Baator, the Nine Hells, is the hell of law, set against the Abyss as law against chaos: “Baator es ley y orden” (“Baator is law and order”).
Description
The cosmos has three tiers: the Heavens (Sigil, the Mountains), the Lands (Terra, Antiterra, the Mediterranean) and the Hells (Baator, the Abyss and others).
Baator has nine layers. The first is Avernus (First Level); lower lies the City of Dis, with its tavern and avenue, on an arm of the Phlegethon; at the bottom is Asmodeus’s throne. Each circle has its general, each deeper than the last: the pit fiends, highest caste of the baatezu, enthroned on souls.
Organization
The nine layers are nine administered districts whose chiefs (Dispater, Bel and others) trade among themselves, exchanging even women. An infernal column halts in formation on arrival. Its officials include the Erinyes, enforcers of contracts and hunters of fleeing souls, and the executioners of Baator, who join the Harmonium. Its torture corridors are the model for the corridor of the Host Dungeon.
Gates
- Urga (later, c. 1600, Ulan Bator) sits on a portal to Baator; its church keeps the portal from the houses and the Prester guards it.
- Near Dorotea’s sister city, a rebel ilkhanate’s town was being sucked into hell through an open portal. The triumvirate of Paladin Kings tried to shift its alignment, raising taxes and letting people govern themselves, so it would cease to be akin to law.
- The Tavern of the Serpent has portals to Limbo and Baator.
- The Maimed descended the Infinite Staircase to defeat Moloch.
- Graz’zt planned to take eleven Chaos ships from Twelvetrees to Mechanus and then Baator.
The Garden
“Ardis del otro lado” (“Ardis on the other side”), a piece of Arborea, lies inside Baator, listed in the Planes of Law at the river of blood in Avernus. Its discoverer had never left hell: he ate the fruit, was expelled, and then lived the double reality of Avernus and the Antiterra of Ardis Hall, 1888.