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Geography Ī representation of the layers of the Nine Hells and a few notable locations, according to the Great Wheel Cosmology. Once again the river Styx flowed through the Nine Hells and the Abyss, but then emptied its pollution into the Astral Sea. The World Axis cosmology model described the Nine Hells as an astral dominion floating in the Astral Sea, no longer of infinite size nor consisting of layers, ruled by Asmodeus and his eight archdevil vassals. Īfter the Spellplague, Asmodeus consumed the essence of the fallen Azuth achieving (some say regaining) greater godhood and ended the Blood War by casting the Abyss to the furthest depths of the Elemental Chaos. The Astral plane connected all of the fiendish planes to the Prime Material Plane, but not directly to each other. Cosmologists verified portals between the Nine Hells and the Barrens of Doom and Despair and Clangor and, by agreement with Kelemvor, to the Fugue Plane. The layers were still described as being infinite but with a central pit of finite size that opened to the next lower layer in a tiered fashion, with a drop of many miles between layers. When the Great Wheel model was overshadowed by the World Tree cosmology model, the river Styx was renamed the River of Blood and it flowed through all the fiendish planes (except for the Supreme Throne and the Demonweb Pits) originating in the Abyss, passing through the Blood Rift-an unusual plane that connected the Abyss with the Nine Hells -bringing the devils even closer to their arch-enemies the demons, resulting in the Blood War. The river Styx flowed through the first layer, Avernus, and also the fifth layer, Stygia, before crossing over into Gehenna. Each Hell was a different infinite layer interconnected at barriers much like a nine-layered cake-the lowest points of one layer manifested barriers that exited high above the surface of the next lower layer. The Great Wheel cosmology model placed the Nine Hells in the Outer Planes between Gehenna and Acheron, with additional connections to Concordant Opposition and the Astral Plane.

7th circle hades book 1