Maladomini
The Great Wheel cosmology view of the seventh circle of Hell described it as having vapor-polluted skies similar to Malbolge but the surface was solid. The post-Spellplague view described Maladomini as a colossal maze of passages each several miles across that eventually led to Cania, Malbolge, and Nessus. All three models agreed that the seventh Hell was filled with ruins of old cities, stagnant rivers, exhausted and abandoned quarries and strip mines, stone aqueducts and lava canals, decaying fortresses, swarms of biting flies, and black pools of ichor that erupted from the ground. The Lady of the Seventh was never satisfied with the construction of her capitol and repeatedly built and abandoned city after city. The largest and most beautiful was Malagard, a sprawling metropolis/palace/fortress/arcology with myriad black towers linked by a tangled web of bridges and walkways. Malagard was rumoured to contain a million rooms and to cap an equally complex dungeon labyrinth.
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Nine_Hells
If anything exemplified Baazelbul's legacy of failure and degeneracy in the unending pursuit of unattainable perfection, it was her layer, Maladomini. Once, perhaps, Maladomini was a beautiful landscape filled with grandiose cities, roads, bridges and other symbols of splendour and triumph. No matter their excellence however, Baazelbul was never contented with the cities she was presented with, striving to complete a configuration of form and function worthy of her greatness.
Upon completion, new cities were inevitably deemed unsuitable and either left behind as a symbol of past failure or plundered for materials in upcoming structures, quickening their degradation. As in most of her endeavours, Baazelbul was able to envision her idealized result but unable to bring it into reality. This was partially a result of her endlessly toiling petitioners having had the ability to create such things beaten out of them.
Maladomini was occasionally wracked with tremors and explosions. Much of the plane was traditionally hellish, consisting mostly of black earth, pits of fire. and an encircling ocean of lava. Within the fiery sea was a ring of volcanoes that fed it through their eruptions, the produced rivers of liquid flame often siphoned off through canals to make molten moats for castles or simply built over with fearsome, arched bridges.
Baalzebul's ceaseless construction projects made Maladomini, while incredibly unpleasant, an excellent hideaway for runaways, deserters, petitioners, defeated baatezu and resilient extraplanar beasts. So many cities existed that trying to run out squatters simply forced them to pick from the wide variety of nearby shelters.
Many structures were aboveground but a great amount of the plane was actually a series of tunnels many miles wide and at least a thousand feet tall, massive curving caverns filled with ancient architecture. The labyrinths below were sometimes lit by orbs of sickly-green floating flames. Even the greater baatezu however, were loathed to tread deep below the cities and mines, as such tunnels housed dangerous entities, possibly the ancient Baatorians from before the reign of the baatezu.
Malagard-
The personal residence of Baalzebul was the fortress city of Malagard, one of the few that were actually inhabited where a panoply of the last remaining plants of the plane were tended to. Constructed of innumerable black stone spires that extended into the sky and stretching for miles on end, Malagard was so vast that not even its lady knew all of its millions of miles of passages and rooms. The towers were connected by both open and covered bridges that slanted and crisscrossed crazily in every direction and the dungeons were so deep that many of those who escaped the clutches of their devil tormentors actually fled into them in order to escape. Perfectly straight streets and fragile yet frightening fountains could be seen throughout the infernally magnificent citadel. Even as it was being constructed however, Baazelbul's servants knew that while it was without doubt her greatest city that she would end up declaring it unsatisfactory and force them to start again, with some even sabotaging their own work to delay the inevitable. Despite its great variety and number of rooms, many of the unused areas were crammed full of garbage, carrion and broken items by spinagons servants, a prime example of the wastefulness of its denizens. Sure enough, Malagard became a symbol of sloth and nihilistic ruin as it slowly crumbled and fell into the surrounding dirt while the poorly kept roads became rivers of trash. Even the occasional repairing spree quickly ended and every day the crushing defeatism weighed more upon the devil denizen, with even the incessant Baalzebul eventually giving up preventing its demise. In the centre of Malagard was the Palace of Filth, Baazelbul's castle that was turned into a building-shaped pile of amorphous dung at the same time that Baazelbul was cursed and ordered by Asmodeus to be filled with even more filth. Baazelbul had to hollow the interior herself to create corridors and rooms and periodically reinforced slumping ones with the ooze from her bloated body, lest they collapse on her servants. The palace was practically indistinguishable from the surrounding city and inhabited by otyughs and ghargatulas, the former of which were ignored as they disposed of the faeces and the latter of which were Baazelbul's personal guards. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baalzebul
The personal residence of Baalzebul was the fortress city of Malagard, one of the few that were actually inhabited where a panoply of the last remaining plants of the plane were tended to. Constructed of innumerable black stone spires that extended into the sky and stretching for miles on end, Malagard was so vast that not even its lady knew all of its millions of miles of passages and rooms. The towers were connected by both open and covered bridges that slanted and crisscrossed crazily in every direction and the dungeons were so deep that many of those who escaped the clutches of their devil tormentors actually fled into them in order to escape. Perfectly straight streets and fragile yet frightening fountains could be seen throughout the infernally magnificent citadel. Even as it was being constructed however, Baazelbul's servants knew that while it was without doubt her greatest city that she would end up declaring it unsatisfactory and force them to start again, with some even sabotaging their own work to delay the inevitable. Despite its great variety and number of rooms, many of the unused areas were crammed full of garbage, carrion and broken items by spinagons servants, a prime example of the wastefulness of its denizens. Sure enough, Malagard became a symbol of sloth and nihilistic ruin as it slowly crumbled and fell into the surrounding dirt while the poorly kept roads became rivers of trash. Even the occasional repairing spree quickly ended and every day the crushing defeatism weighed more upon the devil denizen, with even the incessant Baalzebul eventually giving up preventing its demise. In the centre of Malagard was the Palace of Filth, Baazelbul's castle that was turned into a building-shaped pile of amorphous dung at the same time that Baazelbul was cursed and ordered by Asmodeus to be filled with even more filth. Baazelbul had to hollow the interior herself to create corridors and rooms and periodically reinforced slumping ones with the ooze from her bloated body, lest they collapse on her servants. The palace was practically indistinguishable from the surrounding city and inhabited by otyughs and ghargatulas, the former of which were ignored as they disposed of the faeces and the latter of which were Baazelbul's personal guards. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baalzebul
Geography
The result of Baazelbul's folly was a druid's worst nightmare, a defiled, suffering world robbed of nature. Where greenery might have forested the land was rotting wood, dead stumps and trees burnt by slag heaps, the only persistent life being the fly swarms said to be Baazelbul's eyes and ears. Below the blood-black sky of Maladomini was a surface spotted with deep quarries and strip mines that scarred the land like gaping wounds and leaked polluted gas into the air. Petitioners and lesser devils alike lacked tools but were nonetheless forced to dig deeper underground for stone and minerals to carve and cut, further contributing to the destruction.
Effluvium and sludge from split canals could be seen all across the plane's surface and anything that might have been living within the polluted rivers normally died on the banks after breathing in the toxic air. Rivers existed even in the centre of tunnels, but were so utterly filthy that distilled tar within could light guttering, green flames on the edges.
Alternative Name(s)
The Seventh Layer
Type
Dimensional plane
Location under
Owner/Ruler
Ruling/Owning Rank
Owning Organization
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