Seven Hells

According to the creation-myths of demon-kind, the grand angelic sorcerer Yahweh cast down Lucifer and his host of Luciferians from the High Heavens in the aftermath of the Divine Civil War. Defeated in their rebellion, they were stripped of their stations and condemned to mortality, bound to live out their days upon the bleak continent of Ragnarok. Such is the tale recited by angels and mortals alike. Yet fragments of older lore, unearthed in forbidden grimoires and confirmed by the voyages of bold planewalkers, speak of a darker, truer fate.   During the banishment, not all of Lucifer’s legions reached Ragnarok. The greater number were lost between worlds, their essence hurled screaming through the void. Instead of rebirth in the Materium, they were swallowed by the howling chasm of the Infernal Abyss. There, the tides of the Chaotic Dark, the endless pyres of the Elemental Fire, and the abyssal entropy of the void mingled into a crucible of damnation. From this cauldron, the Luciferians were reshaped into monstrous forms—twisted, tormented echoes of what they once had been. Thus were born the Infernals, and in their anguish they carved out the realms that would become known as the Seven Hells.   The Infernals embraced their corruption as creed. They abandoned angelic grace for the ecstasies of sin, each host succumbing to a vice made sovereign: Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Wrath. From these philosophies rose seven thrones and their lords, who turned their exile into empire. To them, mortals are not allies but prey, their weaknesses fuel for the thrones of Hell. The endless harvest of souls is not mere hunger but a contest, a cosmic game of corruption played against Heaven and the outer spheres.

Geography

The Seven Hells are not a single seamless plane but a conjoined labyrinth of realms, fused together in their exile from Heaven. At the heart lies the Prime Plane of Hell, a bleak wasteland that serves as the foundation for the Infernal Court. From this desolation, seven rifts spiral outward, each yawning into a demiplane shaped by its ruling sin. Together, they form a fractured empire of torment, bound by the Citadel of Saal and the towering spire that marks the seat of the Court.

The Prime Plane of Hell

The Prime Plane is a vast and featureless expanse, a purgatorial ground upon which all roads converge. Its surface is choked with ash and scarred by stagnant black rivers, whose waters carry the residue of damned souls. The skies are an endless pall of grey and crimson lightning, casting the land in perpetual twilight. At its center rises the Citadel of Saal, seat of the Infernal Court, and above it soars the Tower of Envy, five hundred miles high and ever growing—a monument to infernal dominion, visible from every horizon.

The Seven Demiplanes

Encircling the Prime Plane are the seven demiplanes, each one anchored by its throne and shaped by its lord’s philosophy. They do not sit in fixed order, but shift and overlap, their borders bleeding into one another where vices entwine. Travel between them is treacherous, for the land itself mutates to reflect temptation and torment.

Cosmological Position

The Seven Hells drift within the Infernal Abyss, a region of the Outer Planes where law and chaos meet in violent equilibrium. They are tethered together by the Tower of Envy, which pierces the planar fabric itself and pulls the realms into orbit. The closer one travels to the Tower, the more stable the landscape becomes; the farther one roams, the more the chaotic abyssal energies bleed into the world, twisting geography into impossible shapes.

Climate

The Prime Plane of Hell is locked in a state of perpetual stagnation, neither seasonal nor merciful. The climate is one of extremes, yet paradoxically stable—unchanging for uncounted ages. The air is heavy, acrid, and suffused with the stench of brimstone and rot, making each breath feel like inhaling smoke. No winds stir save for the sudden, violent gales that precede storms.   The sky is a constant vibrant red ceiling, fractured by roiling black clouds that build without release until they collapse into furious tempests. These storms bring black lightning, arcs of corrupted energy that sear the soul. Alongside the lightning comes hail of blackened ash, sharp enough to lacerate skin, coating the land in choking dust.   Temperatures swing between sweltering stillness and piercing chill. At times the land bakes beneath oppressive heat, the air shimmering with waves that warp sight and blister skin. At others, the entire plain falls into a sudden frost, where the stagnant rivers harden into sheets of black ice until the next storm shatters them apart. These shifts do not follow seasons but the chaotic rhythms of the plane itself.   At rare intervals, the land is plunged into a soul-eclipse, when the skies blacken completely under the weight of amassed spirits. The air grows suffocating and still, colder than any mortal winter, while the Infernal denizens swell with borrowed power. When the eclipse passes, the atmosphere returns to its oppressive equilibrium, as if nothing had occurred—save for the echoes of the damned still whispering on the wind.

Ecosystem

The Prime Plane of Hell is barren of natural life as mortals would understand it. Here, the ecosystem is parasitic, entropic, and necrotic, a corrupted mockery of the natural cycles that sustain the Materium. Its skies, rivers, and soil do not nourish growth but instead leech vitality, turning all that enters into sustenance for Hell itself.

Flora & Fauna

Vegetation in the Prime Plane is scarce, but where it appears, it thrives only as an extension of torment. Bladed reeds sprout along the riverbanks, slicing open carrion for their roots to drink. Ironwood husks dot the ashen hills, their trunks hollow and echoing with whispers of stolen souls. At night, phosphorescent fungi spread across the ground in mats, releasing toxic spores that lull intruders into death-sleep before feeding on their corpses. None of this flora offers nourishment—only entrapment and consumption.   The creatures of the Prime Plane are coagulations of sin rather than natural births. Shambling carrion-beasts stagger along the rivers, their bodies formed from fused bones and sinew that endlessly rot yet never collapse. Ash-wyrms burrow beneath the hills, feeding on souls like maggots on marrow. Clouds of emberflies swarm across the wastes, biting into the flesh of intruders to siphon blood and leave behind burning welts. These beasts do not reproduce naturally; they spawn spontaneously from pools of concentrated vice, rising malformed and ravenous until they dissolve back into the soil or rivers that birthed them.   The Prime Plane lacks a true food chain. There are no cycles of balance or renewal, only predation without end. Every creature, plant, and river seeks to feed upon intruders, each other, or itself. The end of every cycle is dissolution back into soulstuff, ensuring that the Prime Plane functions as a vast stomach digesting all things. This parasitic “ecosystem” ensures that even if no new damned souls arrive, Hell continues to churn, devouring its own creations and birthing them anew in endless entropy.

Souls

The Hells run on souls. They are the lifeblood of the Seven Hells, its nourishment, and its coin. The black rivers that carve across the wasteland are liquefied essence, the residue of the damned dissolved into a viscous flow. These rivers act as both digestion and mint, reducing all they touch into raw soulstuff that can be harvested, refined, or consumed. From the ashen hills seep crystalline deposits of the same essence, jagged growths hoarded by nobles and measured out as tokens of power, called Soul Stones.   For Infernals, souls are sustenance as well as status. To consume one is to strengthen flesh and spirit, to spend one is to secure loyalty, and to hoard many is to climb in rank. The legions feed upon them, the dukes bargain with them, and the Thrones themselves weave them into new horrors. Mortals damned to the Seven Hells are currency incarnate, their torment and dissolution ensuring the endless cycle of vice is paid forward.   Thus the Prime Plane functions as a vast marketplace as much as a stomach, where every creature and noble vies for a share of this most precious resource. Rivalries are stoked not only by ideology but by access to the rivers and Soul Stone veins, and even the Citadel of Saal measures its wealth in the Soul Stones within its vaults.

Inhabitants

The Prime Plane of Hell is host to the mingled legions of all seven demiplanes. Each force bears the vice of its master, from the ravenous swarms of Beelzebaar to the gilded gaolers of Mammorr and the warhosts of Legion. Though rivalry defines their relations, outright chaos does not. Their contests take the form of skirmishes, displays of power, and ceaseless intrigue rather than unchecked slaughter. The Infernal Court tolerates no collapse of order, and so the legions clash as much to prove dominance as to enforce it, their rivalries carefully balanced against the need to maintain Hell’s strength.   Above them rise the Infernal Nobility; dukes, knights, and generals, who enforce discipline and extend the will of their Thrones. These nobles administer fortresses, oversee soul-pits, and marshal their legions for the endless conflicts of Armageddon. Rivalries run deep, yet the nobles know that rebellion against the Court is futile; their ambition is instead directed sideways, in rival duels, contests of wealth, or the poaching of mortal souls. This tension between ambition and hierarchy gives the Prime Plane its paradoxical stability: order built from vice, and unity forged from rivalry.   Mortals condemned here serve as the lowest tier of inhabitants, their souls shackled to toil in monumental works or bound into the ranks of Infernal hosts. Some are reshaped into lesser Infernals, dissolving into embodiments of the sin that ensnared them, while others are consumed outright as souls. To live, to serve, and to betray are all one in Hell, for its inhabitants, mortal or Infernal, exist only as extensions of vice. Yet even here, the order imposed by the Court holds: every torment, every legion, every rivalry feeds the larger design of the Seven Thrones.