Nessus
While all of Hell—and some might argue all of existence—belongs to Asmodeus, the Archfiend claims Nessus, the deepest of Hell’s layers, as his throne-layer. In the temple court of the Prince of Darkness, no sun or clouds reign over the cracked, volcano-blasted stone, only a vast, depthless night lit by three red stars. Much of Nessus’s surface appears as an Elysian realm torn asunder in the wake of some terrible holocaust. Foreboding forests of ash hide lakes and seas of poison. Volcanoes endlessly erupt upon the horizon, spewing lava that never falls from the lifeless heavens. Deep fissures split the land, their depths emanating sickening crimson light. Roads paved in the skulls of fallen princes lead between vast palaces, connected either underground or by reaching cloisters. Little differentiates between terrain and temple in Nessus, as armies of enslaved souls have sculpted vast tracts and whole mountain chains with elaborate and terrifying statuary, facades, spires, and shrines.
Beneath this apocalyptic landscape lie the courts of Asmodeus: columned halls filled with terrifying scriptures and images no mortal should see. Here, Asmodeus’s infernal dukes forgo the grandeur of the layers above, toiling amid armies of servants in some of the most elaborate and perverse workhouses in the multiverse, the whole realm being at once library, laboratory, and altar. Asmodeus’s audiences with his archdevils or lesser beings take place in the Synod Eye, where eight thrones of salt and an island of glass orbit Asmodeus’s massive Hellfire Throne. Beneath the flaming sigils of the diabolical elite falls a depthless gulf, a pit of absolute darkness that seethes with the barely restrained malice of Hell itself. From this pit, Asmodeus can conjure any view or illusion he wishes, or any bit of knowledge picked from the minds of his countless followers. When he wishes to be alone, however, the Archfiend retreats to the Catafalque, a private extradimensional hall which no one but the Prince of Darkness has ever seen.
Beneath this apocalyptic landscape lie the courts of Asmodeus: columned halls filled with terrifying scriptures and images no mortal should see. Here, Asmodeus’s infernal dukes forgo the grandeur of the layers above, toiling amid armies of servants in some of the most elaborate and perverse workhouses in the multiverse, the whole realm being at once library, laboratory, and altar. Asmodeus’s audiences with his archdevils or lesser beings take place in the Synod Eye, where eight thrones of salt and an island of glass orbit Asmodeus’s massive Hellfire Throne. Beneath the flaming sigils of the diabolical elite falls a depthless gulf, a pit of absolute darkness that seethes with the barely restrained malice of Hell itself. From this pit, Asmodeus can conjure any view or illusion he wishes, or any bit of knowledge picked from the minds of his countless followers. When he wishes to be alone, however, the Archfiend retreats to the Catafalque, a private extradimensional hall which no one but the Prince of Darkness has ever seen.