The Nine Realms of Hell
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The Nine Hells, sometimes Hell or Hells, also known as Baator^[16] 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 thedemons 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.^[12] This plane's place in the cosmologyof the Forgotten Realms shifted over time but was always a bastion and incubator for those of the lawful evil persuasion.

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The Great Wheel cosmology model placed the Nine Hells in the Outer Planes^[3]between Gehenna and Acheron, with additional connections to Concordant Opposition and the Astral Plane.^[17] Each Hell was a different infinite layer interconnected at barriers much like a nine-layered cake—the lowest points of one layer manifested barriers that exited high above the surface of the next lower layer.^[12] The river Styx flowed through the first layer, Avernus, and also the fifth layer, Stygia, before crossing over into Gehenna.^[18]

When the Great Wheel model was overshadowed by the World Tree cosmologymodel, 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—an unusual plane that connected the Abyss with the Nine Hells^[2]—bringing the devils even closer to their arch-enemies the demons,^[19] resulting in the Blood War.^[20] The layers were still described as being infinite but with a central pit of finite size that opened to the next lower layer in a tiered fashion, with a drop of many miles/kilometers between layers.^[9][13] Cosmologists verified portals between the Nine Hells and the Barrens of Doom and Despair and Clangor^[8] and, by agreement withKelemvor, to the Fugue Plane.^[21] The Astral plane connected all of the fiendish planes to the Prime Material Plane, but not directly to each other.^[22]

After the Spellplague, Asmodeus consumed the essence of the fallen Azuthachieving (some say regaining) greater godhood and ended the Blood War by casting the Abyss to the furthest depths of the Elemental Chaos.^[23] 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,^[11] ruled by Asmodeus and his eight archdevil vassals.^[1] Once again the river Styx flowed through the Nine Hells and the Abyss, but then emptied its pollution into the Astral Sea.^[24]

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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 earlier cosmologies, each Hell was a separate infinite layer rigidly joined to its neighbors by barriers at fixed locations.^{[12][note 1]} After the Spellplague, the domains of the archdevils were described as territories (large, but finite)^[1] or circles.^[14] 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.

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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.^[12] According to the Great Wheel cosmology model, this layer was also connected by portal to Acheron, Gehenna, and Concordant Opposition.^[17]By the World Tree cosmology model, portals connected Avernus to Clangor, the Barrens of Doom and Despair and theBlood Rift via the River of Blood.^[8] 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 was unknown.^[16] The World Axis cosmology model posits the Nine Hells were isolated with no direct connections^[1] except via the river Styx to the Abyss.^[24] 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.^[25]

By all accounts Avernus was a desolate wasteland with rocky terrain, sparse, twisted vegetation, concealed snake pits, caves and warrens, 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.^{[12][25][26][27]} 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,^[8] the ground was littered with the detritus of countless battles,^[25] and blood trickled out of the ground in vein-like streams eventually flowing into the river Styx.^[27]

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The second circle of Hell, when described as its own layer, was a flat barren plane 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 plane rose the Iron City of Dis, several miles/kilometers in height and hundreds of miles/kilometers wide.^[12] The foul rivers radiated from a moat big enough to be called a lake surrounding the Iron City.^[28] The World Tree view of the Iron City was much the same but bigger, having been expanded by countless minions following Dispater's grand plan. The walls of the buildings and the stones of the streets glowed the dull red of hot iron; more than brief skin contact resulted in severe burns. Prisoners of war, tormented underlings, criminals, and kidnap victims were kept in underground dungeons where their wails of woe could be heard filtering up through small vents in the iron walls. Above it all rose the Iron Tower where Dispater sat and schemed, untouchable.^[29] 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.^[25]

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Minauros, the Third Hell

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, bone-strewn, disease-ridden swampland made movement very difficult and was only broken occasionally by serpentine ridges of volcanic rock.^[12][30] Nameless creatures even the devils feared inhabited the swamp.^[29] 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.^[25]

Minauros was also the name of the city built of black stone by Mammon on the treacherous surface of this place. Only the ceaseless efforts of thousands of minions and slaves prevent the city from sinking and being consumed by the bog.^[12] The city of Jangling Hiter, also known as the City of Chains, hung by massive links of chain above the noisome fen and was ruled by kytons.^[31]

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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, ash hills, smoking pits, unbearable heat, all wracked by tremors and earthquakes.^[12][32] Even the air seemed aflame and thus Phlegethos was considered to be fire-dominant.^[31] In the World Axis view, Phlegethos was a cavern several miles/kilometers below Minauros, where burning lava poured out of fissures in the ceiling.^[25] The city of Abriymoch was the seat of power in this realm, built of hardened magma, obsidian, andcrystal in the caldera of an extinct volcano which provided visitors some protection from the elemental environment found throughout the rest of the plane.^[12][31]

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The complete opposite of Phlegethos, Stygia was either a bottomless ocean covered by an ice sheet up to three miles (five kilometers) thick,^[12] 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^[25] depending on which cosmological model was in vogue at the time. According to the Great Wheel and World Tree models, the river Styx cut across the ice forming a channel.^[12][33]The older model also suggested the Styx supported small but hardy plants and mosses which, after millennia of decay of this vegetation, resulted in swampy areas along the banks of the river.^[12] A few floating islands were the only non-frozen ground in Stygia, their peaks wreathed in lightning arcing from the coal-black sky. Where lightning struck, a strange phenomenon called "cold fire" erupted: white flames of extreme cold that "burned" for a short time and then disappeared without a trace.^[34] The great city of Tantlin was built upon one of these islands,^[12] in

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