Extract from the Liber Diabolus Domus, written by the Pravaii
Hierophant. As such some of his comments may have a distinct bias
towards Pravaii supposed superiority.;
"The Nine Hells, also known as the Pit, the Terror and Killar's Realm,
are a set of inter-dimensional realms of existence outside of our own.
What is unknown is whether they existed before the Gods came to
Tal'Vorn or if Killar and the Dark God created them for their own uses.
This single point of contention has caused hundreds of years of debate
within the Life Sect, the Dark Sect and those who worship Killar. The
Elves, being one of the few truly immortal Races and thus with more
right to make their beliefs known, believe that the Nine Hells are
indeed the creation of Killar and the Dark God, known also as the
Corruptor.
When Killar came to Tal'Vorn, he found that the true world was not a
suitable place for his offspring to live, the land being far to clean
and bright, missing the essential darkness and blood that Killar longed
for. Instead the Bloody Handed Slayer sought out a way to create a
world where his own creatures could live. He failed. Killar is not a
good known for his knowledge of magic, his skill at creation or his
attention to detail, preferring instead to simply slaughter anything
and everything that stood against him. Indeed it could well have ended
there, Killar leaving Tal'Vorn as a world hopeless for his Demons, but
something else happened.
The Corruptor approached Killar, as was his wont, and used guile to
persuade the Lord of Slaughter to allow them to aid each other. When
Killar agreed, the Dark God tore open a hole in space-time, revealing
the Nine Hells to the Blood Gods raging eyes. Seeing in that torment
ridden place a world that He could control and make His own, Killar is
said to have laughed aloud with the sheer vicious joy of it and stepped
forth into that hellish dimension. What the Dark God failed to tell
Killar was that once within, the Lord of Slaughter would not be able to
escape again.
Killar did not realize this for many centuries, so focused was He upon
populating the Nine Hells with his demonic legions. He, however, could
not access the Sixth Tier of Hell, called the 'Tier of Despair' in some
of the older texts available. This was because the Dark God has taken
that place to be His own realm, preventing Killar's access. Perhaps
inevitably, Killar grew tired with his realm, desiring to walk the
mortal lands once more, to drench his hand in the blood of the living
once again.
It is said that more Demons were born in the moments after Killar
discovered that He was trapped then at any other time in Tal'Vorn
existence. He raged uncontrollably and constantly and indeed still
rages against His imprisonment, more and more Demons born from his
anger with each passing moment. This, it seemed, was the Dark Gods
plan, to trap Killar and his legions in a place where they could no
longer effect the Dark Gods scheming.
However the plan was not as successful as the Dark God hoped. Humans
arrived on Tal'Vorn and VCealic began to gather the allegiance of the
Races. The DragonKing sought out the Demons for many months, knowing
that their power would be unfathomably useful in the coming war. Yet he
was unable to fined any trace of the Bloody Handed Slayer or His
creations. So, in desperation, Vralic turned to his God for aid.
Shaltar, knowing that Vralics desires and aims where just, tore open
the bounds of the Nine Hells far enough for the DragonKing to speak
with the God of Slaughter.
It is said that negotiations between God and Dragon took weeks, Killar
only able to speak when his rage subsided, a rare occurrence. Finally
they reached and accord. Though Killar himself was physically still
trapped, He was granted the ability to project a part of himself into
reality, allowing him to directly speak with morals once more. Vralic,
and thus the DragonGod Shaltar, then permitted a certain number of
Demons through into reality on the condition that they would assist
during the Great War.
Though this sort of agreement may seem an anthesis to Kiallr, be
understood that the Bloody Handed Slayer is not actually an 'evil' God
but more of a God without the normal set of morals to guide Him. Thus
he could see the reason and the benefits behind such a plan clearly
enough when he was not angered. With the bonds of his prison thus
weakened, Killar's Demons could slay in his name once more, the life
blood of the dying feeding Killar and increasing his power.
The Great War was, in Killar's eyes at least, absolutely glorious. Blood
shed on a scale never before seen, murder, slaughter and destruction,
all of it feeding the Lord of Slaughter, allowing him to force more
Demons through into reality. This is an exponential course. As more
Demons enter Tal'Vorn the more Demons there are to kill in Kiallr's
name and thus the more Demons that can be unleashed. It is said that
Kiallr will only ever be free when the Nine Hells are empty.
Yet this would take millennia and Killar is not a patient God. Shortly
after regaining His partial freedom, Killar came across something that
caught His eye, almost confusing the God. He had discovered the
Pravaii, the sorry remnants of the Elven separatists.
Being a God, Killar could see what lay within their hearts, their
burning desire for vengeance and immortality, the only things that had
kept the Race breeding and eking out a meager existence in the harsh
Grey Land. The idea was a simple one. Corrupt the Pravaii further and
then grant them immortality once more, but with a heavy price. If the
Pravaii were desperate enough then they would accept. And once they had
accepted and had a taste of immortality once more, then Killar could
demand more and more for less and less.
Killar appeared before the Pravaii Hierophant as a blood covered skull,
dripping with gore and strips of ragged flesh. Though the Hierophant
was in no way impressed by Killar's appearance, the Pravaii did agree
to Kiallr's proposal. One year of immortality for a single Pravaii for
every soul sacrificed in His name. From that moment Killar's power has
increased exponentially, more and more Demons pouring though into
reality from the Nine Hells. Killar himself drives his creations on
into ever more twisted expressions of blood lust and killing, howling
out the Slaughter God's name as the drink the blood of the living.
The Demons themselves are as varied a group of individuals as any of
the other Races of Tal'Vorn. Each is unique in the same way that each
human is unique, but they can also be loosely grouped into the emotions
that they represent. Broadly speaking, the majority of the Demons that
walk Tal'Vorn will be Slaughter, Rage or Anger Demons. However there
are many more types of Demon that exist within the Nine Hells, each
showing within itself he very living embodiment of some sort of
negative emotion.
Slaughter, Rage, Hate, Anger and Fury Demons focus upon killing for
killings sake and are the most common image summoned up when people
think of Demons. They are hulking, powerful beings that lust for combat
and the feel of blood upon their skin. Typically bestial or monstrous
in their appearance, these types of Demons are abhorrent to behold but
only in the way that a wild animal is.
Lust Demons are perhaps the most normal of all the Demons, at least in
external appetence. They seduce their victims before killing them and
are thus pleasing to the eye and to the mind. Yet they have another
form, equally beautiful as their illusion and yet also deeply
disturbing. Each of these 'true' forms is unique to the individual
Demons, but each is both terrifying and strangely fascinating.
The most horrific to the eye however are probably the Fear and Terror
Demons, monsters whose sole purpose is to instill absolute
soul-chilling, heart-stopping terror into their victim. They do so in a
number of ways, some of the Demons simply causing an aura of such horror
that it drives men mad who approach the Demons, some seek to terrify
unsuspecting civilians in the dark of where they are not expected, some
take great care and pleasure from working with Dementia Demons to drive
a person insane with fear, uncertainty, doubt and paranoia. However the
Demons choose to do their work however, the outcome is always the same.
Death.
Cruelty Demons are just that, unthinkably cruel. Whilst all of the
other Demons will kill you relatively quickly, Cruelty Demons take
to thoroughly tormenting their victims to death, either through pain, fear,
sorrow, anger or blood loss it matters not to the Cruelty Demon. They
are bizarre creatures, festooned with torture devices and barbed
knives, designed to cut and harm with horrific ease and terrifying
precision.
Greed and Hunger Demons work opposed, dividing their victims between
each other in an effort to outdo the other, one with starvation and the
other with gluttony and avarice. They embody the spirit of what drives
creatures to these extremes of physical existence and thus physically
are perfect representations of what they are. Greed Demons are covered
in jewelry and expensive clothing hides their immense bulk, whilst
the Hunger Demons are emaciated and skeletal, dressed in rags and
strips of dirty cloth.
Insanity and Dementia Demons are some of the rarest of all of Killar's
children, a confusing fact when you bear in mind that Killar himself is
indeed irredeemably insane. The Demons themselves are mad, gibbering
creatures that take a twisted delight in inflicting their own madness
upon the minds of other living things upon Tal'Vorn. As for their
appearance, none can say, for anyone who has been close to an Insanity
Demon is no fit condition to talk about it afterwards and those who are
approached by a Dementia Demon have to invariably be killed to stop
their blood-fuelled, insane rampages. These sorts of Demons are perhaps
the highest threat to any ordered society for hunting them down is
almost impossible without highly specialized and exceedingly rare
weaponry and equipment.
Night Daemons are the rulers of the Demons. Indeed it is said that they
are a different breed to the other Demons, a different sort of creature
all together that simply works with and controls Killar's minions
without actually being one of them in the strictest sense of the word.
It is true that they represent no specific emotion or expression of
existence and that they do appear to have total free will over their
own bodies, their actions and their choices. They are perfect in
appearance ,though several things mark them out as what they are. Their
skin is always a pitch black and their eyes milky white. Some of them
have cloven hooves instead of feet, or bat like wings or horns emerging
from their temples. They are both strong and powerful with magic,
expressing the true aspects of Blood Magic in their spells and
incantations. Truly they are the rulers of the Demon Race and fully
deserve their extended name of Daemon.
The Nine Hells are a twisted set of dimensions, each interlinked and
yet very separate, each of them unique and possessing of it's own
landscape and craft. The First of the Hells, named the Hell of Truth,
is identical to reality with one notable exception. If it could
possibly have gone wrong in reality then in the First Hell it did. If a
toss of a coin is the difference between life and death then in the
First Hell you will die.
The Second through Fifth Hells are the Elemental Hells, worlds that
each fully represent the true aspects of a single element in it's full
power. Indeed three of these Hells are home to three of the Gods. The
Second Hell, the Hell of Fire, is a burning world, the very ground
aflame and the sky ablaze. It is beyond hot, the very mind unable to
comprehend the horror of an entire world aflame, where flesh runs like
water with the heat and even metal simply evaporates with the heat.
The Third Hell is the Hell of Water. A frozen sphere filled within
endless water it is actually home to many millions of types of fish and
deep sea creature, each feeding upon each other, the water lit by the
power of it's greatest resident. There, in the centre of this watery
paradise, is the palace of the God of Water, Hydros himself. Here the
Laughing God is free, without the plotting and machinations of the
other Gods. In the Third Hell He can create the creatures He so adores,
the living fish and other beings of the sea.
The Fourth Hell is simply a hunk of solid stone, the Hell of Earth, run
through with endless seams of riches and precious metals, filled with
jewels and weight of gold unimaginable. Though it is named a Hell it is
also the Heaven of the Dwarves, where their creator, Terra the Earth
God, takes their souls when the Dwarves die.
The final and fifth Elemental Hell is starkly different to the other
three. It is simply there, an endless expanse of existence with no
land, water or living being within it. It is the Hell of Air and the
realm of Aeros the Sky Lord. He revels in it's emptiness, in the
bottomless and roofless freedom of existence than such a place allows
him to live in, the fearless joy that is his and his alone to explore.
The Sixth Hell is the Hell of Despair and is totally under the control
of the Dark God, also known as the Corrupter. The Corrupter maintains
an iron grip over his benighted realm, permitting no light to exist
within the Hell, and demanding nothing more or less then absolute
obedience from those He has trapped within the darkness.
The Seventh Hell is controlled by Killar, a flat wasteland called the
Hell of DemonKind and is the one true home of all the Demons, the place
where they are spawned and where they grow into the monsters that they
will become. It is highly segregated, each type of Demons residing with
others of it's own type and war between the types is very common,
especially as most of the Demons will simply kill anything nearby by
just because it is there. In the centre of the Hell is the location of
the entrance into Tal'Vorn, a weeping sore in reality that opens
periodically for a brief time. When the rift opens it sparks of a
flurry of movement across the Hell and indeed from the Eighth Hell as
the Demons and the Night Daemons fight each other for a chance to break
through into reality and gift blood to their God.
The Eight Hell is the smallest and is called the Hell of Night. As the
name suggests it is the home of the Night Daemons and was shaped to
their will long ago into an immense castle upon a floating spire of
stone. However it contains no link to Tal'Vorn and thus the Night
Daemons must travel to the Seventh Hell, fight through the endless
ranks of the Demons just for a chance to spill blood and cause chaos in
the name of Killar. Of course the creatures have many advantages
compared to the Demons, especially within the Eighth Hell. It is said
that only one human has ever managed to step foot within the Hell of
Night and that he is still there, cowering and gibbering in the depths
of the castle, surviving off the scraps of flesh that the Night Daemons
do not eat, unable to escape and to afraid for his soul to kill himself.
The final Hell, the Ninth Hell, is Killar's Prison. Nothing can exist
within the Ninth Hell other then Killar Himself, the raging God filling
the confines of His own Hell from end to end, constantly screaming to
be free, to rend and tear the flesh of the living, His screams echoing
always out into the other Hells, driving His creations into a frenzied
euphoria of blood letting and slaying, all in a vain attempt to appease
Killar, to somehow allow Him to regain some sort of sanity, some sort
of grip upon reality.
Killar is the God of the Demons and he represents what they truly are.
Blood thirsty, raging creatures that are, above everything else, one
thing in importance. The Demons are totally, utterly, and without any
chance of redemption or cure, insane.
BLOOD IN KILLAR'S NAME! SLAUGHTER FOR THE SLAUGHTER GOD! HEARTS FOR THE GOD OF MURDER!
Demon War Cry, spoken by a Hate Demon
free, I will be free, let me loose I demand it, I beg it, set me free
to kill and tear and reND AND CLAW AND BITE AND SLASH AND FEAST UPON
THE LIVINGS BLOOD and to walk upon Tal'Vorn again, to feel the sunlight
upon my flesh, yes flesh upon my lips aND IN MY BELLY AND SWEET, SWEET
BLOOD WITHIN MY THROAT that I may just exist, oh set me free I cry for
freedom and I must have it for my cage will drive me mad, insane,
demENTED WITHOUT HOPE OF FREEDOM, I MUST HAVE MY FREEDOM LEST IT
DESTROY ME and I be lost without all hope
Extract from Killar's ramblings. This goes on constantly and has been so for the last thousand years.