Desc_Pandemonium: Its walls stand tall and utilitarian, forming a line that rises in places the height of forty men.  Outside, white-washed walls reflect the red magma and wine that flow just beneath the chapped wrinkle of Hell’s ground.  Inside, the light is softer, darker, more pleasing to the night eye.  The streets bustle with the figures of demons and spirits about their daily duties.  Passages, snickleways, corridors, and alleys web the spaces between each building as if part of some great, elaborate design.  --From “A Spiritual Handbook and Practicing Guide to the Afterlife” by Anonymous

Desc_Dis: The city is primarily wooden structures, but its walls are iron and stone, and they are capped with a parapet against which atheists and agnostics lean, facing outward.  In the fields below, fires ignite and die at the whim of passing demons.  The figures atop the walls dangle limbs over the edge, pulling them away once the heat grows too much.  And the figures inside--the ones at ground level--look up and ask if anything has changed.  --Encyclopedia Infernal

Desc_HellGate: Lucifer:  (To Beezlebub.)  Open the gates and stake the doors.  Slaughter the drafts and leave their bodies along the road, but bring their tackle with us.  Our threshold is open to those obliged to enter.  Welcome them.  (To the audience.)  Some will be confused.  --1.2.64-66 from Epistemol’s “On Issue of a Pin’s Head”

Desc_TempleDamned: At the height of sixty men stands a tiered temple of painted marble.  Each level tells a story through its marbled statues and filigreed edifices.  The story is the decline and ostracism of one of Hell’s most revered legions.  It’s as old as Hell itself, and this story is often used to coerce lesser demons into submission.  Occasionally, if one is patient, one may see the form of a skeleton walk along the ledges.  It will touch the figures forever locked in time: some holding a spear to the sky, others falling below a sword’s swing.  --Private note by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_PitsTartarus: I submitted Malcolm to Tartarus three cycles ago.  He had a gangly mouth full of long, thin teeth that seemed claustrophobic and perhaps more problematic than functional.  I had submitted seven others to the pit, but those were through my pen, and I felt uncomfortably empowered condemning a demon to Tartarus with my foot on his back.  Actions toward a larger purpose should be the lost details of history.  --From the diary of Bishop Bezel

Desc_Erebus: Atop the rock and clinkstone sit incestuous Night and Darkness.  This is the place of their cruel deed.  Here lies the spot where black snake and toad sparked in the womb.  The highest point of Hell is also its lowest.  Even lesser demons know they should not take to their own blood.  --Note by an unknown hand slipped into a book of mythology in the Infernal Library

Desc_UnholyFountain: In its center stood a copper lion, green from patina around the snout, mane, and up the hind legs.  He looked down into the fountain.  His forelegs pushed on the helmet of a giant, also of copper, who appeared to sink into the basin.  From the lion’s mouth flowed ink.  And that ink peppered the ground and the basin’s lip much like grains of sand crowding a time glass.  --Private note by Archivist Epistemol concerning bio-constructed monuments and other phenomena destroyed then recreated during The Great Heretical Cleanse of ArchBishop Maxiiillius

Desc_WoodSuicides: This region carries the appearance of an unresolved celebration.  Long things of various widths sway underneath the trees.  The ground glitters from the light reflected off the many tiny things that blanket the ripple of roots, the rocks, and the places where earth separates as if it were a healing wound.  Missing, however, is sound.  --Private note by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_PalaceFire: There’s an iron gate around the Lake of Fire.  There are forty thousand dark forms atop the lake with their hands over their heads, or arms outstretched, or kneeling as if searching for something underneath its surface.  But beyond the flicker of red and these dark forms stands the wavering image of a fortress built with the color of gold and the turn of a woman’s hip.  This is the place where the Choir hold their council, and a pen from here can fell more than any vorpal blade.  --Private note by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_TreeWoe: Its limbs have long since dropped those broad, waxy leaves that once colored it red and orange and yellow.  Its trunk splits midway up, and each half of the tree branches those thin, bent limbs that seem to race outward as if trying to be the farthest thing from the ground.  Where its roots take earth is where one will find those remains.  A white figure leaned into the pocket of a curling root.  Another white form: feet reclined, and head against a tapering root that descends into the ground only to buckle out again and descend once more.  --Private note by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_GardenD: A chair sits inside to the left of its metal portcullis, and from that chair one can pluck the bodies of women, men, or beasts from a canopy of supple branches.  Here, consumption is King, and all who enter reveals their own chair at a higher seat than any others.  --Private note by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_PillarSkulls: The Pillar Skulls is a totem of large, squat skulls with enlarged proportions and exaggerated facial features, each representing a Son of Typhon lost to battle.  Closer observation reveals the etchings of stairs that circle upward and around the pillar’s girth.  The stairs are masked by the contours of teeth, jaws, and those cranial grooves indicative of battle.  --The Diabolic Encyclopedia

Desc_VatsOfT: Carved from rock are two drums of twenty leagues depth: one filled with wax, the other soft down of a Muscovy.  Those bearing no wings come here often to smell the thick air of molten wax, read some, and then touch the statue depicting two winged creatures perched on a rock and pointing skyward.  Torment is no physical action; it is providing the components of something far from attainable.  --From the private notes of Bishop Bezel

Desc_WheelPain: It seems as if mechanical issues plague the wheels, my Lord.  The paddles that turn the liquid are broken, or at least stripped, and there is no resistance when they push against these magma and wine channels.  I have ordered Pontius to expedite its repair, and I will have him report to you.  In the meantime, our drivers will flog the demons who idle without work.  --Letter from Master Driver Vilt to ArchBishop Maxiiillius of the High Council and Lord Lucifer’s Choir

Desc_MinesGehenna: The Mines of Gehenna are closed pits where demons discard their rubbish and the bodies of those not worthy of ceremonial cremation.  The fires within these holes never cease, and it is rumored that the mines connect to the Earth’s core, sufficiently heating the underworld.  Its pulley operators wear the hollowed shells of red-snap turtles, since fires of this temperature can score even the most thickened flesh.  --The Diabolic Encyclopedia

Desc_CitadelWrath: We cannot expect lesser demons and those below to understand their need of our sword, and it is for this reason we must build a citadel.  Just yesterday a fellow told me he was strong enough to defend against any attack, and that I was a fool and a tyrant for ensuring the security of masses by force.  He should not fear the individual assailant but the mind who organizes an army of them.  --Private note from Archbishop Maxiiilius

Desc_TempleLust: What an illusion!  Instead of rising the height of twenty men it descends into the earth an equal amount.  I walked inside and saw a hundred thousand unclothed forms squirming in the peak of its depth.  The heat was immense as was the smell of moist, mottled skin.  Along the pit’s four ladders hung the forms of other figures: touching, moving, forming a contiguous chain of flesh that seemed without head nor tail.  I feared that upon descending I would never return.  --From the diary of Suffragan Pazul

Desc_VaultsAvarice: Rumor claims that vined fruit line its walls and coins guild its floors.  According to some, there is enough saltpeter to make a powder which would ground any building in Pandemonium.  Others say a harem reclines inside, and its women grow pale and thin from the lack of Hell’s natural light.  Things kept inside are not meant for public pleasure.  It is as if Hell’s most fruitful bounty shall be consumed by a single mouth.  --Private notes by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_WallEnvy: I wrote my name upon that wall.  It was tiny at first, and I was afraid of its exposure to every eye, but then I realized I shouldn’t bear the shame so I scratched out that tiny name with a nail and wrote my name again.  Then I wrote his name beside mine in equal script.  He had been good to me, though part of that was enforced by his oath to the Choir.  --From the diary of Suffragan Pazul

Desc_PalaceGluttony: In the courtyard vines shoot from a stone half-wall.  They run the wall’s length, cross the pebbled path, and enter the palace through a small square window in the brick.  From there they travel the hall: curling up and down; twirling around a sconce; racing towards the stairs where the hall ends.  They descend the wooden steps and drill their tapering bodies into a pile of chicken bones and the cloven feet of swine.  Apricots, peaches, and pomegranates the size of a boar’s head grow from that vine, and they grow with purpose to satiate all.  --Note by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_TowerPride: Behind its gold edifice, burlap and stick web upward then double over at three-quarters the way up.  Seven chairs of equal fashion sit in its throne room.  Yet one is large, one sits afore an ottoman, and one in the middle sits slightly higher than the rest.  Occasionally the forms of large beasts fill these chairs, but mostly not.  Mostly, the tower commands silence.  --Private note by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_TheaterSloth: In the amphitheater’s center are seventeen straight-back chairs in which sit the emaciated bodies of seventeen pale men.  Their heads, gaunt and hollow, lay to whichever side they’ve happened to rest, and their arms, nothing more than tissue spread over bone, dangle, brushing their knuckles against the wood of the seats.  They don’t move nor do they speak.  In fact, they show no life save the soft rise of their chests or the occasional close of a mouth.  The audience always watches but is never the same.  Figures enter and sit while others gather their belongings and leave.  --Note by Archivist Epistemol

Desc_AltarDespair: The altar is a large, stone square at the peak of an equally wide rise of stairs.  The stairs ascend by sixty counts, and the flat altar atop stands seven fathoms at its highest point from the sloping land.  From the edges of the altar where the parapet ends to expose a clean, straight edge, figures hang from the sides.  Mostly they hang alone, though in spots they form chains of two or more by grappling arms and legs.  They don’t fall far, so these figures squirm before they stop.  --The Diabolic Encyclopedia

Desc_FaceSand: It is the last remnants of ground treaded by a being of light who descended into Hell and free captives, the most noteworthy of whom are Adam and Eve.  The face is of a bearded man, young but weathered around the temples, though most of his details have softened into dust with the passing of time.  Left now are the contours of a nose and these great depressions of eyes.  --The Diabolic Encyclopedia

Desc_AltarAbomination: I have taken his writings that I found to the Altar and have ensured that even their ashes were disposed.  He will not recant--I am sure of this--so we are left with no choice but to remove this member of the Choir by force.  Even though it is a place to submit words to the fire, the Altar, I feel, is also suitable for our bishop.  I will council with Balphegor before acting on haste.  --Note signed by Moloch

Desc_BronzePyramid: In the belly of the pyramid lay a cache of metals from which my employer would melt and form the alloys of a war machine.  Securing them would not be easy, and I was the twelfth demon commissioned--and the only one still upright--to take these materials by force.  Later, I would learn that twenty-seven others were approached after my recruitment.  Had I known my employer’s desperation, I would have negotiated myself a more lucrative arrangement.  --From Xlaxiov’s “By Might and Reason”

Desc_CryptsTyrants: After three millennia of collective service within Tartarus, the forms of four demons will be reunited to their spirits and prepared for final burial.  As you know, these are Warlords Pluri and Donovant, Greater Demon Apollyon, and Peer Nahema.  Senior Engineer Pontis of the IO Engineers personally selected the site to construct this crypt and black cathedral.  Brothers, let us convene under its shadow.  --Oration delivered by Dlexvia, Archbishop of the South, to Lucifer’s Choir upon the deliverance of four souls from Tartarean service

Desc_MouthAbbadon: Upon the call of five horns the head of a locust will rise from the ground and spew forth fire and snow from its mouth.  Those who have greatly wronged others in the afterlife will draw toward the white of its mouth yet will be consumed by its red.  Ensure that each present wrong is either lashed into your flesh or worth its cost in the end.  --Prophecy XXI from “The Book of Infernal Assertions”

Desc_PillarsMalebolge: They are marble and plain, almost to the point of mere functionality.  Grouped in complementary pairs that run the length of thirty-two fathoms, the pillars total sixteen unique structures in its stretch.  Their heights vary since their tops illustrate the effects of a past battle.  Some retain their canopies, others not.  What litters the ground between them: deeds, wills, and various forms of binding documents.  --The Diabolic Encyclopedia

Desc_IronStaircase: Its balusters are the twisted femurs of the lame.  They are weathered, almost woody in texture, and they have the dull shine of an old tooth.  The treads are wrought iron as are the handrails that spiral up with it.  Formerly, humans descended these stairs into Hell, but as sciences have increased human capacity to make and sustain life, so have the Infernal Engineers designed an entrance of wider berth.  --The Diabolic Encyclopedia

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