City of Judgment

The City of Judgment, formerly known as the City of the Dead and the City of Strife, was the destination in Hades within the Fugue Plane, where the souls of mortals went following their death. It was governed by the numerous gods of death, namely Kelemvor, Cyric, Myrkul, and Jergal.

Description
The city underwent drastic transformations as it passed in ownership from one deity to another. During Cyric's reign as Lord of the Dead, the City of Strife was a horrific landscape of anguished souls and torture. The outer gates of the city was built using the still-beating hearts dead cowards. An oppressive red sky loomed over the landscape. Under Kelemvor, the City of Judgement was colorless and purposefully bland, built upon the flat, featureless plain underneath a perpetually gray sky.

Depictions
Certain books published in Faerûn known as 'penitentials' featured horrific scenes that depicted mortal souls being tortured for eternity within the city.

Cosmography
Using the older iteration of the Great Wheel cosmological model, the City of Dead was situated within Oinos, the first layer of Hades in the Lower planes. Using the World Tree and World Axis models, along with the iteration Great Wheel model utilized following the Second Sundering, the City of Judgement could be found within the Fugue Plane.

Notable Locations
According to the three primary cosmological models, the Crystal Spire, formerly known as the Bone Tower, stood directly in the center of the city.

The city itself was encircled by the Wall of the Faithless, consisted of the souls of those judged as the Faithless by Kelemvor. They formed the bricks of the wall and were held in place by a supernatural greenish mold. The mold held the souls while their essence was slowly dissolved away to nothingness.

History
Throughout its existence, raiding demons would occasionally tear souls from the Wall of the Faithless and return with them to the Abyss. These captured souls were used to spawn new low-level demons to swell the demonic ranks or to feed their masters.

In the, according to the Calendar of Harptos, the soul of the mortal hero Kelemvor led the denizens in the City of Strife (as it was then known) in revolt against the god Cyric. The petitioners and other residents marched upon the Bone Castle, overthrew the God of Strife, and installed Kelemvor as his replacement.

Inhabitants
The City of the Dead was largely inhabited by petitioners, mortal souls left waiting for their patron deity to escort them to another plane for the rest of their afterlife. The souls waited aimlessly in the city, beseeching their respective gods and often wholly unaware that they had died. Not all souls were called away to serve their god however, and others were reincarnated on the Prime Material plane.

Followers of Kelemvor and Jergal in life were given positions of authority in the city. The False and the Faithless as well as the souls of the dead also populated the city.

Appearances

 * Novels
 * Avatar series (Prince of Lies • Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad)
 * Sentinelspire
 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
 * Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer