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Disclaimer
Some parts of this book are taken almost verbatim from published materials for Kult. I did this to centralize this material, not to claim credit for it; I wanted to save people the trouble of having to look in the rulebook, Legions of Darkness, the Metropolis Sourcebook, and here, in order to have a complete picture of things. All material that is directly lifted from a published Kult product is preceded by a tilde (~) in order to distinguish it.
Sidotta Rimice was a child in the Italian countryside during the second world war. She and her parents hid in a barn, when fighters were flying overhead; a dropped bomb set fire to the barn and its hay. Her parents were killed in that barn, and her legs were crushed under a falling beam. For the next four days, she passed in and out of hallucinations, she lost blood, went hungry, cannibalized her parents' corpses, while waiting for rescue.
She went insane, a little bit.
Her rescuers found her, a little mad crippled girl, sated from the raw meat her parents' dead bodies offered. In blood-her own blood, her parents' blood, and many other people's blood-she had drawn symbols over the beam that pinned her to the ground. These were the maps of hell, pathetic blasphemies in the eyes of some, powerful occult lore to others.
These were the maps of hell, never published before, until now. Today, on the tenth anniversary of the day Sidotta Rimice was cruelly vivisected by satanists, who wanted to study her brain for hell's secrets. It is in the memory of a sad life, a mad life, that we now publish Sidotta Rimice's seminal Maps of Hell.
"Down through circles and trenches. Down and down into the screaming rock and the molten flesh of Hell.
"Down where lovers, who have promised never to part, are fused together in a tangle of shrieking flesh. Towering, selfless love turned into hate and madness.
"Down through infinite arctic wastes where people wander alone and naked and freezing, never reaching any destination.
"Through the streets of suffering cities where the stones of the houses bleed and beg forgiveness. Where taps drip and fires don't light and hearts burn endlessly,
"Where men and women are made monstrously huge. Bodies so big they cannot move. They can only scream and cry out as other damned creatures burrow and build in their flesh.
"Down and down.
"And down through the pointless grinding banality of Hell."
~Grant Morrison
~Inferno is the reality that our torture rooms, prisons, mental hospitals and death camps are a small visible part of. When the illusions crumble in these places, we see into Inferno. It is the home of death angels and razides, where they were once created by evil powers.
~People who believe in the punishment of sins go to Inferno after death. Some few have managed to escape, or were able to turn back when they realized that it was only their own bad conscience that was taking them there. Most remained. Inferno is full of tormented people, but fewer and fewer people go there after death in our time.
~Those parts of Inferno that are closest to our world are what we call the seven layers of Hell. Ialdabaoth (Astaroth) has ruled there for as long as anyone can remember. Here the death angels roost in their black palaces. The upper levels are beginning to be emptied of inhabitants, and it is not uncommon to find empty, dusty hells, from which the death angels and razides have fled into our world to create new purgatories for the living.
~When Ialdabaoth (Astaroth) stepped into our world, he brought with him ten legions of condemned sinners who had been tortured for centuries and subdued into becoming his servants. Pain and humiliaton has turned them into ruthless sadists who see pain as their only reason to exist.
~Today, people who seek to atone for their sins more often get in direct touch with nepharites, who create a personal hell for the sinner they serve. These personal places of torment are called purgatories. A person with feelings of severe guilt can more or less unconsciously get contact with the nepharites, who read his innermost feelings and create a purgatory for him. Many artifacts can be used to summon nepharites.
~Inferno is a vast torture chamber, not just for humans but also for other creatures. It is filled with devilish machines, burning furnaces, unbearable prison cells and unrelenting tormentors. Most of Inferno consists of halls and rooms, connected by stairs, elevators, shafts, and corridors. In some places there are cities and lifeless landscapes. Inferno is not just a system of caves underground. A dark sky looms over the torture chambers. Here and there, shafts open toward the starless void. It is a separate world, which can be reached through the underworld or through gates in our earthly hells. The Demiurge used Inferno in his labors to keep humanity subdued, but it is probably much older than that.
Inferno was once a thriving bureaucracy, efficiently executing its function: to expunge the memories of the dead, in order to make sure no one Awakens. But Inferno has fallen into chaos since Astaroth (also known as Ialdabaoth) has forsaken his charge, and chosen instead to gather power in the Illusion, to rally his forces against Metropolis.
Once, someone from Egypt would go to Sekhet-Aaru, where dog-headed men would rip her heart out and weigh it against a feather - a lifetime of acculturation would make those images especially terrifying. But now, someone from Egypt could just as easily find herself demolished in a Navajo afterlife, where demons and images from an alien culture torture her in ways she would never have expected.
A poverty-stricken man might find himself being tortured for a rich man's sins, a promiscuous man tortured for a woman's life in abstinence. Nothing makes sense anymore; the punishment no longer fits the crime. In a way, the sheer injustice of Inferno now makes damnation all the more horrifying.
Still, the time-honored tortures remain; although their victims were intended for different punishment, there still is no leniency or forgiveness anywhere. No one feels they've gotten off easy, just because they're not being punished for their own crimes.
The Dead Sun
~In the starless sky that can sometimes be glimpsed between slats and roof windows in Inferno, a black sun is burning. It hangs still in the sky and looks down over a desolate world. To see the dead sun is a terrifying experience and demands an ego throw of 10 or more to avoid shock.
The Seven Levels of Hell
Gehenna - The Waste Land
Gehenna is the only outdoors part of all Inferno, an endless waste land of broken glass. Gehenna is Inferno's highest level, through which all the dead must pass. This is why Gehenna is sometimes called "The Gates of Death." Broken glass lines its desert ground-glass that laughs meanly when you cut your feet, thirsty glass. Wisps of fire blow in its dry air, and dark shapes in the sky hunt out travellers. Since Gehenna is a vast, deserted space, offering no cover, seeing a dark shape coming for you out of the gray sky can be a harrowing experience.
Here you can find Rats' Alley, where the dead men lose their bones. An exiled razide called Moloch also stalks these wastes, an old man with horns and a swollen, deformed penis, who gibbers wordlessly while he hunts the escaped souls of children. Above Gehenna, in the airy void, a strange being called Lilith smolders-half razide, half creature of passion, she and her mutant offspring, the succubi and incubi, hunt these lands in a predatory sexual frenzy.
Sha'are Mawet - The Watery Hell
The waters of Sha'are Mawet are often referred to as "rivers," "lakes," and "seas," but these euphemisms pale in the dark light of the truth. More accurate adjectives would be "sewers" and "cesspits."
Acheron, the river of hate, winds nine times around Sha'are Mawet, closing in the rest of the damning waters, and the bizarre blank spaces, in which the waters hang. The waters of the Styx aren't water at all; these churning fluids are the remnants of what were once human beings. An eddy of Klansman rises in stark bitumen against a blob of what was once a Black Power activist; no memory of the crimes that motivated any of this hatred remains, only vile abhorrence.
The only way to cross the Acheron is to be ferried across by the boatman, Phlegyas. He waits at the Lethe Wharf, the only solid surface to be found in Sha'are Mawet, other than his ferry. Phlegyas is almost four meters tall, and is very, very thin; his face seems to be made of decomposing flesh, over a World War II gas-mask where his skull should be, and long black robes that have been spattered with grotesque liquids. For a river crossing, he demands payment in fresh flesh-he has a penchant for eyelids. His boat is made of recent comers who refused to pay; slowly they liquify underneath Phlegyas and his passengers. Phlegyas has been known to be talked out of demanding payment; someone who promised to bring him the fresh eyelids of an Innuit, with their epicanthic folds, might be able to swindle him, or someone who offered to bring him a better, more modern gas-mask to be his skull.
The Acheron flows past three lakes: a lake of boiling gold to punish the greedy, a lake of freezing lead to punish the miserly, and a lake of iron shards to punish the abstinent. Of course, now that Inferno lacks the regularity and order that Ialdabaoth (Astaroth) brought to it, someone who experienced no greed at all might call out from the boiling gold he swims in, sentenced to eternal suffering.
The Acheron, if not crossed, flows out to Tohu Vi' Bohu, the Primal Sea, the uterine waters of first creation. Some mapmakers have located the Primal Sea elsewhere-not in Inferno, but in Metropolis, the Unreal City. This doesn't really make sense; Metropolis is comprised of skyscrapers, potholes, all the signs of urban decay; there is no sea in Metropolis. Also, spirits of the dead never go to Metropolis, as they travel the messy path from life to death to life again.
~Old buildings and towers stick out of the muck of the Primal Sea like atolls or reefs. Oberons, who direct the flow with their dams, swim around the Primal Sea seeking the foetuses that float under the surface by the hundreds in shoals. The Primal Sea itself seems to create them, but the oberons ignite a light at the center of the shoal, which seems to animate the foetuses in anticipation of what awaits them: Rebirth. Some of the buildings that protrude from the sea are inhabited. Parts of the Primal Sea are floating cemeteries of ships, large cracked tankers pouring out radioactive toxins, old steamers half sunk and spewing poisonous smoke. Grossly fat rats four feet long swim in currents of nerve toxin from rusty battleships. Bubbles rise, foul organic gases, testifying to strange chemical processes far beneath the surface, as if the sea itself was alive.
~If a character is so unfortunate as to fall into the sea, fail to swim and miss a +5 Ego throw, she has no chance to be retrieved. She will be reborn as a baby with her personality and memories intact.
Sha'are Zalmawet - The Hell of Seven Hells
At Sha'are Zalmawet, one is confronted by seven gates. There is a hell behind each gate, but only one of these hells-Kurnugia-can be passed through to Inferno's deeper levels. At each gate is a strange sight; a nepharite stands at each, like a carnival barker, trying to convince passers-by to enter the gate they guard, not one of the other gates.
Purgatides and prisoners in Samjiva, the Hell of Repetition, endlessly repeat the actions of their first few moments upon entering. In Kala-Sutra, the Hell of Black Coils, bodies are stretched out into long wire to constrict and tighten around other bodies; periodically, the coil and the coiled-around are allowed to switch places, and both feel they've gotten the worse end of the bargain. Millions of people are pressed into a tiny area in Samghata, the Crowded Hell; while all of Raurava, the Screaming Hell, is made of the compounded substance of spirits that have been there longer-whatever you touch screams, and you know that this will be your fate. Victims of Tapana, the Burning Hell, are scorched to ashes, and then the ashes re-form to be burned again, while those who enter the sixth gate, to Avici, the Hell of No End, find themselves dropped to the lowest level of Inferno, to Sheol.
The gate to Kurnugia is guarded by a nepharite called Rashnu. Once someone enters the gate, they have to cross a bridge so narrow it's sharper than a razor-blade. On the other side of the bridge there are stony caverns and a grisly tree called the Zacornu. Hideous, terrified, suffering human heads grow like fruit on the Zacornu, begging for death.
The heads growing on the Zacornu are tortured by an Awakened, not by a nepharite, although it might be difficult to tell the difference. Erlik, the Awakened, claims to have been the first man; his organs and bones are on the outside, and they glisten sickeningly-but he claims that humans are the false image of him, made inside-out, that he hates us for being such a distorted image of his beauty. He also claims the Zacornu was the tree whose fruit was forbidden.
Kurnugia is ruled by the razide Nergal, dead lord of Sha'are Zalmawet, and his adulterous wife Ereshkigal. It was Ereshkigal's lover, Namtaru, the spreader of plague, who killed Nergal, and yet Nergal continues to rule from his own grave, while Namtarue and Ereshkigal copulate over him.
Be'er Shahat - The Hell of Fire and Ice
Be'er Shahat is comprised of a frozen land and a fiery one, both underground.
Niflheim, the icy world of the dead, is guarded by Garm, a monstrous, three-headed dog, whose mouths and throats are caked with the dry blood of all who tried to escape from his mistress.
Hel, the razide mistress of Niflheim, is a beautiful woman above the waist, but below the waist she is all decayed and rotten. She experiences sexual pleasure from the maggots in her vagina. All in her presence experience the sensation of extreme starvation, famine. Hel is building a ship out of the dead, a tremendous boat that she intends to sail across the Atlantic Ocean at the world's end, in the endless winter that is to come.
The rest of Be'er Shahat is the fiery pits, where the Duat live, ancient triple goddesses seeking to avenge their exile by cooking souls alive and feeding them to the famine-stricken souls who have strayed too near to Hel.
Ti'it Ha-yawen - The Hell of Man's Making
Tartarus is here, the hell of the Greeks, and Sekhet-Aaru, the Egyptian hell, and the substance of Ti'it Ha-yawen is constantly remade to reflect new visions of hell.
Tartarus is closed in by iron gates. A three-headed razide named Hecate rules here, feasting on the entrailed of humans who have been executed or assassinated. She is aided by the three Hecatoncheires, nepharites who appear as thousands of hands and arms rising from the shadows, and by the kerea, hideous winged death-spirits that only exist in Ti'it Ha-yawen, one for each soul.
Ophion suffers prominently, a giant serpent with bloody, broken teeth. There are thousands of prugatides called "ixions" affixed to a burning wheels that revolve forever, and sisyphi condemned to push huge boulders up hills for all eternity, and tantali standing in pools of water that recede whenever they bend over to get a drink.
A razide called Anubis rules Sekhet-Aaru. Inside black pyramids, human hearts are torn out and weighed, with a feather as counterbalance. Those whose hearts are heavier than a feather are made to suffer eternal pain, blinded, given hot sand to drink, and are swarmed by stinging insects.
There is more, much more, in Ti'it Ha-yawen, all the hells humans have feared or imagined.
Abaddon - The Pit of Corruption.
Once Abaddon may have held more than just the City, but no one remembers such a time. Dis, the City of Anguish, is all there is to find in Abaddon now. Dis is where cities go, when they go to hell; when human feelings and association have given a city a life of its own, and that life must be expunged. Bars, cafes, restaurants, that "just aren't what they used to be," wind up here, being tortured, as is the entire city of Tenochtitlan. The Warsaw Ghetto, 1930s Paris and London, wherever human adoration of a city caused that city to gleam with its own, inner light, threatening to open up to Metropolis, that archetype of the city in its whole, these cities wind up destroyed physically by Lictors, and their emotional resonance comes to Dis to be ruined.
Functions of high society, gala affairs, go on through the evening, and then a swarm of nepharites comes in to desecrate the soiree-pissing in the champagne fountains, gang-raping the debutantes, sodomizing the eligble bachelors. The glamor of the day turns to horror, until the people who loved the city most come to hate their unending torment, and the city's own pretensions slough away. Walls can be heard crying, for the life that was once within their grasp.
~In Dis stand the dark citadels, home of the death angels and dark mirror images of the Archons' citadels in Metropolis. They are carved out of the rock deep underground, delving down where the Archons' citadels soar toward the sky. They stand mostly empty today, since the death angels have turned their attention on the world of the living.
~The dark citadels are not buildings which can be seen from without, but labyrinths down into the deep. From the abandoned upper levels, one meets more and more razides, nepharites, and doomed humans the further down one goes. Like the rest of Inferno, the dark citadels are places of torture for the souls of the damned. They are filled with a complete darkness that allows no light to penetrate or be created. To enter a dark citadel is a terrifying experience that demands an ego throw.
~The manifestation of the death angel penetrates each citadel and captures the minds of all who enter. Anyone with a negative mental balance immediately falls under the control of the death angel, and will blindly obey any impulse from the master of the citadel. Persons with a positive mental balance may resist these impulses by making an ego throw with an effect of 20+. Anyone with a mental balance of +250 or more is not affected. The mental balance of all people who enter goes down by one per hour they spend there, until it reaches -100.
~At the lowest level lies the true body of the resident death angel, as an impenetrable darkness. When it wants to meet its servants or visitors, the death angel takes shape as an incarnate.
~Thaumiel
~The citadel of Thaumiel is a huge palage thrust into Inferno. His subordinates, razides and other creatures of Inferno, reside in rows of great halls, and they are arrayed in strict hierarchy, from Princes to slaves. The pecking order is constantly altered through violent and bloody fights. The strongest dominate the weak ones. On the lowest steps of the ladders are the tormented human prisoners in the dungeons of the palace, who are at best servants to the razides.
~Humans coming to the citadel of Thaumiel submit to the power of the Death Angel, obeying blindly all strong enough to subdue them.
~Chagidiel
~Chagidiel's citadel is a prison camp for dead children, where the human servants of the Death Angel and their victims are tortured eternally. The citadel is formed by dark cells along endless corridors, torture chambers, and deep pits filled with prisoners. There are more Nepharites than Razides serving Chagidiel, torturing the imprisoned dead. The screams of the children echo in the citadel. All humans entering Chagidiel's citadel receive the shape of children, and their experiences and feelings are limited to those of a child.
~Sathariel
~Sathariel's citadel is a decayed maze filled with ancient creatures not existing anywhere else beyond the illusions. Her citadel has the same effect on humans as Gaia. Consciousness and culture disappear. Creatures of different species can mate and have offspring. Bestial creatures prowl the rooms and corridors searching for food and sex.
~Gamichicoth
~Gamichicoth's citadel is one of the smaller ones in Inferno and consists of endless rooms where heat or cold is unbearable and there is never enough water. No torturers are neededžthe dead cause each other to suffer in the struggle for water. Humans entering the citadel will, if they are unable to resist the Death Angel's influence, be seized by insatiable hunger and thirst. They will be prepared to do anything to get their hands on a cup of water and a piece of bread.
~Golab
~Golab's citadel is a huge torture chamber. Several million people are there being tortured by nepharites and razides. All humans entering the citadel, not being able to resist the influence of the Death Angel, will feel an irresistible desire to inflict and suffer pain.
~Hareb-Serap
~Hareb-Serap's citadel in Inferno is full of chaotic military camps and bloody battlefields, and is inahbited by legionnaries and razides in eternal battle with each other. They fight until all are dead, only to be resurrected and start the slaughter once again. Humans entering who are not able to resist the influence of the Death Angel are seized by bloodthirst and attack everyone who seems weak enough to be defeated.
~Samael
~Samael's citadel is a penal institution, where all imagined or real crimes are punished over and over again. With the exception of Golab, he is the Death Angel who has the greatest number of human prisoners in his citadel. Humans coming there, not being able to resist the influence of the Death Angel, are seized by a violent desire for revenge. They remind themselves of previous injuries, which will have to be paid for in blood and pain.
~Gamaliel
~His citadel is a torture chamber, inhabited by nepharites and razides specialized in sexual violence. Sex criminals are drawn to his Inferno after death. Humans come there and, lacking the ability to resist his influence, are seized by carnal urges and will sexually assault anyone whom they believe they are able to subdue.
~Nahemoth
(If you have run the scenario called "Teeth of Our Dreams," Nahemoth's citadel may have been destroyed.) ~Nahemoth's citadel is largely deserted-endless corridors and halls are filled with dust and lost memories. A few apathetic servants are seated here and there staring into the air, not having enough spirit even to budge. Humans entering this citadel without being able to resist the influence of the Death Angel are seized by a paralyzing apathy, and will slip down to the floor and stay there until something carries them away.
Sheol
A place of shadows and ghosts where the dead wander forever, outside of time. Boredom is perhaps the ultimate torture. All the shadows that once were men or women look exactly the same; some of them still walk around, although there is nothing to see or do anywhere. Most, however, sit or sprawl, gray on the gray ground, knowing nothing but the hollowness they feel and the hollowness in the eyes of everyone they see.
Those who come here feel as if they've always been here, as soon as they arrive, because time has stretched out into an eternal, unforgiving moment. Who knows? Perhaps only a few moments of our time pass, before these spirits bow down under the weight of their loneliness and forget, forget, forget everything; then they are drawn up to the Tohu vi' Bohu, the Primal Sea, to be reborn.
Paradise and its Devils
There is, of course, a Paradise, where the souls of those with positive mental balance go after death. It may not be what they expect. Much of Paradise is burned, and the corpses of angels who were killed have never been cleaned up; they rot in the ivory halls. Excesses of glory suddenly strike its residence with ecstasy enough to kill, blinding geometries or musics in a too-much of beauty that no one could withstand, let alone desire. Understanding that Inferno is even worse than Paradise, many souls here become sycophantic, serving the whims of the angels, who have taken every advantage in the absence of the Demiurge. Many of them keep harems or stables full of human souls, who thought they were coming here to be saved.
Many of the angels have fallen, gone to serve Ialdabaoth (Astaroth) since they could not survive without the Demiurge to tell them what to do. It was this defection that began the struggle that devastated Paradise. Notably, some of these fallen angels are Angra Mainyu, the Adversary; Lucifer, the Lord of Light; Belial, the Worthless; Mastema, the Great Enemy, who is half human, half fallen angel; Beelzeboul, the Lord of Excrement, who now lives in Dis; Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies; Azazel, Lord of the Wasteland, neglecting his duties in Gehenna; Ukoback, now assigned to keep hell's fires burning; Samiaza, Yomael, and Urakabarameel, who were the leaders of the fallen, and Xaphan, who set fire to Paradise.
Purgatories
"Within each hell are as many other hells, as varied as the sins that built them. Between Dante's Inferno and Sartre's stark room lies an immense expanse, as yet unexplored. For as soon as human though conceives a new version of Hell, that hell exists."
Alisa Kwitney
