Hell

Hell is an extra-dimensional realm (or set of realms) which acts as an afterlife. It is where evil souls are sent and are subjected to punitive suffering, often torture as eternal punishment. It is home to various beings known as Demons and fallen angels. There are various Hell dimensions; whether they are separate from each other or different areas of a much larger dimensional plane has not been clearly explained, nor can it be confirmed due to the deceitful nature of the realm's/realms' various rulers.

RULERS

Many beings claim to be the ruler of Hell. These beings have all been referred to as Hell-Lords and have often worked with, or against, each other and have both referred to themselves and/or posed as the True Satan at one point or another. These rulers have included:

Metus Hellstar (Terror)

Sin Bin

Lucifer

Marduk Kurios (the True Satan)

Mephisto

Satannish

Thog the Nether-Spawn

Pavor Hellstar (Panic)

At the location in Hell known as the Devil's Advocacy, the throne of the Biblical Satan sits unoccupied, with the various Hell-Lords being unwilling to claim it for themselves lest it spark a war between them. However, a ritual called the Descent can be enacted to determine which of the Hell-Lords will ascend to sit on Satan's throne and become the supreme ruler of all the Hells.

Most of the Hell-Lords preside over their own personal Hell dimensions - most prominently the one ruled over by Mephisto - and often claim that their realms are the Biblical Hell as a form of propaganda. However, the Hell-Lords are bound by a pact to keep their realms separate, though some - such as Lilith the Mother of All Demons - harbour the ambition of merging the Hells together into a single realm ruled over by one king and/or queen.

Hell is many things, among them a mirror of the collective unconscious.

20th CENTURY

One of the most active demons claiming to be Satan during the 20th century was the demon that empowered the Black Widow in 1928. This Satan had the Black Widow bring him the souls of the wicked and those who violated deals that he had made with them. The first of these was criminal Lester Maddox, who killed the Black Widow's sister, Debbie. Accounts of other souls that the Black Widow has brought to this Hell-realm included James Wagler, Garvey Lang, and war profiteers Lewis and Sykes. The Black Widow was also sent to Germany during World War II to collect the souls of Nazi soldiers due to the fact that their leader, Adolf Hitler, had apparently violated some pact that he had made with the Black Widow's master.

One region of Hell was briefly run like an Earth-style business in 1942. Dubbed "Hades Inc.", it was run by a demon calling himself Lucifer Satan (or L.S. for short). They claimed to have been responsible for Hitler's rise to power. They also sent one of their agents to the town of Arbor City in the United States and, as local celebrity Victor Risling, entered into politics in order to spread his message of hate and prejudice. Risling was defeated and exposed by the other-dimensional being the Vision. In 1943, a demon calling himself Satan and his mistress claimed that they were involved in Hitler's rise to power. Unimpressed with the progress that Hitler was making during the war, they decided to replace him with Attila the Hun. This plot was foiled by the Destroyer.

Following his death, a Totenkopf impersonator found his soul in an unspecified Hell-realm ruled by the Master Judge of the Lower Depths, calling himself "Satan". He tricked this Satan to pull the soul of Shield Spider into this realm. There, both men battled for their freedom, with Shield Spider ultimately winning his freedom by defeating Totenkopf.

POINTS OF INTEREST

The realm is broken down into nine sections or "Circles", They were described by Dante Alighieri in his book Inferno during his journey into the depths of Hell.

• Limbo: the First Circle of Hell is a nether-realm or void in which souls go before they are judged to go to Heaven or Hell. The Gateway to Hell can be found here. Once through the gate, the souls are ferried along the River Styx by the ferryman Charon to the Second Circle to be judged.
• The Second Circle of Hell is home to the souls of the lustful and King Minos, who judges souls and decides in what level they will reside for all eternity.
• The Third Circle of Hell is home to the souls of the gluttonous and guarded by the three-headed hellhound Cerberus.
• The Fourth Circle of Hell is home to the souls of the greedy.
• The Fifth Circle of Hell is where the Swamp of Wrath is located.
• The Sixth Circle of Hell is home to the souls of heretics and the fiery city of Dis, home to hordes of demons.
• The Seventh Circle of Hell is home to the souls of murderers and those souls who committed violence.
• The Eighth Circle of Hell is distinguished from its predecessors by being made up of those who consciously and willingly committed fraud.
• The Ninth Circle of Hell is home to the souls of the treacherous and is the place in which Satan resides.

Some invocations and mentions present Hell as having only seven circles. Another invocation mentions the "ten unholy levels of Hell".

RESIDENTS

Demons