torsdag den 6. marts 2014

The Lords of Hell

It's amusing how all mortals assume the gods were here first. They weren't. Hell is much, much older than the gods. They might be the most powerful beings at the moment, but nothing but Hell is eternal. Then again, maybe they aren't the most powerful beings around. Maybe that it just something they need to believe....
- Asmodeus, somewhere in Hell
Hell, while ruled by Bane, is run by the seven Lords of Hell and their infinite hordes of demons and devils. For thousands of years, they have warred on the angels of Heaven and against each other. The seven Lords are:

Baphomet
Symbol: Bull's head with flaming red eyes
Portfolio: Savagery

Also called the Prince of Beasts, Baphomet is a demon with the the appearance of a huge humanoid with a bull's head, a bovine tail, and broad, stubby hands and feet. Baphomet's rippled body is covered with coarse charcoal black hair. His horns curves downward and outward and are at all times surrounded by hellfire. He wields a giant spiked warhammer called the Worldcrusher. It is said that his spit and drool is unholy water. Amongst the Lords of Hell, Baphomet is often considered the dumbest, the most simplistic. The brute with no subtlety. He is also the guardian of Hell, both entrance and exit. Baphomet's Hell is a huge maze full of roaming demons of all kind.

Asmodeus
Symbol: A red-black upside-down pentagram
Portfolio: Lies

Asmodeus is descibed as the strongest, most cunning, and most beautiful of all devils. He usually appears as a huge human. He has lustrous dark skin and black hair, handsome yet deadly. His crimson eyes gleam with infernal power, a pair of small sharp horns crown his forehead. He dresses in regal finery of red and black robes studded with black diamonds and fiery rubies of incalculable expense.  Beneath his clothing, Asmodeus's body is covered in bloody wounds. His wounds oozes blood daily, and the drops of his blood which touch the ground in Hell is said to grow new powerful devils and demons. Whether in battle or on his throne, Asmodeus is rarely far from his famed Ruby Rod, said to hold the souls of an arch-angel. If Asmodeus is not the leader of the Lords of Hell, but he is certainly the first amongst equals and most assuredly the brains behind most of the greater schemes the Lords come up with. Asmodeus’s machinations are long in the making, and they might take centuries, if not millennia, to see resolution. He works on a grand scale, carefully constructing insidious and inexplicable intrigues, maneuvering the forces of wickedness like chess pieces on a board that encompasses all of Gemnos and the rest of the planes. Asmodeus' Hell is an infinite castle where backroom dealings and backstabbings are on the order of business.

Orcus
Symbol: Mace with human skull as head
Portfolio: Decay

Orcus is typically described as having the head and legs of a goat, although with ram-like horns, a bloated body, bat-like wings, and a long tail. Orcus cares for nothing save himself - not even his devotees and undead servants - and focuses only on spreading misery and evil. One of his most identifiable symbols is the artifact, the wand of Orcus, a skull-topped mace with the power to slay any living being. Orcus' Hell is a giant graveyard filled with ruined temples and broken mausoleums.

Demogorgon
Symbol: A serpentine forked tail, wrapped around a skull.
Portfolio: Insanity

The huge demon towers above everyone else. His body at once sinuous like that of a snake and powerful like that of a great ape. Two baleful baboon heads leer from atop his lumbering shoulders, from which writhe two long tentacles. His lower torso is saurian, like some great reptile with an immense forked tail.

Demogorgon not only spreads insanity, he is insane. He is said to believe that he is destined to rule all of Gemnos, due to the twin connection
Demogorgon's hell is a vast tropical jungle that exists under a constant cacophony of sounds from animals that do not exist and a fog so thick that you can cut it. In the depth is his twin towers of madness.

Grazz't 
Symbol: A black six-fingered hand
Portfolio: Lust

One of the smallest of the Lords of Hell, Graz'zt appears as a lithe, muscular humanoid, although still much larger than normal humans. His skin shines like polished obsidian, and his eyes glitter with malevolent green light. He has yellowed fangs, pointed ears, and six slender fingers decorating each hand. He is sometimes described as having six small black horns half-hidden amid his thick black hair. As Asmodeus, he can almost be considered beautiful. and he also dresses in some of the most expensive and elegant finery on the entire plane.

Wielding an acid-drenched greatsword in one hand and a profane shield in the other, Graz'zt, also called the Dark Prince is a veritable killing machine, but also a true and extremely intelligent war commander. When Graz'zt isn't fighting the angels, he spends time in his own personal hell. Graz'zt's hell is a harem of never-ending pleasure and pain.

Lolth
Symbol: An eight-pointed metal star, with the points connected by intricate webbing
Portfolio: Murder

In drow form, Lolth, sometimes called the Spider Queen, appears as an "exquisitely beautiful" female dark elf, sometimes covered in clinging spiders. In her arachnid form, Lolth takes the appearance of a giant black widow spider with the head of a female drow or human peering from between the eight spider-eyes. Sometimes, the two foremost pair of her spider-legs are actually humanoid arms.

Lolth is the assassin of the Lords, the one that dwells and strikes in the darkness. Her hell is a plain of rocks with chasms and rocky gorges. It is full of many pits and craters. The land appears dead and covered in pitchblack darkness. If you could see in the darkness, you would see that there are giant petrified spiders with webbing found everywhere..

Yeenoghu 
Symbol: A triple-headed flail
Portfolio: Torture

Yeenoghu combines the worst features of a gnoll and demon in one immense form. His body is huge, gaunt and lanky, and patches of yellow fur stained with brown spots cover him. Leprous gray skin and suppurating wounds mar his body, revealing the corruption of his flesh and spirit. His head is a large, anthropomorphic hyena’s, with glowing red eyes and a toothy maw from which spills strings of drool. He is often depicted wielding a three-headed flail.

Once souls arrive in Hell, they are tortured. While any devil or demon can torture, most that do answer to Yeenoghu.

Bel
Symbol: A chest of bloody coins.
Portfolio: Greed

Crimson scales cover this large fiend, from its bestial head to its clawed toes. From its back spread great bat-like wings. Foul green venom drips from its teeth, sending up streams of smoke wherever it falls. Cinched around its waist is a belt of a dozen shrieking angel heads, their necks neatly severed by the massive flaming sword the creature holds in his clawed fist. Not much else is known about this Lord of Hell. Some sages speculate that he has only gotten his title recently, while other surmise that he is just that good at keeping mortals in the dark about his machinations.

Mephistopheles
Symbol: A cross(road)
Portfolio: Corruption

This diabolical fiend is huge, has crimson skin, with handsome yet diabolical features that include a set of massive red leathery wings, curling horns, his eyes are white with red irises and pupils, and long, straight black hair. He has huge muscles that befit his great strength, and his speech is whispering wind. His wings, horns, and talons are deep red and his scales are sooty black. Swathed in a flowing black cape, he is the vision of evil. While all the Lords benefit to some degree from the souls that end up in Hell, Mephistopheles is the one that control the demons and devils that do nothing but corrupt the mortals of Gemnos. Some say that while most deals are struck through intermediates, sometimes Mephistopheles himself show up to close the deal.

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