The Nine Hells (Lore Dump)

Hi all, I'm still waiting on edits for the next chapter, so I'm gonna drop a lore dump to give you guys something to look at. We're going to be seeing a lot more demons in book 2.

Additionally, I want to drop the discord link here for anyone who isn't looking at RR anymore: https://discord.gg/6b3hKGgC

See you there!

Souls in the Underkeeper universe run on a reincarnation cycle unless that cycle is broken by divine intervention. All others pass through the nine hells to be essentially refitted and restored to blank slates for their next go around. Each of these hells (and their demons) purifies the soul as it passes through, stripping out an aspect of its identity and consuming it for power.

Different cultures organize the hells differently, but the Solicitors and the Beseri by extension just number them one through nine. Some organizations that concern themselves with souls, like the Solicitors and a few of the temples, have learned enough to be aware of this cycle, but it’s not something that’s commonly understood. No one has fully mapped this process or the hells, because warlocks haven’t ever been able to summon anything from beyond the sixth hell. 

In general, it’s understood that all demons evolve over time as they grow in power. Each hell has its own demonic races, social structure and hierarchies. Most weaker demons are not or are only partially aware of their own true purpose.

First Hell - Consumes Desire

Environment - a gray, barren landscape. 

Demons from the first hell are generally small, squat humanoids in the same shade of gray as their environment. They aren’t hostile. Instead, they feed by meeting newly dead souls and engaging them in conversation. As the souls talk, they become more lethargic, losing their will and ambitions as they bring them up in conversation. Once they are fully freed from worldly desires, they descend to the second hell.

Warlocks generally only contract demons of the first hell to play guard duty. They don’t fight, but they can incapacitate people by robbing them of their will to act (which is also their payment). These are the only demons who can feed on the souls of living people, and the victim won’t die unless they completely consume their will to live.

Second Hell - Consumes Memory

Environment : An inescapable fog

Demons of the second hell are formless mist creatures. They tear the knowledge and memories directly from the shades of the dead as they pass through. They can only do this with souls who have no remaining will at all – so a summoned mist demon can’t affect a living person at all without their consent.

Warlocks summon demons from the second hell to recover information known to the dead, and they need to pay with knowledge of their own, freely given. Needless to say, people don’t do that very often.

Third Hell - Consumes Pain

Environment: Classical hellfire and brimstone

Demons of the third hell consume incoming souls and strip them of physical senses and sensations using the hellfire that courses through their veins. This includes more than just pain, but pain carries the most energy. What remains passes through to the fourth hell.

The third hell is easily the most popular hell for warlock summoning. Demons from this plane are usually capable fighters, have access to fire magic and heal rapidly. Unless contractually limited, they can also draw the trace remnants of pain-laden souls from freshly killed people and consume them for small amounts of power.

Fourth Hell - Consumes Joy

Environment: Frozen wasteland

Demons of the fifth hell take various forms, though often they’re some manner of near-skeletal humanoid. They chase after souls as they wander across the endless frozen expanse, keeping them moving and devouring the dying embers of whatever happiness they carried with them as they descend into a numb state of despair.

Warlocks summon demons of the fourth hell to track down enemies who would otherwise be impossible to find.

Fifth Hell - Consumes Fear

Environment: A void of pure darkness

Demons of the fifth hell are shadow creatures that cradle souls in the blackness of the void, slowly devouring their primordial fear of oblivion before passing them along to the sixth hell.

Warlocks contract shadow demons primarily for stealth purposes. They aren’t physical beings, and can both teleport and exist in multiple places at once, making them excellent, nearly undetectable spies.

Sixth Hell - Consumes Reason

Environment: Unknown

Demons of the sixth hell are eldritch horrors that defy logic and reason. They consume sanity.

Attempting to commune with an entity of the sixth hell will drive the relevant warlock violently insane in seconds, but it doesn’t stop the summoning. The only known summoning of a demon of the sixth hell occurred about two hundred years before our story on the Isle of Harrowick. The place hosted a mid-sized town with an academy that used to be a sort of refuge and research center for warlocks. It was abandoned after this incident. The only full account of the story comes from a simple fisherman, the sole survivor.

One day, the town simply went silent. The guards outside vanished, no lights were lit at night and those who lived outside and approached the gates were repelled by a nauseating sense of wrongness. Then, people began to disappear, one by one, from the surrounding countryside. The fisherman took his boat to the mainland to report the situation to the proper authorities and beg for help. But, by the time he returned, the missing people had returned.

They were home, but they were not the same. They babbled incoherently or laughed for no reason and, hour by hour, they grew more and more insane. Horrified, the fisherman watched as his neighbor plucked his own eye from his head, singing a joyful song all the while. As he ran back to his boat, he found that to be the most wholesome scene by far. The little fishing village was filled with scenes of tortured madness – gleeful violence accompanied by an attitude of rapturous worship.

Hells 7-9

The lower hells are only known by hearsay. When questioned, demons of the fifth hell insist there are nine, but they don’t know what lives there, or what happens to the souls who pass through them.