Maladomini

The sky is a dark, vein-streaked black, and the air is thick with the reek of decay. Across the poisoned plains lie countless abandoned cities, once ambitious, now hollow, serving as dens for deserters, escaped petitioners, and creatures lost from other planes.   The land is scarred by open-pit mines, deforestation, and ruined waterways. Rivers run thick with sludge, and black ichor seeps from every stone, tree, and corpse, corrupting all it touches. The last remnants of forest are either rotting or igniting in sudden, spontaneous bursts of flame. In some places, the pollution itself is alive, sentient slurries of matter reaching out to seize prey before collapsing into inert sludge.   In addition, the layer is defined by cycles of creation and collapse. The Quarry Marches descend in terraced pits for miles, their walls carved of marble, basalt, and soul-set concrete, cut apart by chorus saws that sing contracts as they slice. The Dead Canals run thick with green-black water choked by rubble barges; bridges span them for a week at most, collapsing exactly on schedule after their ribbon-cuttings. Along the Boulevard Wastes, half-finished statues lean against scaffold skeletons while the wind drives abandoned vellum plans into drifts like snow. The Smelt-Parishes burn constantly, their blocks surrendered to tar kilns and brick chimneys, soot falling on the streets like evening rain.  

Notable Locations

The Carnival Eternal

A grotesque amusement ground designed as a “reward” for devils who bring in great hauls of mortal souls, offering diversions that are as cruel as they are elaborate.  

Grenpoli

Also known as the City of Diplomacy , is a domed metropolis where all violence and weapons are forbidden. Home to the Political School of the Nine Hells, which educates devils in deception, double-dealing, and treachery with academic rigor.  

Offalion

A training complex where political manipulation is honed through immersive simulations of mortal-world cities, allowing devils to perfect the arts of coercion, bribery, and diplomatic sabotage.  

Inhabitants

Maladomini is home to the most calculating and politically adept devils in Baator: amnizus, paeliryons, harvester devils, and erinyes thrive here. The legions also contain ayperobos, barbazus, cornugons, lemures, and spinagons, while the layer’s constant ooze seepage spawns mindless threats, black puddings, gelatinous cubes, and ochre jellies.   The devils of Maladomini are its architects and executioners: phistophilus as contractors, erinyes as provosts, osyluths as compliance auditors, cornugons as site enforcers, and pit fiends as prefects. Lemures serve as menial labor, pushing wheelbarrows until they themselves are pressed into bricks. Bound constructs groan as cranes, petitioners are paved into roads, and mortal factors imagine they are running the projects—though the truth is otherwise.   Visitors arrive on business, whether ambassadors making treaties in Grenpoli, guildmasters chasing “Hell’s best practices,” or heroes hunting relics buried in abandoned foundations.  

Government

Maladomini is ruled by Baalzebul, a fallen archon whose descent into archdevilhood was matched only by the depth of his obsession with perfection. He commands the construction of city after city, each intended to surpass the last in elegance and function, yet he abandons each as soon as it is complete, condemned in his own mind for being unworthy of his vision.   The Ministry of Revisions oversees every brick, block, and beam of Maladomini’s endless construction. Phistophilus, the contract devils, draft the plans with infinite clauses; erinyes provosts patrol the scaffolds to police aesthetics and enforce symmetry; and osyluth auditors stalk the sites with ledgers in hand, shutting whole districts for “noncompliance.”   The guiding principle is the Law of Facades: what appears compliant is deemed compliant, until the moment of inspection. Inspections, of course, never cease.  

Access and Travel

Survival in Maladomini demands preparation. Essential equipment includes a breath veil, a fly-mesh hood, solvent, eye-wash, stamped visitor writs, bribes in coin or favors, and boots that can endure tar. The wise move with a crowd, inspectors always prefer to single out individuals. Never touch wet mortar; it remembers. And always carry the latest map, for yesterday’s city is already archaeology. Above all, never praise a design in earshot of an auditor, flattery triggers an “improvement cycle,” and what stands above you will not stand for long.  

From Malbolge

Processional switchbacks become surveyor-straight highways inset with iron milestones; each stone bears a clause.  

Toward Cania

The roads thin to frost-bitten causeways through administrative icefields and sealed archives.  

Gate Etiquette

Border posts demand Improvement Bonds (soul-backed fines) before issuing visitor wayleaves. Skipping the line? The flies will find you.

The very laws of physics answer to the bureaucracy. Permit gravity favors those carrying valid writs, granting steady footing and stable scaffolds; forged papers, when discovered, invert the blessing into calamity. A clause echo ensures that any oath sworn near official masonry etches itself faintly into the stone; breaking that oath causes the wall to weep chips like tears before collapsing directly onto the oathbreaker. Even lies are weighed.... fly consensus gathers swarms around the most compelling falsehood in earshot, the greater the boast, the thicker the cloud.

The air itself seems written for punishment. Stone-dust squalls scour the horizon like a plane-sized sandblaster, blinding eyes, filling lungs, and fraying tempers. A tar fog of sickly-sweet haze clings to skin and contracts alike, sticky with obligation. Worst of all are the fly storms, living eclipses that drown light, sound, and reason beneath their buzzing tide.

Maladomini was once a beacon of infernal urban design, thriving under Baalzebul’s dual rule of both this realm and Malbolge. His ambition, however, proved his undoing. By falsifying records and plotting an assault on Nessus, he sought to overthrow Ashmedai. The scheme faltered when a massive demonic invasion struck Avernus, forcing Baalzebul to choose between aiding the Nine Hells or continuing his coup. He joined the defense, but only after a suspicious delay that exposed his treachery.   The other archdevils descended upon Maladomini in a coordinated reprisal, devastating the layer. Ashmedai, recognizing Baalzebul’s intellect but unwilling to forgive, cursed him to live for a millennium as a colossal slug, retroactively punishing him for every lie he had told. Only in the late 10^th century AB did Baalzebul regain his former appearance, though the scars on his realm and reputation remain.