Minauros (city)

Minauros, also called the Sinking City was the capital of the 3 layer of the Nine Hells, which was named after the city itself. Minauros was the world-sized metropolis of the archdevil Mammon and received its "Sinking" epithet from the fact that the entire settlement was inexorably slipping deeper and deeper into the extraplanar bog that was the layer.

Description
Covered in vines and sludge, the Sinking City was, like many cities in the 3 Hell, composed of ornately carved stone and constructed in a cyclopean architectural style. Despite its seemingly impossible vastness, the city did not take up the entire layer, but was still large enough to rival several continents' worth of land.

Geography
In spite of its great longevity, Minauros the Sinking was forever slipping beneath the foul cesspool of the swamp, the foundations of the stony, weighty city slowly vanishing beneath the shifting muck. Only the unending efforts of a stream of slaves and petitioners prevented its final demise, but a little ground was lost to the cold mud every year. Buildings constantly shuddered and teetered, occasionally disappearing into the slime entirely or collapsing and killing the inhabitants. Black ooze rose between what passed for roads, the shifting and buckling streets of paving stones regularly became impassable for wheeled vehicles, and the huge stones sunk into the swamp were in need constant replacement as old ones were slowly but surely submerged.

This was not helped by the skin-flaying hail that intermittently terrorized the denizens of the city and plane at large on a less than hourly basis. While not able to actually harm them, the hail still pained the devils, and so the city's architects constructed huge stone canopies across its streets and laneways. Even this modicum of relief and protection was wrought with hazards, however. The columns propping up these dilapidated canopies did so precariously, adding to the danger of falling debris, and chunks of fallen brickwork were not returned to their proper place but instead used for one of the countless other reclamation projects of the city, primarily shoring up the sinking foundations.

Government
The sinking of Minauros was a source of extreme concern to the devils, who seemed unable to stop the problem. Such a matter might seem distant and faraway to mortals, but to baatezu sensibilities it was an impending, ever-encroaching doom, the "mere" millennia it would take to arrive constituting "soon" to their timescale. Work parties scoured the layer for usable stone and the work details of lowly devils grabbed up material as fast as it became available, to the point where multiple crews sometimes fought for stones to the point of serious injury or even death. Eventually the solution of sending petitioners to find and bring back pieces of stone ridges was devised, but this only prolonged the process. Less stone could be found over the eons until there was practically none nearby. As a result, valuable devils had to be assigned to watch the petitioners as they harvested resources ever-further afield.

Petitioners and captured intruders (motives for coming could be fabricated or price of entry haggled with baatezu willing to bend the rules, but unbidden entry was still illegal) were kept in the same cells, just outside the city. These "cells" were in fact pits deep where captives stood manacled to stone pillars with iron or brass chains. Sinking slightly slower than the rest of the city, the prisoners sat and stood here in the cold filth being tormented until they either drowned, escaped, or were taken for interrogation or labor.

Given that Mammon, lord of the city and layer, had accumulated a vast and varied treasury over the eons, one might ask why more resources to improve Minauros could not simply be obtained. The fact of the matter was that Mammon cared little for his possessions, including the state of his layer, can cared only for that which he was yet to acquire, so he spent only a small fraction of his great hoard on maintaining it. If the most damning rumors were to be believed, Mammon was capable of saving his city but was unwilling to expend the power to do so. Thus, while technically in charge, much of the real administrative and diplomatic power in Minauros was wielded by his seneschal Focalor.

Trade
The major industry of the Sinking City was the soul trade; it was this field that Mammon oversaw and the functionality of its marketplace the only aspect Mammon was willing to spend money on, and only when needed. The city bustled with economic activity as caravans came and went, merchants haggled over wares and fiends from across the planes traded souls.

The primary market of the Sinking City was the selling of soul futures, transactions best described as a kind of spiritual loansharking. In exchange for goods, services, information, or a small number of currently damned, the generally desperate devil in question pledged to pay back more souls at a later date. Squads of enforcers able to strike fear in even greater devils visited those who failed to pay up. The secondary market for the city's soul traders was the buying and selling of existing souls, swapping a potentially more useful spirit for multiple average souls or treasure for some operation or equipment. The souls of the living or non-lawful evil were not exempt from the process, for they could be used later against their loved ones.

Registry
Along the banks of the River Styx or sailing in well-sealed boats patrolled roving bands of soul-mongers looking to harvest newly created devils, whether immediately reborn as lemures or first taking the form of soul shells. Once their rightful infernal master was identified or otherwise sorted out (possibly through barter, violence, or theft, in the rare instances where no master could be determined) the soul was taken to the appropriate location for torture. However, the kytons of Jangling Hiter, the other major metropolis of Minauros, were so skilled at their craft that much of that work was instead outsourced to the City of Chains. Once thoroughly stripped of humanity and identity, they were then carted into the Sinking City for transmutation into lemure form.

Whether immediately reincarnated as lemures or first sent for torture, souls eventually arrived at the Sinking City. There they were recorded and distributed according to whatever contracts, laws, and other details applied. Occasionally the process was disrupted when several shells escaped confinement and kicked off a stampede of nearby devils eager to claim merit points for their recapture. In the event that no appropriate claimant could be decided upon, any extra lemures would be appropriated and sold for profit by Mammon himself.

Defenses
Minauros's slimy walls extended several hundred feet in the air, protecting the palace of Mammon within. Notably, though each layer of Hell (with the exception of Nessus) had to muster a force to fight the Blood War, the rock-gathering patrols for Minauros pulled enough troops away that the layer's contributions were much less in number.

In addition to his other duties, Focalor was tasked with protecting the treasure hoard of Mammon, which was in fact the first of his duties. He was given access to the "palace purse"—a relatively small source of funds to spend at his discretion toward both the defense and comfort of the home. Furthermore, Focalor was generally the true power behind the security of Minauros. Any target that could not be captured or killed was dealt with by one of them, though Mammon depended on the archdevil Bael's battle acumen and military expertise to protect his holdings from attack.

Inhabitants
Lemures were allowed to run riot through the streets of Minauros, mindlessly approaching anything that moved and instinctively attacking. Other devils could turn them away with a telepathic command and found the inability of others to do the same hilarious, laughing at the newcomers' expense. While they might extend their amusement by attempting to extort those who killed the creatures by claiming ownership and threatening to sue for property damage, those already welcome were never begrudged the necessity of killing attacking lemures.

Hamatulas were very common to Minauros and were responsible for making sure all was well in the layer, by hunting down escapees (sometimes after intentionally letting them go), watching captives, and bringing them where needed. Barbazu devils carted souls, sometimes taking a moment to rest their weary muscles on benches, while corpulent amnizu gathered in cafes, downing flagons of noxious liquids as they sold soul futures.

History
Minauros had been sinking for at least as far back as the beginning of mortal memory. The original city sank long ago, with the newer buildings built haphazardly atop the already fallen ruins. It was possible the ruins below were once part of an Outlands town pulled to Minauros millennia ago, and some said it contained vast riches, but no one (at least none who reported it) had managed to swim down deep enough into the muck to find out.