, but the three topmost terraces housed thousands of safe and cozy living quarters vaulted impossibly upwards, the bottommost levels being cramped and warren-like and the topmost residences being grand suites. Befitting the strange kindness of Mephistar, its populace was reassigned quarters based on promotion and demotion for the mutual benefits of both sides, superiors and inferiors kept separate to avoid the distress of the former or terror of the latter. It was within the higher regions of Mephistar that Mephisto's true palatial manor was placed, a castle where all furnishings and contents, even his throne, were constructed of subtly and intricately detailed ice.

Recently however, Mephistopheles's experiments in hellfire had been proving detrimental for the overall stability of his domain. The foggy cloud around the city had grown more established, and the details of his estate had become more muted as they thawed and puddles formed. Already the gelugons, once perfectly fine in the somewhat warm citadel, had begun leaving for the outer reaches of the plane, replaced by increasing numbers of pit fiends, cornugons and barbazus. The Garden of Frost, a perfect facsimile of an organic garden in Mephistar and one of the few beautiful, if saddening, places in Hell, had to be repeatedly blasted with cones of cold to keep it together. From the 99-story School of Hellfire elsewhere in Mephistar came toxic clouds of effluvia that left a fair fraction of the citadel uninhabitable for non-devil inhabitants. Eerie bursts of hellfire, were becoming signature characteristics of Cania, and the inherent risk of Mephisto's hellfire strategy had to be growing more and more obvious, even atop the Cold Lord's slowly melting throne.

Activities
From the wizard's tower that was Mephistar, Mephistopheles performed many tests, to discover more about arcane magic and the nature of the planes, his most recent pet project being his hellfire obsession. He had spent a great amount of time mastering and experimenting with the new, magical fire, distracted him from the needs of his formerly favored minions, the gelugons, his realm's stability and his soul-harvesting efforts.

With Cania's old power structure virtually upended, the ice devils fled to the mountain Gelineth and formed a retreat known as Nebulat, which stuck out of the mountain's side like a crystal fungus. Though none would directly condemn him, the discontent devils made many plans to resolve their situation, some scheming to undermine his lead researchers by finding or planting evidence of treachery, creating a new type of ice magic to win back his interest, trying to correct his behavior and others just plotting to replace him.

Meanwhile Mephistopheles's attempt to grow his cult using hellfire had put him in large amounts of divine energy debt to some of the other archdevils, particularly Dispater and Levistus. He was taking a serious gamble, for though his success could ideally grant him the largest and most popular cult, failure would leave him devastated, and his investors would likely sabotage him if his risks seemed likely to pay off.

Servants
Mephistopheles had several powerful devils in his retinue, including entire companies of cornugons and gelugons. In fact, despite recent times, the ice devils were bound to serve Mephistopheles before any other archdevil, similarly to Asmodeus's pit fiends or Levistus's amnizu. Occasionally he brought in other creatures, such as the relatively new red dragon Testaron, who was bribed to come from the Material Plane to Mephistopheles's domain with the job of lounging around the throne room hall and making it look more foreboding. Mephistopheles also had children to help do his bidding, such as his half-fiend, half-elf daughter Antilia, not that anyone in his court knew she was his blood, who served as his double-agent against Baalzebul, or the winged monolith of half-fiendish fire known as the Burning Soul, made through Mephisto's union with a powerful resident with the Plane of Fire.

Mephistopheles's most powerful, and dangerous, allies were the pit fiends aristocrats of Cania who, along with many of the cornugons, dwelt on the rocky spires and pits of its borderlands. There were 2 companies of pit fiend nobility, each consisting of thirty-three individuals of equal rank, most of which were barely loyal to Mephistopheles and were possibly his greatest weakness. The pit fiends, as encouraged by the baatezu promotion system, were as strong as they were ambitious, and favored dissent and rotation in the ranks of the dukes and archdukes to better increase their own chances of promotion. Unless Mephistopheles became the official ruler of Hell, their loyalty would always be tenuous.

A prime example was the pit fiend Nexroth, commander of several companies of cornugon whose total selfishness made Mephistopheles openly distrustful of him, only keeping him around due to him seeming the most reliable. Also notable for his treachery, although not exactly directed at Mephistopheles, was the harried dean of the school of Hellfire, Quagrem, who tried to obtain useful insights from mortal magic-users before killing them in order to take sole credit for their discoveries, thus depriving Mephistopheles of their future usefulness. While Mephistopheles would gleefully play the pit fiends off one another indefinitely, this ran the risk of creating open conflict in Cania, which another archdevil could use to their advantage. Unable to shift the ranks as it suited him, he instead, on top of disposing of anyone too incompetent, simply arranged for anyone that rose too fast to be removed from the equation which both kept him in power and robbed him of his most capable nobles.

History
Mephistopheles once engineered his own coup, replacing himself with Baron Molikroth. However, Molikroth was just an alias of Mephistopheles, and that duplicity has now ended, as well as the lives of "Molikroth's" co-conspirators.

Mephistopheles failed to unseat Asmodeus during the Hells-wide rebellion known as the Reckoning. If it weren't for his canny consort Baalphegor, whose mere presence greatly protected him from the Lord of Nessus, Mephistopheles would, likely, have been at best demoted upon the Reckoning. His largest rival was Baalzebul, and his court ran thick with plots against the Lord of the Flies.

Once the court magus of Asmodeus in Nessus, Mephistopheles gained the rulership of Cania by seizing it away from Rimmon. After the Reckoning, he seemed to fall into a slumber, remaining frozen and unmoving, until he led a coup against himself in the guise of Baron Molikroth and then destroyed all his co-conspirators against himself.

In more recent events, Mephistopheles had persuaded his half-breed son, Magadon, to release the devil inside of him and therefore bring himself and his fellow companions Erevis Cale and Drasek Riven to Cania through some manipulation of Erevis Cale's ability to travel the shadows. Mephistopheles then proceeded to kill his half-breed son, when Erevis Cale stepped in and promised Mephistopheles a portion of the god Mask's divinity to him in return for Magadon's soul. Mephistopheles agreed to this under one condition, that condition being he kept half of Magadon's soul there until delivery. Erevis Cale later returned to Cania and sacrificed his life for the return of Magadon's soul. It was at this time that the new demigod Drasek Riven, who had also absorbed part of Mask's divinity traveled to Cania and paid Mephistopheles a visit. Riven attacked and badly wounded the archdevil, and told him that if he ever stepped out of his domain that Riven would utterly destroy him. Mephistopheles replied by telling Riven that he will come back, and he will be waiting for him. He seemed to think that Riven would be back for Erevis Cale at some point in time.

Mephistopheles, along with Dispater, was once an ally of Mammon, but Mammon betrayed them both.

Attack on Toril
Not too long after 1372 DR, a drow matron afterwards known to history only as the Valsharess managed to bind Mephistopheles into her service on the material plane, in Toril. Aided by his powers, she proceeded to conquer much of the Underdark, and even went on to try to expand her influence on the surface, attacking Waterdeep through Undermountain.

Previously, an adventurer fleeing the briefly re-activated but now again falling Netherese city of Undrentide into the Plane of Shadow had come across a strange relic that they had used occasionally to access the small plane of a strange creature known as the Reaper. This item was in fact meant for the leader of a cult of Mephistopheles, and contained a piece of the devil's own flesh. Later the adventurer, by then quite famous and powerful, came to Waterdeep to aid the city in its struggle against the Valsharess's forces. Mephistopheles manipulated the Valsharess to eventually bring the adventurer into her inner sanctum, where she ordered him to kill them. At this point, her control over Mephistopheles was loosened, since the relic carried by the adventurer bound them to the archdevil, and by ordering him to kill the adventurer she broke the pact which she used to bind him.

Instead of complying, Mephistopheles left the adventurer and his party free to duel and kill the Valsharess. He then sent them to Cania in his stead and set out to conquer Toril, intending to turn it into a new layer of Hell that would go down below the Ninth and make him the new supreme ruler of the plane. He raised the dead souls he had gained from the recent battles between the Valsharess and her enemies as a special form of spiritual army and began to follow a similar course of conquest to hers, advancing from the Underdark to Waterdeep. However, the adventurer, who had by this time grown in power far beyond that of most other mortals, was able to escape Cania by learning the Reaper's true name (Hecugoth the Abandoned), return to Toril and banish Mephistopheles back to his old domain before he could destroy the City of Splendors.

According to this account, Mephistopheles's true name is Thra'axfyl the Ambitious. It can be deduced however that since Mephistopheles remains a threat to the planes as nobody's slave, the adventurer either did not learn this or chose for some reason to not use it to its full potential.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus


 * Novels
 * Shadowbred • Shadowstorm • Shadowrealm


 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark