Tartarus, the Abyss, Niffelheim, Avernus, Baator, The Pit, Oblivion, the really bad place, no matter what culture, what religion and what fictional setting it’s portrayed in we recognize it by its one true name: Hell.

Writers and game masters such as me love hell. It’s a constant and endless supply of ready inspiration made to order. Need a villain? Look to hell. Need a source of power for your dark machines? Hell will suffice. Need a dark and ineffable master for your group of black cultists? There are plenty of dukes in hell to go around.

Hell as I speak of is not the classical image of Christian mythology of a dark underground place where the only light comes from the burning souls of the damned. Rather, I speak of hell as a concept, as a supernatural place where the source of all evil lies and bad people go when you stick your holy sword in them. More settings come with pre-made hells ready to go even if they don’t normally provide a compelling reason why the hell in question does not exist. Of course some game masters with their own homebrew settings will want to design their own hells with their own devils and demons dancing among the custom painted flames and poking souls with their own custom built pitchforks. This month's edition of The Bad, The Worse, and The Vile will breakdown hell into it’s base components and explain them so that a game master can create a compelling hell to unleash on his or her unwitting players.

Where the heck is hell anyway?

Hell is a reflection of our basest most primal fears. Naturally Hell is below the earth. This was good enough for Dante, but probably not good enough for you. After all Dante was writing from the viewpoint of an entirely different culture and place. How does a hell set in a flame filled cave work for a culture that sees very little of fire and even less of caves? Rather then setting hell in a place that no one knows about it’s best to set hell in an environment that everyone knows about but almost no one truly understands. Let’s say our game takes place in a world not too unlike the movie Water world, but with better writers and less nonsense. Here fire is dangerous but is more often then not a lifesaver rather then something to be feared. Caves are simply unheard of. So what’s left is the ocean, a vast blue plain of endless unknown water. The people have an idea what’s under there by the monstrous fish they drag up for food and the conversations they have with the merchants that come from underwater dwelling races. These merchants bring them back stories of black trenches where not even their own kind dare venture. They tell of hostile places of pitch blackness where the water can become cold or boiling hot to the point of flaying flesh right off the bone. Places where light has never touched the bottom and the only source of luminescence is the flickering lights of nightmarish creatures more terrifying then anything they’ve ever encountered. This is where hell is found, it exists underneath the hulls of honest men and lost souls weighed down by a lifetime of sin inevitably find their way to the deepest, blackest portion of the unforgiving depths.

I’m on a hiiiiighway to hell!

As important as figuring out where your hell is it’s nice to be able to know just how one goes about getting there. The typical method is for an evil person to die and be judged to spend all eternity there. Of course this also tends to be rather inescapable so not entirely suited to play. The hells of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms can only be tread through the use of high level magic and special circumstance. Other settings allow characters to simply instigate an easy ritual that allows communication and entrance into hell. Our water world might simply require a bit of magic or clever engineering to dive to the deepest part of the ocean to enter the black depths of the abyss. Keep in mind that the easier you make it to get into hell the more alluring hell becomes for players to walk into before they are powerful enough to properly deal with the forces there. It also changes the setting quite dramatically the forces of good would constantly lay siege to a hell that had the outside security of a screen door after the cat used it to climb on forever. A hell that seemed nigh impossible to get into or deal with would seem very mysterious to all but the most learned or insane scholars of evil.

On the flipside of getting into hell is getting out of hell. A hell with a revolving door would be a constant pain to the forces of good as demons and mad men walk in and out with impunity. These little decisions can make a big difference on how people view and deal with hell and its denizens. In our water world example we could say that getting out is every bit as much a hassle as getting in as hells denizens have a difficult time surviving past the depth of their trenches. As such the worlds of the surface and ocean bottom are safe from all but the boldest and smallest incursions of deep sea demons.

Driven By Demons

Every bit as important as the location and traffic of your hell is the things that live there, or don’t as the case may be. Christian demons rise from pagan imagery, heavenly mythology, and common fear. So horns, scales, batwings, and cloven feet and pitchforks all rise from history. Your demons can have similar tones arising from common fear and superstition or images commonly found in opposing religions. Demons of a jungle type hell might have serpentine or insect like look to them while demons in our water world would represent the worst aspects of deep ocean life and have a kind of luminescence characteristic of deep sea life. However your demons look they must follow three characteristics to match a demon from hell:

1. They must be irredeemably evil.
2. They must have a love/hate relationship with hell.
3. They must be willing and happy to escape in order to cause terror and strife in the mortal realm.

With these three factors in place it’s easy to make your demons look and feel however you choose while still keeping that demonic flavor to them. They can be mortal or immortal, intelligent or cunning, deadly or relatively harmless, beautiful or horrifying to behold.

An alternative is to not have any denizens of hell at all. Rather hell itself could be a sentient entity feeding on the despair of lost souls and manifesting their greatest nightmares to bring out the worst in its prisoners. The place can seem to breathe and writhe with its own emotions and feeling all its own. Or hell could simply be a location without anything in it except those forced to wander its endlessness until the end of time. Even the origins of demons serve little more then a bit of extra fluff. Simply use whatever you think fits the characteristics of the demons best.

“As the founder of Hell I command you to OOF!!...Even in hell I get no respect.” ~Rodney Dangerfield in Little Nicky

At the top of every crime, at the head of every conspiracy, there is a being pulling the strings, ancient, powerful, and cunning beyond the bounds of any mortal being. This being is the puppet master of hell, damned souls and demons dance on his whim carrying out his ineffable plans without even realizing they serve his will. He has many names and his only true name is spoken in the faintest whispers for fear of summoning him. He is Asmodeus, The Devil, Satan; he is the highest of the lowest, the baddest of the bad. You get the picture.

There is always a need for a devil; it’s the habit of human psychology to put a face to our greatest fears, our most terrible sins. It just so happens he’s also a totalitarian ruler. Every setting needs a devil as something or at least the concept of one. You need not to go into much detail and can go into as much speculation about him as you like. However if you plan on having the devil as something of a main villain you need to have him statted out and very week detailed. He needs to represent the worst aspects of hell. Our water world devil would look like a combination of a number of deadly and mysterious undersea creatures like sharks, and giant squid, it would burn with terrible mystery and glow malevolently with consumed souls wailing in agony at an infinitely slow digestion process. It rules by right of strength and simply devours any challenger to its might. If I were to actually make this guy for a game I would certainly go into more detail concerning its origins, its weaknesses and its closest minions. Though what I gave is more then enough for a priest or shaman to cow his flock into submission by describing the fate that awaits sinful men. The devil will be the greatest villain in any game he is included in and should be given as much detail.

The Purpose of Hell

Regardless of its face, its locations, its denizens and its arcane nature hell serves the same purpose. It is both prison and fortress to the greatest evils ever known. Evil souls swell the ranks of the damned behind its walls while they clamor to get out and infest the rest of the universe with their perverted vision of a perfect universe. This is an important distinction to make, because your players will note right away that it’s not hell if this thing is not there. It does not matter how this hell came to this state only that it exists now. Within hell demons lash against its boundaries craving a way out of its torment simply to spread some of their own into a waiting world. Of course endless torment of the damned can get boring, so demand and devils plot, and plot, and wait, and consider, and reconsider until the time comes for them to reach out and scar the brightness filled world. It’s an act of vengeance for their imprisonment and a military action by the most hostile of all nations. This is the driving force behind any demon, the foundation of hell, and why priests warn against its temptations, it is not simply a prison, not simply a source of evil, it is a staging area for the most terrible of foes, and the forces of good are doing all they can and more to simply keep them penned in for eternity.

Hell is Mysterious

A proper hell holds black mysteries and the promise of power to those bold enough and insane enough to risk grabbing it. Hell is the house of lies and nothing should be taken for its face value. Who is to say the devil himself is not a mere puppet in a much grander and far more terrible game? If players travel through hell they should find things that eve demons cannot or will not explain. Tomes that refer to hell should speak in terms of symbolism and metaphor and penned as if written by a mad man. Demons speak in riddles and even at his most honest all the devil can do is shrug and simply not say. Hell is obvious in its intention but mysterious in its mechanics, a perfect opposing image to heaven.

We have such sights to show you…

Even if it never takes the centerpiece of your campaign even a little bit of work in this frame can conjure inspiration for your custom theologies and answer questions as to the workings of your universe. Hell gives us a real reason to fear sin, and reassurance that bad people get what they deserve in the end. It’s an invention of the human mind that both haunts our nightmares and gives us inspiration to do the worst things imaginable to one another. Use it wisely and beware strange men at lonely crossroads.