The Fifteen Hells

The Fifteen Hells, also referred to broadly as Hell, is an outer plane that makes up the moon Koranos, which is the unholy domain and planar embodiment of the god Ku'Qala. It is populated primarily by the souls of the damned and infernal fiends known as devils.  

The Fifteen Layers of Hell

The Infernal Domain of the First Circle

The First Circle is a massive city at the very center of all Hell. It is home to the palace of Ku'Qala and the eternal prison of Attinae. The city is full of mortals living and dead who have taken up residence in Hell, typically followers of Ku'Qala or other infernal powers. These mortals live and work alongside devils, neutral outsiders, and monsters. The denizens of The First Circle trade in favors and souls pledged to themselves, running what could otherwise be mistaken as a mortal city. It is the frequent destination of spellcasters seeking power, celestial historians, and planar explorers. The Market of Souls is a particularly famous landmark home to fifteen different portals to the mortal planes and stranger worlds beyond the veils of mortal understanding. The First Circle is also known for the Hall of the Gods, an ancient building where the Fifteen meet to make deals and allegedly was the site of original Creation.  

The Iron City of Torments

The Second Circle of Hell is the Iron City, the destination for mortals who have bound themselves to fiends and were judged by the gods to be deserving of temporary punishment in the afterlife. Devils who work in the Iron City act as the jailors and tormenters of these damned souls, inflicting all manner of punishments. Some inmates are allowed to live and work in the devil-city as part of their debt, others simply decide to stay after their punishment is up. The Iron City's torments are left up to the individual fiend assigned to any given mortal inmate, and are rarely personalized. The Iron City is commonly referred to as "Ghost Jail" by the living.  

The Lake of Fire

The Third Circle is the Lake of Fire, the forge from which all devils are born of mortal sin. It does have settlements, particularly the Tiefling city Balazed. The Lake of Fire itself is a massive pool of liquid fire surrounded by landmasses of brimstone, cut through with rivers of fire and patches of lava. Some souls are sentenced to eternal torment in the Lake, put to work in devil cities or Balazed while constantly regenerating from ever-worsening burns. The Lake is home to countless elementals, a burning parody of Material Plane creatures living out their entire lives in the flames. The Lake is one of the planar portals to the Plane of Fire.  

The Screaming Pit

The Fourth Circle is a winding pathway encircling a literally bottomless pit, where souls are condemned to fall for all eternity. The screams of it's prisoners echo through the pathways, giving joy to the devils who live there. The fiends of the Screaming Pit relish opportunities to pull souls from the eternal fall, giving them kindness for a few days or even weeks, and then sending them back to their punishment to suffer. There are very few settlements of the Screaming Pit, but some denizens of the Shadow Plane have migrated here via a planar gate that connects the two worlds of darkness and misery. Some of these are mortal Fetchlings seeking to be closer to their patron goddess Attinae. The Pit is one of the most common punishments for souls deemed worthy of eternal damnation  

The Halls of Sin

The Fifth Circle is a small circle of Hell called the Halls of Sin, the eternal reward for powerful souls who served Ku'Qala faithfully in life out of zealotry rather than avarice. Few in number, these True Believers are given command of devils who have been judged worthy of punishment by the reigning Archdevils, forced to obey the every whim of mortals. Each mortal in the Halls of Sin is given a palace of their own, connected by an endless network of doors to others like them, and each leading to the Grand Temple of the Red Scroll, where they need only attend services to maintain their now-lavish lifestyles. Plenty of half-fiends and Tieflings and sorcerers are born in this place, and these act as a sort of servant class to their mortal progenitors. Some souls that are sentenced to eternal punishment found to be too proud are bound to these True Believers as well.  

The Forest of Bones

The Sixth Circle is an endless forest made of trees and creatures that are half alive and half undead. Full humanoid undead wander the forest eternally to hunt the souls that are damned to this place. The Forest of Bones is a favored hunting ground of Vadaszat and his followers as well as devils looking to hone their skills with weapons. Those sentenced to the Forest of Bones are sent to the middle of it and told the rules: there is only one way out, only one soul may ever make it out, you will be hunted down by outsiders and the forest's beasts, and should you find a safe zone you may only stay for one mortal day. The Forest is unique in that it's souls simulate true mortal life. They must eat, sleep, and drink enough to stay "alive", for if their soul would ever die they are sent back to the beginning of the maze-like forest. There are some settlements scattered throughout, safe zones where no fighting is allowed, populated by devils that trade supplies to the Hunted in exchange for favors. The Hunted are encouraged to slay each other, as if one soul ever leaves the Forest, none will ever have that chance of escape.  

The Void of Innocence

The Seventh Circle of Hell is The Void of Innocence, commonly referred to as either "The Void" or "The Nothing". It is an empty space of Oblivion, no light enters it's depths nor does any material object survive more than a second or two inside of it. The Void is so powerful that mortal spellcasters have in the past turned it's anti-energies into Spheres of Annihilation in times past. The Void is the destination of souls who's bodies have been reanimated by necromancers, regardless of where they were in the afterlife before. There is no sound and no sensation in The Void of Innocence, only one's mind. Of course, if an undead is properly destroyed the devils assigned to The Void are able to rescue the freed soul, but even for an Outsider meant to survive The Void it is difficult to find a single soul amid thousands in the endless nothing. When such souls are freed, they must be re-judged by Nex Szar who frequently lightens the sentence of evil souls that have spent any time there and gives greater rewards to good souls. The punishment for necromancers that are consigned to Hell is to be thrown into the Void, only pulled out of it once every century to be overwhelmed by sensation after being deprived of it for so long. The Void is the wellspring of all negative energy in the planes, the source of undeath, the power behind unliving beings and countless horrors.   

The Infernal Battlefield

The Eighth Circle is the Battlefield, the place where the legions of Hell train and rest. Mortal souls are sometimes brought here if they showed particular prowess in mortal war, given a lighter sentence in exchange for shaping up new recruits. The Battlefield is the designated site of conflicts between the evil gods, a place set aside for battle between deities so as not to harm the Material Plane with the power unleashed. Warmongers and mortals who relished in killing are sent here to be forged into weapons, trapped forever in their own minds as a piece of metal with no control whatsoever. The malice of these soul-blades turns the weapons into powerful magic artifacts sought after by collectors and warriors across the planes, but to even purchase one is a crime in the minds of the Archdevils. The legions of Hell can access any other level from here.   

The Cage

The Ninth Circle of Hell is a cosmic prison where outsiders are sent by their patron deities for punishment. There is no true torment here, only infernal guards and cell blocks where prisoners are kept isolated from others of their kind. While in The Cage, outsiders are stripped of all their power and are as frail as mortals. Occasionally, the souls of spellcasters who specialized in binding outsiders are kept here as well to be beaten constantly by prisoners. Because evil-aligned outsiders, especially demons, rarely learn anything from such punishments The Cage is inhabited primarily by good and neutral outsiders. Devils working here speak of the experience of making angels scream, a sound that drives mortals insane to behold and fills fiends with an unrivaled joy. Some angels confined in The Cage Fall, becoming either a devil or a demon and is thus freed from their torment as a new being. The abundance of angels in The Cage has led to some devils calling it "The Birdcage" or "The Rookery".  

The River of Souls

The Tenth Circle of Hell is an endless plain cut through with the dark River of Souls, the means by which most souls enter the afterlife. The River is made of the souls of those who have been sentenced to Hell but have not yet been assigned a punishment. Devil Ferrymen escort those waiting to be judged to The Hall of Absolute Judgement, which houses a portal to the plane of Nex, Geminus Predicae and the infinite city of the same name. Devil Fishermen wait to extract the souls of those about to be assigned eternal punishment from the River and bring them to the Chained Palace, where the Archdevils reside. The Council of Archdevils are the rulers of each circle of Hell, and together determine where a damned soul is to spend eternity. Should there ever be an impasse, the soul is simply thrown back into the River to await a retrial in a millennium or so.   

The Mirrors of Memory

The Eleventh Circle is an unending hallway with thousands and thousands of doors, each with a name scrawled into it in Infernal texts. Those sentenced to The Mirrors are forced to re-live their entire lives hundreds of times, each time with no memory of the previous lives. Between cycles, the damned are given full access to the memories of each existence and the full knowledge of missed opportunities, unpleasant truths about themselves and loved ones, and how much pain they have caused others. On occasion, a soul consigned to Memory will show no remorse or regret between cycles, in which case the devils isolate the single most painful memory the soul has and forces them to relive that moment for all eternity, while slowly erasing their favored memories until they are nothing but a single bad moment for all of time.   

The Primordial Between

The Twelfth Circle of Hell is a sea of pure axiomatic energy that binds the rest of Hell together. Some souls and devils are bound here for all time to ensure it runs smoothly and that the planes and Hell itself all connects properly. These beings work out of several buildings of solidified Law they call "stations", and to preserve the mortal mind the stations are under a great illusion to hide their true natures from those who slave there and the rare visitor. The stationmasters keep careful watch on levels of Law, introduce or take away Evil, and ensure that wayward souls are rounded up and taken to their proper place.   

The Wellspring of Evil

The Thirteenth Circle is the evil counterpart of the Primordial Between, a roiling darkness of concentrated evil from which all fiends trace their existence. Just as the Twelfth Circle is maintained by souls and devils, so too is the Wellspring. Rather than stations, the Wellspring's workers travel about in cosmic boats, riding the storms of hate to ensure than just the right amount of evil is allowed to leak into the rest of Existence. The beings that maintain the Twelfth Circle are all enslaved, those of the Thirteenth are volunteers. They are almost always creatures of true neutrality or the most trusted of devilish fiends, chosen for their ability to withstand the proximity to the literal embodiment of all evil. Outsiders sworn to each of the gods save Attinae, Vadaszat, and The Dreaded One guard all the gates to the Thirteenth Circle, standing eternal vigilance to ensure no agents of those three ever manipulate the balanced alignment of the universe.   

The Unmaking

The Fourteenth Circle of Hell is only accessible by Ku'Qala himself, in his role as the Spirit of Shackles. Just as The Cage is the cosmic prison of outsiders, The Unmaking is a prison designed for beings from outside our own reality. The horrors contained within are unknowable to mortalkind, creatures of a Great Beyond that only the gods can truly understand. The Unmaking has been used in the past to imprison gods suspected by the others of having been corrupted somehow, including Ku'Qala himself at some point before the creation of mortals. The Unmaking sits on the very edge of reality itself, as far from mortalkind as possible.   

The Final Punishment

The Fifteenth Circle did not exist until the Sylvan War that changed Iliria forever. It is a small circle of light in a plane of darkness where Skaldor the Conqueror is chained. He is forced to hear the grievances of all those he has wronged directly or indirectly, forced to experience their pain, and those of their descendants who have lived a harder life as the result of his actions. The Archdevils decreed that he shall be retried once he has felt the pain of every single soul harmed by him or his own line, and those souls are always given the choice of whether or not to speak with him. Part of the punishment is that he can never, ever forget what his victims say and force him to feel, he can forget nothing of his own life either. Skaldor has heard and felt the entire life of a hundred thousand souls, and is still nowhere near done with just those that have died as a result of his war. Ku'Qala occasionally comes to visit The Conqueror to remind him that this is exactly what he wanted, a place to be remembered for all eternity.