Minauros

Minauros was the third layer of the Nine Hells of Baator. Ruled by the archdevil Mammon, it was the economic center of the Nine Hells, where new souls were processed and minted, its great wealth belied by its ramshackle appearance and unenjoyed by the vast majority. It was a wretched fen of toxic influence that promised only sickness and despair, slowly pulling everything beneath the putrid mud. "There are more secrets — dead, alive, and otherwise — buried under the muck o' this layer than the Lady of Pain ever knew. I'll tell you a few, berk, for a price..."

- Unknown

Description
Minauros was best described as a great stinking swamp, a fetid marsh of mire, muck and misery extending further than one could possibly imagine. The plane was a dismal morass of reeking, rotting earth and inches of polluted, diseased water where the corrupting powers of poison and illness were enhanced and recovery diminshed. Corpses and carrion were so ubiquitous across the hellish bog that stumbling was a constant problem, and the occassional falls they induced might be enough to kill from landing on a sharp, upthrust bone or falling unconscious and drowning in the unclean waters.

Much of Minauros was dominated by a dreary urban landscape, a kingdom in a state of endless disrepair constantly teetering on the edge of ruin. The structures that interspered the plane were in need of constant fixing, upkeep, or outright replacement, all characterized by flimsy materials, cheap construction techniques, and shoddy artisanship. There were cities of ornately carved stone, masoned in cyclopean fashion, but even these suffered from slow decline. Almost everything built in Minauros was left untended to inexorably slide into the bottomless mud, gradually collapsing into the gigantic sinkhole that was the plane. Nothing of value stayed in the bog for long, with any treasure of size, magic, or other notability fated to be destroyed or taken.

Geography
The black, putrid surface of Minauros was covered in thick layers of scum and dotted with a series of mud flats and cesspools. The bubbling, filthy waters dispersed various foul odors and yellow-green swamp gas faintly illuminated the murky, fog-shrouded air. In some places infernal heat rose up from below, boiling and steaming the dank waters and creating mud geysers, while others were so cold the water iced over.

Beneath the slowing mud were deep pits, which combined with the other hidden dangers required travelers to cautiously slog their way through the unpleasant swamp. Deeper in the plane, the marshes eventually gave way to stretches of lifeless, cinder-choked trees and volcanic ridges, the obsidian and igneous rock meandering eternally through the swamp until toward the center the plane rose into a vast and tortured volcanic badland of ash-hills and slime-filled rifts.

Weather
The dimmed, eternally overcast skies of Minauros ranged from brown to leaden  and roiled with fecund, drooping clouds ranging from slate gray to putrescent indigo. More often than not the surface was buffeted by harsh and cold winds.

The weather of Baator was not really weather as such, but rather vigorously regulated features of a lawful plane, all happening for a reason, and the steady, never-ending rains of Minauros were no exception. An incessant pour of acid rain pelted the soil from above, an oily, rusty, pungent and polluted barrage that  created a sound like hundreds of beaten drums. Usually this was followed by sleet, which struck travelers and stuck to them to create an icy coating that slowly melted into an oily residue irremovable while still on the plane. Lastly came the frequent and sudden rushes of jagged, flesh-flaying hail, composed of balls of polluted ice sometimes augmented with hooks, metal shards, and the still-sharp teeth of long-dead devils.

These changes in atmosphere were cyclical in nature, the other effects accompanying the rain. Hailstorms reoccured at least every five minutes and would take under half an hour maximum to return. The storms lasted anywhere between a few seconds and a couple minutes, made worse by the fact that the bitter winds of a raging storm made flying, the otherwise fastest method of travel, highly dangerous. Away from any kind of structure, the only shelter for those unfortunates caught outside was the ridges, hiding behind which was effectively the same as having none.

Cosmography
By Asmodeus's decree, no planar portals could connect directly to any layer of Hell besides Avernus. This meant that in general, if one wanted to get to Minauros they would have to go the layer above it, Dis, and find a portal, and likewise would need another to get to Phlegethos below. Portals existed from the City of Dis to the Sinking City and Jangling Hiter, as well as from the Sinking City to the lower city of Abriymoch in Phlegethos. It was also possible to reach Phlegethos from the lowest points of Minauros by way of constant dribbles of slimy water that sluiced into long and generally lethal falls.

There were also other means of getting to Minauros without interfering with the other layers. Offshoots and waterfalls of the River Styx could be found on every layer of Hell, and a landing of the Infinite Staircase was known to lead somewhere within Jangling Hiter.

World Axis
In the World Axis cosmology model, the Nine Hells were a planet-shaped astral dominion floating in the Astral Sea, no longer of infinite size nor consisting of layers. In this cosmology Minauros was a dark and brooding cavern about across and a few  high supported by colums of rock every  or so, the rain caused by the oily water seeping from the ceiling. It was reached by descending down a road lined with gibbets from the lower gate of Dis which gradually broadened out into the layer of Minauros. Traveling scores of miles down dripping steps cut into Minauros's mudy geysers would put one at the feet of great rocky columns before a steep descent to the blackened plains of Phelegethos.

In the World Axis, the Styx plummeted into Minauros from a fuming cavern in Avernus, slowly and sluggishly wandering on a long, dark jounrey before emerging in the icy seas of Stygia.

Notable Locations

 * The City of Minauros, also called the Sinking City, from which the layer derived its name. It was the largest settlement in the layer, the one at its center, and the seat of power of Mammon, Lord of the Third.


 * Jangling Hiter, a city suspended by chains from the bottom of Dis, the second layer. Those within the city were exempt from conscription for stone-harvesting, a small comfort given that conditions within were worse than without.


 * The Labyrinth of Truths, a grim, isolated fortress of worn, gray stone on the edge of a bubbling swamp. It was a vast repository of records staffed by a horde of lesser devil bureacrats, guarded by barbazu and narzugons and supervised by pompous amnizu. In it was countless boxed and cased documents compiled over the eons, much of it worthless but some of inestimable value, such as recordings of powerful magic. The lower levels housed journals of corruption operations, the fifth blackmail-rich if highly suspect hearsay on the flaws of mortals that interested Mammon, the sixth a collection of ciphered or incomplete treasure maps, the seventh an incredibly detailed inventory on his layer, the eighth personnel files and advancement records, and the ninth, top floor infernal cult account books.

Divine Realms

 * Aeaea, the secondary realm of Hecate, the Greek interloper deity of magic and the moon.
 * The divine realm of Pisaethces the Blood Queen. The bog around her unmoving form received a constant stream of her "blood", which in truth was a vast miasma of blood-red mucus.

Inhabitants
The primary inhabitant of Minauros was its ruler Mammon, who dwelt in, or rather under, the Sinking City. He preferred an amphibious lifestyle, writhing and spasming through the rank waters of his layer. He did not roam far from his city, preferring to oversee the layer from a singular location, although despite being its ruler he cared little for Minauros and spent most of his time scheming. If he felt tense or frustrated he would don pit fiend form and go on a hunt across the layer.

Notable dukes that formed Mammon's court included the generals Bael, Caarcrinolaas, and Melchon; Focalor, Mammon's seneschal; and Glwa, Mammon's consort. As opposed to fortresses or even houses, these dukes lived in bowl-like craters in the higher parts of Minauros's volcanic ridges, keeping their treasures (typically in chests) in boulder-covered pits guarded by a score or more of their personal retinues.

Garrisoned on Minauros were Mammon's Gleaming Guard, a unit named for their shining armor partially taken from celestials and corrupted for infernal use. Led by General Zaebos of the Dark Eight, it was by far the most well-equipped of Hell's special forces, called upon whenever a strategy required a specific magic item. The sinking of Mammon's capital city, however, saw him delegate valuable fiends to supervise rock-gathering missions far in the wilds, and as a result his Blood War contributions suffered.

Devils
The devils in service to Mammon were known to emulate his behavior in the hopes of impressing him. As a result they were indirect to the point where even orders were given like riddles, with their plans convoluted to match. Unlike other devils, who saw treasures as a means to an end, his minions were so consumed by greed that they would take moderate risks to protect their hardwon gold, and they specialized in soul-based transactions (though even they marveled at the low prices for which many mortals sold their souls). Devils residing in Minauros were pained, if not hurt by the plane's hail, and the native high-rankers had enough practice to walk and fly normally through its storms.

The devils of Minauros silmultaneously benefitted from the highest promotion rate out of all the circles of the Nine Hells whilst silmultaneously suffering under an excessively high rate of demotion. Mammon was incredibly vindictive, constantly alert for the faintest hint of insult and known to cast down his servitors for the slightest provocation, such that the layer was full of devils hoping to regain his approval. To compensate for this constant onslaught of favor and banishment, a ready supply of least devils was kept as a talent pool. Lemures and spinagons were unusually common, and woeful, demoted nupperibos so ubiquitous it was hard not to trip over them in the swamp.

Other common devil types in Minauros included barbazus, hamatulas, kytons, and excruciarchs,    though imps, merregons, and cambions could also be fairly reliably found. Narzugons meanwhile were actively sought out for Mammon's entourage to satisfy his need for absolute loyalty, and so his bearded devils often traded for souls suitable for such a transformation.

Abishai and osyluths were somewhat uncommon, but still present in Minauros. Erinyes were infrequent, but even rarer were cornugons, amnizu and pit fiends, as well as paeliryons due to their conspiratorial natures agitating Mammon's paranoia. Most absent of all were gelugons, which found the swampy damp of Minauros outright inhospitable, though they still led his army of osyluths and hamatulas.

Petitioners and Planars
The baatezu of Minauros scoured the layer for beings to enslave and put to work. Normal petitioners, as well as captured intruders, were kept in shallow pits about deep. These "cells" were the only places stone was used out in the marshes. Great chains and manacles of iron or brass were fastened to the prisoners on one end and on the other to stone pillars sinking slightly slower than the Sinking City. Prisoners stood or sat in the cold foetor until death or if taken away for some other wicked intention, such as slave labor or a Blood War draft. Those who survived eventually learned to keep close to the rock for protection and support, find elevated bones to stand on and keep their heads above water even when sleeping.

The need for guards to keep order in Minauros was the reason why hamatulas were so common there. Typically they were perched atop the stones and willing to burn or scald captives with precise uses of produce flame. They brought all they captured to the prisons and were active in their duty to track and hunt down those who attempted to escape. If Mammon's lieutenants were occupied however, they sometimes let their prisoners escape on purpose just to hunt them for sport. For anything they could not deal with themselves they called upon one of the lieutenants (such as Focalor) or even Mammon himself to deal with.

Despite hamatula vigilance and efforts to the contrary, such as the increasingly distant mining assignments for stone to shore up the Sinking City, escapes did happen, such that there were several communities of runaways banded together to fight off the fiends. The ramshackle collection of hovels they called cities could be bolt-holes against the devils, though unless some escape from the Hells was organized they would always be at risk of destruction. Even when aware of such cities the devils did not immediately move to destroy them, perhaps as a result of seeing countless of them destroyed over the years.

The souls of the damned, even those fated for other realms of torment, generally made their way to Minauros first. First they arrived in Jangling Hiter to undergo processing, which entailed a regimen of torture to prepare them to become lemures. Other archdukes outsourced much of this work to the City of Chains and its factory-like flaying facilities. Souls were carted in by the tumbrel and then shipped off the same way to the Sinking City when stripped of personhood and ready for transforming. In any event, all lemures passed through the Sinking City where they would be recorded and redistributed as appropriate, the exceptions appropriated and sold by Mammon. He and his greater devils also created soul coins, one of the primary forms of infernal currency, in vast chambers from the spirits of the wicked.

Despite the plethora of dangers and difficulties inherent to doing so, there were still some evil mortals and wayward fiends who willingly came to Minauros, usually crazier and viler than even their chosen masters. Precarious citizenship could be gained by proving one's usefulness to Mammon, with most of such interlopers being soul trade functionaries.

Others
Even the devils feared the things that lurked in Minauros, both from straying too far from their cities and in some cases, from going in too deep. Fiery hellstinger scorpions were common there, but there were also rumors of a hive of mosquito-like insects, the seekers of which never returned, and record of monstrous spiders called hellchain weavers which terrified even the kytons ostensibly living in the depths of Jangling Hiter. Beneath the murky waters roamed terrible, nameless creatures and giant monsters of shadow, but none were willing to swim deep enough to discover what truly lied beneath the surface.

Legendary among the devil-feared monsters of the plane was the immense Worm of Minauros, a bizarre, purple worm like creature with ivory-plates and a crested head resembling the gnarled skull of an archdevil. This creature eternally haunted the hinterlands of Minauros, always returning when killed, existing only to punish stray or unwary devils and attacking mortals only in self-defense. Non-lawful evil mortals who openly offered themselves to it and survived being swallowed and excreted would be enhanced for a month, but renewal of such power required them to draw closer and closer to lawful evil. It killed the lawful evil, identified by smell, in an attempt to damn them.

History
The sinking effect of Minauros had been in effect for as far back as mortal memory and knowledge extended.

Glasya's rise to archduchess sometime during 1353 DR frightened Mammon into action beyond Baator. Based on the principle that money was the root of all evil, Mammon whipped the devils of Minauros into a frenzied camapign of economic warfare upon unsuspecting centers of good on the Material Plane. By collapsing the economies of prosperous nations, he hoped to instigate such despair and desperation that millions of souls would be driven to corruption and damnation in the process.

The resultant frenzy during this period saw Mammon's cities creepily depopulated. All his devils were hard at work sabotaging industries, ruining works of charity and otherwise destablizing major nations of the Material Plane. Each sought ripe targets for the scheme and might be temporarily bought off with worthwhile intelligence.

Trivia

 * The plane of Minauros was named after the Sinking City of Minauros, and after the Reckoning Mammon changed his name to Minauros.