The Nine Hells
Baator
What Baator is. The Nine Hells (Infernal: Baator) are the planar archetype of lawful evil—a bureaucracy of damnation where cruelty is codified, hierarchy is everything, and promotion is paid for in souls. Devils rule, recruit, and refine wickedness with industrial precision. The plane is divided into nine stacked Hells, each vast, hostile to mortals, and stamped with the will (or whims) of its archdevil.
Where the Hells sit in the multiverse
Great Wheel (classic). Baator is an Outer Plane between Acheron and Gehenna, connected to the Astral Plane and Concordant Opposition. Each Hell is an infinite layer; the River Styx crosses Avernus and Stygia before exiting toward Gehenna. Layers interconnect like a titanic tiered cake—descend to reach the next.
World Tree. The Styx becomes the River of Blood, threading all lower planes (via the Blood Rift between Abyss and Baator). Layers are still infinite but imagined around a central pit; long drops separate tiers. Documented portals link Baator to the Fugue Plane (by compact with Kelemvor) and to militant gods’ realms.
World Axis (post-Spellplague). After Asmodeus devours Azuth’s essence and hurls the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos, the Nine Hells become an immense astral dominion (finite but colossal). The archdevils still rule their circles, the Styx again flows through, and devilish logistics turn ever more inward.
Bottom line: Cosmology labels shift; Baator’s function—as the machine shop of damnation—doesn’t.
Economics of evil
Baator exports devil-wrought steel (notably green Baator ore from Avernus), weapons, infernal contracts, and even Baator whiskey—a scalding golden liquor few mortals survive. Trade reaches Sigil and other planes; bargains are currency, souls the reserve standard.
The nine circles at a glance
1) Avernus — the warfront
A blasted plain of black rock, magma rivers, and fireball storms beneath a smoke-choked red sky. Mustering ground for infernal legions and first stop for Astral arrivals (or victims who fall from the Astral Sea). Blood runs in thin streams toward the Styx. Zariel commands the war machine here; Tiamat once laired in the Dragonspawn Pits and sometimes still meddles at the gate to Dis.
2) Dis — the Iron City
A vast, glowing metropolis of hot iron whose streets burn bare skin; beneath lie miles of prisons. At its heart rises the Iron Tower of Dispater, the untouchable schemer. In some models the whole city sits in a cavern, gated from Avernus by a mountain-side portal.
3) Minauros — the sinking bog
An endless polluted fen of rain, sleet, and disease. Mammon’s black-stone city perpetually sinks, held up by titanic pillars and slave labor. The kyton-ruled Jangling Hiter (the City of Chains) dangles above the mire.
4) Phlegethos — the burning court
A realm of volcanoes, rivers of flame, and ash hills; even the air burns. The caldera-city Abriymoch hosts the decadent, deadly court of Fierna and Belial, masters of temptation, pain, and pleasure in equal measure.
5) Stygia — the frozen Styx
Either a bottomless sea sheathed in miles of pack ice or a frozen ocean under a black sky, riven by the Styx. Lightning births transient “cold fire.” The trade city Tantlin sits on floes or islands. Levistus, entombed in an iceberg, rules—in theory; Geryon has also held power here.
6) Malbolge — the grinding crush
Conflicting testimonies reflect eras: a world-pile of titanic angular black blocks belching blood-colored vapors; or a perpetual avalanche slope like Gehenna; or a once-idyllic god-garden corrupted into lethal beauty. Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus, currently sits the throne, after the fall of Moloch and the Hag Countess.
7) Maladomini — ruins and rebuilding
Miles-wide corridors, quarries, drained canals, abandoned cities, and swarming flies. Baalzebul (the Fallen) eternally demolishes and rebuilds his capitals; the greatest, Malagard, is a labyrinthine palace-city of a million rooms over dungeons to match.
8) Cania — the killing cold
Beyond Stygia’s chill: −60 ℉ blizzards, grinding glaciers, and razor peaks of blue ice. The fortress Mephistar crowns the living glacier Nargus, steered by Mephistopheles, whose refined cruelty is matched only by his arcane ambition.
9) Nessus — the pit of power
A vertical labyrinth of rifts, trenches, and citadels, mixing Cania’s cold with Phlegethos’s fury. In its lowest abyss sprawls Malsheem, the Citadel of Hell, a mountain-sized complex housing legions. Asmodeus, Overlord of the Hells, rules from here.
Who lives (and schemes) here
Devils are the native power: from mindless lemures and nupperibos to the sly imps, militant bearded and barbed devils, contract-crafting erinyes, all the way up to the archdevils.
Frequent denizens/allies: hell hounds, night hags, nightmares, kytons, and stranger things (bonespears, haraknin, maelephants).
Notables and realms across ages include Asmodeus (Nessus), Dispater (Dis), Mammon (Minauros), Fierna & Belial (Phlegethos), Levistus/Geryon (Stygia), Glasya (Malbolge), Baalzebul (Maladomini), Mephistopheles (Cania), plus interlopers like Tiamat, Set, Kurtulmak, and the occasional orcish triad (Gruumsh, Luthic, Ilneval) before they moved to Nishrek.
Culture & order. Unlike the Abyss, Baator is hierarchy incarnate. Every devil covets promotion, but advancement demands obedience, quotas of souls, and flawless cunning. Treachery is punished, not for immorality but for inefficiency.
Souls and the afterlife
In some worlds, lawful evil spirits arrive directly as nupperibos or lemures—the raw clay from which higher devils are sculpted through pain and service.
In the Forgotten Realms, souls first reach the Fugue Plane, where devils legally (and aggressively) negotiate: accept lemure “employment” (with a ladder to climb) rather than risk divine judgment. Clever mortals sometimes bargain for boons or mitigations; others are duped.
After the Spellplague, travel begins in the Shadowfell before routing to the Fugue; many deals are struck—and many souls are lost—along the way.