History of Hell

History of Hell — How to Read the Infernal Record

Hell has history, but not every story told in Hell is history.

The plane itself is vastly older than its present government. The earliest cosmic chronology records the formation of Hell as an independent Outer Plane long before recognisable devil civilisation, the Lords of the Nine, Malsheem’s bureaucracy or the later infernal courts existed.

Infernal archives nevertheless contain traditions that project later rulers, political doctrines and theological claims backwards into the earliest ages of Creation. Such accounts remain valuable because they reveal how devils understand themselves, what their rulers want believed and which ancient stories continue to carry political force.

Hell Before the Devils

Hell begins as a place before it becomes a civilisation.

During the Great Separation, the First Thought-Realms become self-sustaining Outer Planes. Among the realms shaped by domination, exploitation, punishment and control is the ancient reality that later generations call Hell.

Its first landscapes and internal laws develop during this early planar age. Native phenomena and embryonic intelligences exist, but the recognisable devil hierarchy does not yet possess its later offices, legions, contracts, courts and permanent political institutions.

Nothing in this period requires Lucifer, Asmodeus or another later infernal ruler to have created the plane. Hell’s geography precedes the political regimes that eventually claim it.

Infernal Civilisation Becomes Enduring

Eon XVI is the beginning of Hell’s durable political history.

Devil populations develop continuity. War bands become legions. Strongholds become administrative centres. Rank survives individual office-holders. Punishment and promotion become recognised instruments of obedience. Contracts cease to be merely private bargains and become weapons of government, territory and policy.

The oldest infernal traditions remember extraordinarily powerful early fiends known as the malefircareim. They are best treated as ancient infernal great powers active during the violent consolidation of organised Hell, not as beings literally created from the blood of a secret cosmic Overlord.

Some survive the struggles surrounding the first infernal order. Others disappear through destruction, exile or political defeat. Names such as Merorem and Haagenti remain in fragmentary records, while eight great powers become associated with the earliest Luciferian division of the Perditions.

At the same time, demonic expansion from the Abyss collides with infernal attempts to secure routes, gates and borders. These first infernal–Abyssal fronts establish the ancient conflict that later ages will know as the Blood War.

The Circle of Three Tradition

One of Hell’s oldest surviving creation traditions describes a threefold cosmic power called the Circle of Three.

In its traditional form, the story claims that the Circle established cosmic law, shattered in primordial conflict and produced the major realms of ordered Creation. Infernal versions go further, claiming that Hell and the first devils arose from the fall of the dark member.

The persistence of the story is nevertheless important. Infernal rulers, philosophers and propagandists have repeatedly used it to argue that tyranny is not merely one political system among many but a fundamental principle woven into Creation itself.

Lucifer and the First Infernal Settlement

The first securely remembered sovereign regime of organised Hell belongs to Lucifer.

Lucifer is not another name for Asmodeus and is not an avatar through which a concealed being rules from behind the throne. He is an actual earlier infernal sovereign whose government precedes the Asmodean order.

Under the Luciferian settlement, eight great infernal powers are remembered as territorial rulers beneath the sovereign throne. The surviving tradition gives the following arrangement:

This arrangement is more useful as political history than as a claim that all nine modern jurisdictions already possessed their final borders, cities and institutions in precisely their present form. Hell continued to change under every later regime.

The Wars of Light and Greed

The decisive break in early infernal history is a civil war against Lucifer’s rule.

Asmodeus gathers support among devils dissatisfied with the Luciferian order and among powers that believe they can profit from a change of sovereign. Astaroth becomes entangled in the conspiracy, although later infernal records disagree strongly over his intentions, the timing of his betrayal and whether his apparent failures were deliberate.

The conflict ends not with a staged dispute between two manifestations of the same hidden being, but with a genuine succession: Lucifer is overthrown and Asmodeus takes the infernal throne.

Astaroth loses Avernus and is driven from the normal territorial order of Hell. Tiamat subsequently acquires the First Perdition, beginning a long historical association between the Dragon Queen and Avernus.

The new regime does not eliminate the older infernal elite. Dispater, Mammon and Mephistopheles remain major territorial powers. Other seats change hands repeatedly as fallen celestials, archdevils and rival factions enter the struggle.

For the surviving contradictory traditions surrounding Astaroth, see the Astaroth archive . Those traditions are evidence for infernal memory and propaganda; where they conflict with the master chronology, the master chronology takes precedence.

The Fallen Enter Infernal Politics

The Great Fall does not create Hell and does not create devil civilisation. Both are already ancient when the event occurs.

Instead, the Fall introduces a new generation of powerful celestial exiles into an infernal state whose hierarchy, armies and territorial offices already exist. Most Fallen do not automatically become devils, nor do all enter permanent service to Hell. Several of the greatest, however, seize opportunities within the infernal courts.

Astarte also becomes a major Fallen power in later infernal politics. Her eventual struggle with Tiamat reshapes the First Perdition.

During the same broad political age, Leviathan loses the Fifth. Asmodeus imprisons him within the frozen reaches associated with Stygia and installs Geryon in his place.

Classic Perdition

For a long age, Hell is governed by the arrangement later mortal scholars remember as Classic Perdition.

The principal territorial powers of this settlement are Tiamat, Dispater, Mammon, Belial, Geryon, Moloch, Beelzebub and Mephistopheles beneath the sovereignty of Asmodeus.

The arrangement is stable only in comparison with the upheavals before and after it. The Lords scheme continuously against one another, build patronage networks among the Dukes and senior devils, interfere in rival courts and compete over the direction of Hell’s military, diplomatic and mortal-world policies.

The old archives sometimes describe these struggles as a division along infernal “racial” lines. That classification is misleading. The more useful distinction is political: rival blocs of Lords with different histories, alliances and visions of infernal rule.

Tiamat eventually abandons direct rule of Avernus after a prolonged struggle with Astarte. Astarte takes the First and becomes one of the principal contestants in the factional politics that precede the greatest infernal civil crisis of the later age.

The Gathering Darkness

The Gathering Darkness is the traditional name for the current age of Hell: the political settlement that follows Dies Irae and the final changes to the present Lords of the Nine.

The term does not describe the secret plans of a concealed Overlord. It describes a Hell whose territorial rulers remain ambitious and dangerous while the sovereign state is firmly held by Asmodeus.

The present settlement is:

Hell Seen Through Mortal Art

Mortal artists often use volcanoes, darkness, fire and catastrophic landscapes to imagine infernal realms. Such works are valuable as historical visions without being literal maps of the Nine Perditions.

The actual Nine Perditions encompass far more than fire: iron cities, drowned marsh, volcanic wastes, frozen seas, crushing slopes, ruined monumental landscapes, moving glaciers and the colossal rifts of Nessus all belong to Hell’s geography.

Related SpiralWorlds Records

History explains how the present infernal order developed. The realm, rulers and wider cosmic chronology are detailed separately.