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The Nine Hells, sometimes Hell or Hells, also known as Baator in Infernal, was the home of the devils. It was a plane of sinister evil and institutional cruelty organized in a strict caste system with a very rigid chain of command. Unlike the demons of the Abyss, the devils were highly organized in their quest for power and status: scheming and plotting power plays, coups, and assassinations. Each of the nine Hells had its own physical laws or properties of matter but all were inhospitable or deadly to outsiders. This plane's place in the cosmology of the Forgotten Realms shifted over time but was always a bastion and incubator for those of the lawful evil persuasion.

Cosmology
First and second edition D&D placed the Nine Hells in the Outer Planes of the Great Wheel between Gehenna and Acheron, with connections to Concordant Opposition and the Astral Plane. Each Hell was a different infinite layer interconnected at barriers much like a nine-layered cake&mdash;the lowest points of one layer manifested barriers that exited high above the surface of the next lower layer. The river Styx flowed through the first layer, Avernus, and also the fifth layer, Stygia, before crossing over into Gehenna.

When the Great Wheel model was overshadowed by the World Tree cosmology model, the river Styx was renamed the River of Blood and it flowed through all the fiendish planes (except for the Supreme Throne and the Demonweb Pits) originating in the Abyss, passing through the Blood Rift&mdash;an unusual plane that connected the Abyss with the Nine Hells &mdash;bringing the devils even closer to their arch-enemies the demons, resulting in the Blood War. Cosmologists verified portals between the Nine Hells and the Barrens of Doom and Despair and Clangor. The Astral plane connected all of the fiendish planes to the Prime Material Plane, but not directly to each other.

After the Spellplague, Asmodeus consumed the essence of the fallen Azuth achieving (some say regaining) greater godhood and ended the Blood War by casting the Abyss to the furthest depths of the Elemental Chaos. The World Axis cosmology model described the Nine Hells as an astral dominion floating in the Astral Sea, no longer of infinite size nor consisting of layers, ruled by Asmodeus and his eight archdevil vassals. Once again the river Styx flowed through the Nine Hells and the Abyss, but then emptied its pollution into the Astral Sea.

Description
Each of the nine Hells was unique and usually mirrored the malevolent characteristics of its ruler, or perhaps the archdevils were shaped by the domains they schemed to control, no one can be certain. In early editions, each Hell was a separate infinite layer rigidly joined to its neighbors by barriers at fixed locations. After the Spellplague, the domains of the archdevils were described as territories (large, but finite) or circles. The relationship between layers and circles is not fully known. What follows are descriptions of the nine Hells reported by various cosmologists working under different cosmological models, gathered, collated, and summarized.

Avernus
The first circle of Hell was also the "topmost" because Astral travelers would emerge from color pools on this layer and reaching the next circle required descending to the lower depths to breach a barrier to Dis. According to the Great Wheel cosmology model, this layer was also connected by portal to Acheron, Gehenna, and Concordant Opposition. By the World Tree cosmology model, portals connected Avernus to Clangor, the Barrens of Doom and Despair and the Blood Rift via the River of Blood. It was believed at the time that some of the archdukes maintained portals to the realms of Bane, Loviatar, and Talona, but the ownership and location of those portals is unknown. The World Axis cosmology model posits the Nine Hells were isolated with no direct connections except via the river Styx to the Abyss. Travelers on the Astral Sea who did not follow the Styx likely found themselves falling out of the sky above Avernus to a fiery death.

By all accounts Avernus was a desolate wasteland with rocky terrain, sparse, twisted vegetation, volcanoes, and rivers of magma. The sky was starless, full of choking smoke, and glowed a dark red due to balls of flammable gas that floated about or streaked across the atmosphere, randomly exploding as a fireball. During the Blood War, Avernus echoed with the marching of legions of devil troops preparing for the next campaign against the demons of the Abyss and the ground was littered with the detritus of countless battles.

Dis
The second circle of Hell, when described as its own layer, was a flat barren plain containing little more than black, stagnant rivers, stretching for thousands of miles/kilometers until it reached some rolling hills. The sky was a cloudy dull green shot through with lightning. In the center of this plain rose the Iron City of Dis, several miles/kilometers in height and hundreds of miles/kilometers wide. In the World Axis view, the city of Dis was enclosed in a huge cavern accessible from Avernus through a tremendous iron gate in the side of a mountain. The walls of the buildings and the stones of the streets were said to radiate extreme heat; more than brief skin contact resulted in severe burns.

Minauros
Minauros as a layer was described as an endless bog of vile pollution, decaying bodies, and rotting marsh, repeatedly drenched by rain, sleet, and hail storms. The soggy, disease-ridden swampland made movement very difficult and was only broken occasionally by serpentine ridges of volcanic rock. Minauros as a realm was depicted as a broad but low-vaulted cavern connected to Dis. An oily water percolated through the roof of the cave and rained down upon swamps, deserts of mud and oozing black soil, pockmarked by bubbling fumaroles and mud geysers.

Minauros was also the name of the city built by Mammon on the treacherous surface of this place. Only the efforts of thousands of minions and slaves prevented the city from sinking and being consumed by the bog.

Phlegethos
The fourth circle was the Hell that most resembled the stereotype of a fiery world of eternal damnation, filled with active volcanoes, rivers of liquid fire, molten rock, unbearable heat, and wracked by tremors and earthquakes. In the World Axis view, Phlegethos was a cavern several miles/kilometers below Minauros, where burning lava poured out of fissures in the ceiling. The city of Abriymoch was the seat of power in this realm, built in the caldera of an extinct volcano.

Stygia
The complete opposite of Phlegethos, Stygia was either a bottomless ocean covered by an ice sheet up to three miles (five kilometers) thick, or a frozen sea salted with huge icebergs buried in a cavern several miles/kilometers below Dis and hundreds of miles/kilometers away from fiery Phlegethos depending on which cosmological model was in vogue at the time. According to the Great Wheel cosmology model, the river Styx cut across the ice forming a channel and supporting small but hardy plants and mosses. Millennia of decay of this vegetation resulted in swampy areas along the banks of the river. A few floating islands were the only non-frozen ground in Stygia, their peaks wreathed in lightning arcing from the coal-black sky. The great city of Tantlin was built upon one of these islands, or perhaps a giant ice floe.

Malbolge
There is significant disagreement between cosmologies on the nature of the sixth circle of Hell. As a Great Wheel layer, Malbolge was a gargantuan tumble of angular, black, stone blocks, each block ranging in size from a small city to a large metropolis, that formed a pile hundreds of miles/kilometers thick. The randomly tilted and ill-fitting blocks were honeycombed with angular passages and caverns causing non-flying travelers to frequently need mountaineering skills and risk avalanches. Stinking clouds of vapor rose up from the depths and lit the sky with the color of blood, causing cosmologists to speculate that the blocks of Malbolge may have rested on an infinite sea of lava. Most habitations in Malbolge were copper-clad fortresses built from black stone.

In the World Axis cosmology view, Malbolge was another huge cavern connected to Stygia by icy canals that ran hundreds of miles/kilometers before reaching their destination. A former godly inhabitant had shaped the realm into a vast garden with fountains, towers, reflecting pools, and all manner of landscaping delights. With the coming of the devils, Malbolge was still beautiful on the surface but creeping corruption permeated the realm, twisting the beauty, perverting the architecture, and poisoning the pools.

Maladomini
The Great Wheel cosmology view of the seventh circle of Hell described it as having vapor-polluted skies similar to Malbolge but the surface was solid. The post-Spellplague view described Maladomini as a colossal maze of passages each several miles/kilometers across that eventually led to Cania, Malbolge, and Nessus. Both models agreed that the seventh Hell was filled with ruins of old cities, stagnant rivers, exhausted and abandoned quarries and strip mines, stone aqueducts and lava canals, decaying fortresses, swarms of biting flies, and black pools of ichor that erupted from the ground. The only inhabited city of note was Malagard, a sprawling metropolis/palace/arcology that was rumored to contain a million rooms and to cap an equally complex dungeon labyrinth.

Cania
Early editions spelled the name of the eighth layer "Caina" but later editions corrected it to "Cania". Both pre- and post-Spellplague cosmologies agree this Hell was a bitterly cold realm of solid ice mountains, titanic, unnaturally fast-moving glaciers, and nearly continuous snowfall that made Stygia seem balmy by comparison. Unprotected travelers were exposed to temperatures of -60 F (-51 C) but on the positive side there were few creatures that hunted in the icy wastes.

Nessus
The ninth and deepest Hell was a land of extremes in the Great Wheel view: regions cold as Cania, volcanoes like Phlegethos, a lake of ice, sheer cliffs, waves of fire, and a citadel even larger than Khin-Oin in Hades (later, the Khin-Oin became part of the Abyss ). A progression of rifts, pits, and chasms lead down and down, forming a vertical maze hundreds of miles/kilometers deep that contained great cities, fiendish armies, and the mighty fortress of the Overlord Asmodeus.

Inhabitants
The principal inhabitants of Baator are the devils, fiendish creatures of pure lawful evil; the most populous variety of devils are the baatezu, a race which effectively rules the plane. The devils are in a constant conflict known as the Blood War with the Chaotic Evil demons. The ultimate rulers of Baator are the Archdevils, also called Lords of the Nine Hells; each one rules absolutely over one of the layers. The current political climate of Baator was determined by a civil war known as the Reckoning of Hell.

Besides the devils, Baator is home to hell hounds, rakshasa, night hags, nightmares and other evil creatures. A few mortals live in well-defended fortresses in Baator.

In earlier Planescape supplements, another type of creature, the nupperibo, is said to inhabit Baator as a remnant of an ancient race that existed long before the Baatezu. Nupperibos grow naturally from larvae present on the plane if left to develop. Since the arrival of the Baatezu, the larvae have been molded by the devils into lemures in an effort to prevent large numbers of nupperibo developing.

Afterlife
Baator's petitioners are those that have been stolen or lured from the Fugue Plane by the devils sent there to do just that. Most start as lemures, though some strong-willed souls begin their devilish afterlives as spinagons, the next step up from a lemure. Petitioners can 'evolve' to inhabit more powerful bodies, if they survive and prosper long enough to do so.

Realms
Tiamat's realm, the Dragonspawn Pits of Azharul, was found on this layer, as was Kurtulmak's realm Draukari. The Archduke Dispater rules this layer from the Iron Tower, an impregnable fortress that reaches far into the sky and can be seen everywhere on Dis. The kyton city of Jangling Hiter, City of Chains can also be found on Minauros.

Mammon the Viscount is the ruler of Minauros, he resembles a long serpent with a human torso. He rules from the centre of the city, within a huge mausoleum like structure. Lady Fierna and Archduke Belial are the lords of Phlegethos.Fierna and Belial reside in a palace of pure obsidian high up on one side of the city.

Prince Levistus rules over this layer, frozen in a giant iceberg floating in the harbor. The sahuagin deity Sekolah laired here in the realm of Sheyruushk. Set had a realm here called Ankhwughat.

Formerly, the Hag Countess ruled from her mountain-sized boulder fortress, which perpetually rolled down the slopes of Malbolge. Now however the layer is ruled by Glasya, the daughter of Asmodeus. The Countess grew to such a height and girth that she exploded and became the layer itself.

The layer is ruled over by Mephistopheles, from his great citadel of ice Mephistar. It sits upon a giant glacier called Nargus, the movement of which is controlled by Mephistopheles himself. Inside Mephistar huge heated baths and fire warm the citadel, providing quite a comfortable environment.

The great city of Malsheem lies immediately below the layer between Cania and Nessus and is the largest city in all of the Outer Planes. Here, Asmodeus rules over the entire plane, and thus the entire race of devils.