Summary
The Nine Hells of Baator (more commonly known as just The Nine Hells) are the home of the lawful evil Devils inDungeons & Dragons. The plane is divided into nine layers, giving players a lot to explore if they want to delve into this hellish landscape, although not much is known about the bottom layers.
Any trip to the Hells will be filled with perils, where only the mightiest heroes stand a chance of coming out alive, but certainly not unscathed. Yet not all layers are made equal, so if you need an evil setting for your next campaign, you need to know how each layer functions inside out.
9Phlegethos
The Fourth Layer
While we are ranking Phlegethos last, it isn’t because the layer isn’t interesting on its own. It is the first layer where no Lesser Devils are allowed, making it the first place where the Hells take the kid’s gloves off, and it is ruled by two Archdevils instead of one, making them harder to trick or deceive.
The problem with Phlegethos is that, well, it just looks like Hell. With bursting volcanoes and hellfire everywhere, the fourth layer of Hell looks strangely similar to the first, so if you’re planning to venture deep into the layers to see what they hide, you might as well skip this one.
8Cania
The Eighth Layer
Similarly to Phlegethos, Cania suffers from a lack of uniqueness, since it is a realm of ice that already exists in the plane’s Fifth Layer, Dis. The most notable feature of Cania is that, as the Eighth Layer, it is right next to the seat of power of all the Hells.
Now, Cania isn’t without its interesting features, and it can work as a place where a high-leveled party goes to find forbidden knowledge. The glaciers of this plane are filled with frozen unknowable beasts and arcane sources of long-lost knowledge, something the Archdevil in charge is constantly digging up to amass more and more power.
7Malbolge
The Sixth Layer
One of the main features of Malbolge is its constant landslides, burying alive anyone that isn’t careful enough while traversing the Layer. This makes the landscape a bit dull to the eyes, since it is just mountains as far as the eye can see, but there are bronze citadels scattered around for players to explore.
These citadels work mostly as prisons for various tortured souls, which is the main redeeming quality of the layer. Players looking to free a soul of someone dear to them might find it here, transforming Malbolge from a place with mountains to a highly visited location for high-leveled rescue missions.
The Second Layer
Blight Steel Keep Plague–Mort by One Pixel Brush
As the Second Layer of Hell, Dis is a location that players can realistically visit, and it works as a nice contrast to Avernus, the Layer most players are familiar with. Instead of constant war, what you’ll find here is the vast city made of iron (and also named Dis) where all kinds of devils make contracts, trade, and slave away in the iron mines.
The Blood War can sometimes spill into Dis, so conflict with Demons isn’t rare, even if the Layer isn’t assaulted by all-out war. There is even a mystery of what the Archdevil is secretly constructing in the outskirts of the city: a weapon to win the Blood War, a ploy to overtake the Nine Hells, or simply a fabrication to lure unsuspecting adventurers?
5Minauros
The Third Layer
Minauros almost feels like a place plucked from the Abyss, since evil bogs and swamps are usually the realm of Demons. Yet here, you’ll find a putrid landscape barely hanging on, with plant life that seems better off dead, and cities constantly sinking into the swamps.
The most interesting locale is the Jangling Hiter, a city that is suspended in midair by many colossal chains, and most of its architecture revolves around chains. You’d think that the city is suspended from the base of the upper Layer, but anyone that tries to find where the chains connect to has never returned to tell the tale.
4Stygia
The Fifth Layer
At a glance, it seems that Stygia is made solely of frozen water, but there are areas where the water actually flows, particularly where it connects to the river Styx. This river’s waters connect many planes, and it is used by Demons to enter the Hells from the Abyss (although they land on Avernus, since they would be slain before they could land on Stygia).
The Archdevil of this Layer, Levistus, was imprisoned on ice for his betrayal of the Lord of the Nine, but he continues issuing commands to his forces through telepathy. That alone makes it an interesting place to visit, but it is also an important area of Devil commerce due to the many ports surrounding the river Styx.
3Avernus
The First Layer
Avernus is by far the most well-known Layer of the Hells, since it is where everyone journeying to the Hells needs to go through first. This is the main staging ground for the Blood War, as well as the setting for many well known adventures, mainly Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus.
The place is a spectacle of hellfire, constant bloodshed, and tortured souls being tossed around. The Devils found here are at their most brutal and feral, since there is little time for contract making when a Demon is trying to kill you every day, although you can still see somerefined Devils living in this Layer, if you go looking.
2Nessus
The Ninth Layer
Not much is known about Nessus, other than it isthe seat of power for all the Hells, and where Asmodeus, leader of the Nine, resides. The lack of descriptive features makes this Layer one for you to make your own, since you can have it be anything you want; it can be a place where the most depraved torture is constantly on display, or a heavenly garden mirroring the Gardens of Eden.
Really, the point of Nessus is that no one is supposed to know what it looks like, since the mystery is what makes it great. Asmodeus is an entity that is better left alone, since slaying him might be worse for the Planes in the long run… although that hasn’t stopped a party of adventurers before.
1Maladomini
The Seventh Layer
Older editions of D&D described Maladomini as a realm filled with tall square buildings and pollution, and while 5th edition doesn’t really give that description, it still sounds incredibly fun to explore a Layer of Hell based around modern city landscapes.
It is still a place of bureaucracy and knowledge, so while the monsters here might be fierce, the deals you make can be even more dangerous.
Maladomini is also the place where the contracts made by the Devils are kept, making it an ideal place to visit if you only want a single adventure in the Hells. Any contract you want to have undone (all while avoiding the written consequences) will be here for you to find, if you can survive the perils to locate it.
