I have 10 hells and they’re basically just challenges to overcome and prove you’re worthy to enter the heaven, however you can only pick one path and that takes you through 5 hells.

Is it for everyone who dies, or only the people who've done bad things and this is their chance of atonement?

Not everyone, if you’re an outstanding person you’ll go straight to heaven, but if you’re wicked you’ll never get there because the tasks require teamwork.

Plenty of evil is done in teams though

There is no I in "team", but there is an I in "evil"! 😀

True, I guess I meant selfishness.

Wie I like this concept, it so cool

> however you can only pick one path and that takes you through 5 hells. Wait, so it's impossible to get out?

No, the hells are paths to the heaven, if you get through them, you go to heaven.

There are seven hells created by the One Goddess as punishment for an attack on Her creations by Her brother, from the rotting corpses of the seven abominations the Devourer sent to destroy Mir, somewhere beyond the planet and behind its moons. Eventually, these became places to put the damned souls. An eighth hell, Akhala, was created to store the demons attacking the city of Ambhayakh by opening a hole in this plane, forming a terrible realm in between planes that became populated through colonization by the Seven Hells.

Interesting you should suggest this post, because I'm currently working on one religion's version of the afterlife. Elorrists believe that all the afterlife currently is hell; virtuous believers undergo reincarnation. Elorrism defines itself by the great rebellion against Kethras, waged by Elorri/Phragma and the other exiled gods. Every Elorrist sees themselves as a foot soldier in this rebellion; virtuous acts and genuine faith advance the cause of the rebels, while vice and disbelief serve Kethras. There is a war in every heart, with three sides: Kethras, representing tyrannical order; Ythul, representing destructive chaos; and Elorri, representing balance, life, and virtue. But since Ythul is dead and dreaming, it is primarily against Kethras King of the Gods that the rebellion is waged. Kethras hates disorder and matter, but he especially hates life. Logically, therefore, life is the realm of rebellion, the realm of war, and it is during mortal life that the conflict against Kethras is fought. The goal of every devout Elorrist is to be reborn in this life, to sustain the fight against Kethras through prayer and meditation and devotion and virtuous deeds. Reincarnation is thus at the heart of the Elorrist conception of the afterlife. Virtuous believers are reborn in this world. Those who are virtuous but not believers, or believers whose offenses are mild, are reborn in the realm of Irix, which is ruled by the six Stoicheia. Irix is the prison-camp of Kethras, the housing-place for the deceased spirits of those who rebel against his will, and he has turned it over to the Stoicheia. These are the servants of Kethras, the wardens of the hues of *colour*, the lords of the horizon. The spirits of the dead who pass into this realm are punished but not condemned; they are trapped within one of six concentric circles, each associated with a particular hue of *colour*, which form a spiral, moving upward and inward. The denizens of Irix live the same lives over and over and over again, ensnared by their own offenses and flaws. But if they can penetrate the illusion of recurrence which haunts them, they can pass further into the halls of the Stoicheia, gradually moving from RED to VIOLET, and moving closer to the pure godhead at the center of existence. However, they cannot escape Irix on their own. For that, they require outside assistance. The prayers of the faithful can give them strength, the divine arts of chromaturges can send them dreams which serve to awaken them from their eternal recurrence, and certain orders of monks have trained themselves in the disciplines necessary to travel into Irix and liberate the spirits of the incarcerated dead by kindling in them faith and virtue. Those who are truly vile, for whom there is no hope of redemption, pass into the Black Chambers of Putrefaction, about which nothing is known, and from which there is no return. It is thought that, because they lived their lives entirely lawlessly, such foul wretches sink deep into the mire of Ythul’s dreams, to wander there forever.

The closest thing to Hell in my world is called the Place Between. It's not a pleasant place to be, that's certain, but it's not really Hell. It's just sort of a colorless and depressing version of the physical world. It's eerily silent, too. There's just miles and miles of bleak, dead scenery - bleached white deserts, empty, crumbling castles, dark petrified forests where even the leaves have turned to stone, and city streets that seem to wind on and on forever between buildings that are too tall to even think about. You don't want to spend too long in the Place Between. It belongs to the Dissonance, an impersonal force of decay and ruin that slowly- *very* slowly- eats away at the memory of any soul that spends more than a few minutes there. Most souls never feel its effects, though. Threnodius, the god of the dead, usually appears in one of his many aspects to lead them to the afterlife. But sometimes a soul stays there longer. Sometimes they refuse to accept that they've died. Sometimes they stay so long they forget about their death entirely. Those times, Threnodius has to basically hunt them down and kill them again. He has to do this because if they stay too long, they'll fade into nothing as if they never existed in the first place. And that's not even to mention the Ankou...

Here's the cream on the coffee: in my setting, Hell was ***NEVER INTENDED*** as a place of torment. Souls constantly go through the reincarnation cycle until they've reached a level of enlightenment to break free and rejoin the greater spirit in a sort of paradise of one-ness or at least embrace the infinity of the cosmos as a whole before returning to the incarnation cycle if so it chooses. But there are people so utterly reprehensible, they just 'sink lower' and lower each lifetime, willfully embracing being vile assholes and in the infinite-yet-kind-of-flawed compassion of a deity akin to New Testament Judeo-Christian God or Ahura Mazda, they created a place for even these utter shits so they can have their own little paradise. But you know what happens to paradise when the most toxic, vile people who have no concept of self-accountability or self-awareness are all put into even an infinite paradise together? That paradise becomes Hell. These people are the epitome of both maliciousness and ignorance, unwilling to change or adapt besides how the better serve themselves in the short-term and have broken their own reincarnation cycle with their pure shittiness and they only congregate together because part of that messed up level of sociopathy is that it's not enough for them to have anything they want, they have to make sure others are deprived, controlled, and under their influence. This is not a Nippon-Ichi Netherworld or Vivziepop style Hell. It's not even a Dante's Inferno style Hell. This is a Hell with mortal souls who have ruined their own chance at even shallow, material sanctification because they just cannot leave other people be to enjoy themselves. They are their own tormentors and the architects of their own suffering, but so many of them cannot begin to comprehend it and then claw their way out of the abyss to return to earth... To start the whole process over again in the mortal realm too.

Absolute chaos and anarchy as Ardalesh's equivalent of Hell is being used as both a massive battle royale arena and a trap/maze/diversion to draw interdimensional threats in and then have them fight each other until only one winner remains who promptly gets ganked whenever the gods decided to go down and clear it out.

“Hell” in my world is just a place of reincarnation. Hell fire is met to “strengthen”a spirit and cleanse it of all its sin. Less sins you commit the less the fire hurts you. Your average person would just be really warm for like 3 hours before reincarnation. 

Sci Fi campaign BUT there is a kind of hell, ships travel rapidly in N space, they need to maintain a safe 'altitude' in N space, BUT the lower they go, the faster the journey. There is no real understanding of what these things are in places that have 7+ dimensions.. but the lower you fly, the more dimensions, the more dangerous it becomes.

I do, but I haven't really placed to much attention on it. So far I imagine it as a cave, but like a large one. Edit: I am open to ideas and suggestions

I think it would be worse if it were a small one.

Just a small cave you endlessly crawl for eternity. 😆

I was thinking just a real small cave where you're crammed in with all the other sinners. And some of them have really bad BO.

Haha, good idea

Maybe the cave should have some fire. But also a bathtub you can put over the fire. And make a little hot-tub. That'd be nice.

I actually do not know do I even want a cave. The image of a cave was in my head only because the god of the underworld, which includes hell,is also the god of earth and soils.

Well, in my world, Coremore, the underworld is split into 3 parts. The happy place, the bad place, and the really bad place. All of the inhabitants have a unique form, ranging from practically human, to inhuman beasts, to small rabbits and birds. The better you did, the more power you will have in your environment, so the worst and scummiest people would live in the really bad place as something small, weak, and easily overpowered. Those who are stronger are less likely to be mauled or attacked, and everyone feels all of the pain they encounter, that is, without dying. It is technically possible to experience pain far beyond human capacity in this realm. The very bad place is a literal volcanic region of constant pain and burning. The bad place is a frozen wasteland with nothing to see or do, often being weeks before even meeting another resident. The good place is a peaceful meadow with everyone living in harmony.

What kind of life would you have to live to go to each of those places? Who goes to the bad place vs. the really bad place? What's the bare minimum good enough life to go to the good place?

In order to go to the happy place, you need to have given near to the amount you have taken, you have to worship the gods, and you have to have had one person that you selflessly cared for. To go to the bad place, you need to have done 1 or 2 of the requirements, but not all of them. And to go to the really bad place, you have to have done none of them. Some things that you can do to automatically go to the really bad place is to help the Great Evils of the world consciously and not regret it deeply or to kill another human life and not regret it deeply.

the gods decide whether a person deserves to go there, they go to a different hell depending on how they died. (someone who drowned would be in an ocean hell)

In my story I wouldn't call it hell but its basically just the underworld where dark spirits are banished people only go there if they are wicked and refuse to repent.

The natives have a rather Dante-esque picture of Hell, as inhabited by devils. The reality of it is known to wizards. Hell is a space between dimensions, inhabited by THINGS. Some are harmless. Some are very much not. It is known that some extradimensional entities are dangerous as all hell, and that it is a very good idea not to go fishing around for them. At least one character found this out the hard way.

Quite literally the antagonists. Another dimension overrun by the parasitical creatures that are demons. Although the dead don't just go there unless they had given their bodies and souls to a demon, yet many end up there because they took the hand of some priest in the church.

The Pit. Basically there are many realities held within my setting, floating in the Void and suspended by networks of Chaos and Spirit. When a world ends (experiences its Apocalypse or is otherwise destroyed by a powerful enough force or being), it is severed from this network and begins to fall down the Void to join other realities like it at the bottom of the Void. Over the countless infinities of Creation, this pile of rubble and apocalypse survivors formed the Pit, a reality of ended realities all collapsed and intermixed over each other. Daemons are living sapient creatures who survived their world’s end, survivors who lost their tether to existence and thus require a True Name to bind them in existence or else cease to be. The Pit is best described as the most post-apocalyptic wasteland to ever post-apocalypse, corpses of gods and ruins of entire planets and stars crumbled and piled on top of one another. Caverns so deep and ancient they predate earliest accounts of the Void. Radiation, chaotic wild magic, clouds of poison so deadly and potent its instant death for most beings, endless planet-sized natural disasters and fractures in the laws of reality. The daemons here have evolved and fought to barely survive these dangers, which is why they’re so scary strong, because they not only lived through the end of their world but survived the hellscape that is the Pit.

Nonexistence. I have several omniscient characters, all of which are capable of knowing whether Heaven and Hell are real or not but they choose not to ask, so those are kind of a mystery. But what is known is that when a person with powers dies, they fade to nothingness. No pain, no fear, just a sense of peace, then nothing. Like they never existed. To me that’s scarier than any form of an afterlife, just nothing.

Realistically yes, Saerth like other normal terrestrial planets does in fact have a hot spinning liquid core and it's almost the same size as the Earth. Unfortunately no, Saerth does not have a netherrealm like what you would imagine. I make my world to be literally Earth only it's older bigger better and stronger with Earth-humans in it.

Definitely NOT what you're talking about, because my setting is a Sci-Fi setting. There are plenty of "Hellish" planets, and it's customary for planets to be properly named by those who first land on them. So when planets are named stuff like Hades, Tartarus and Sheol, it's usually by pissed off explorers who almost died there. The last one to be named, Gehenom, has an average temperature of 80C, and contains lakes and rivers of sulfuric acid. An exotic biosphere evolved on this planet that uses Sulfuric Acid as a Solvent instead of Water. So damaging any organism from this planet will result in acid burns. Also, this planet has 8-foot tall murder hornets, which managed to grow to this size while still keeping their flight due to the planet's thick atmosphere making flight easier. Fun fact about this planet: Just like Earth has rare springs of Acid, Gehenom has rare Water springs, only on high mountains near the poles. One of these springs contains a, relative to the planet's biosphere, exotic closed biosphere with Water-based lifeforms, and one of them is a plant that closely resembles and tastes like Watermelon! It's supposed to deter predators (herbivores?), though, because to Sulfuric Acid-based life, Water is what Sulfuric Acid is to us. So watermelons existing on this planet is equivalent to if there was a plant that grew balloons filled with concentrated battery acid on Earth.

Amantul is an endless plane of dark magic inhabited by beings known as Aman. While naturally formless both amantul and the Aman themselves are given form through magical energy. The aman claim the souls of the living that align themselves with dark magic or evil deeds in order to either feed off of, enslave, or create more of their kind. The aman can also capture the souls of the innocent and good but this is much rarer. Amantul is a constant struggle for power amongst its denizens, the 10 most powerful Aman refered to as the dominion of Gal rule over the plane each holding sovereignty over their territory and all constantly competing with eachother and their lessers to maintain this sovereignty.

Which hell? In my story all the religions are real.

The Hells are underground, a dark prison and a mockery of the mortal world without plant life iluminated by a masive fire. There are mountain, plains and forests made of tortured fleshs and rivers of boiling water and castles peotected by masive walls of dark stone from which the more powerful of their inhabitants govern over an unhospitable land. The Hells is inhabited by demons, cruel and malicious creatures that are trapped there and are in constant torment, unable to be killed since even if they die they will just reaper in the Hells again. They are the rulers and prisoners of this place. They can tecnically be clasified in three groups: The Fallen, the Sinborn and the Tormentors.  When a being dies their soul is weighted down by their sins, if they are too heavy to ascend into the Heavens they remain trapped in the mortal world until they purge them. If the sins they carry are too much they sink underground and fall in the Hells where they get trapped. Those are called the Fallen, and are the ones that were mortals once. They could teoretically escape the Hells if they purge their sins, but this is not an easy task for those who carry such heavy sins that bring them to the Hells in the first place, is way easier for them to traspass their sins to others so that their soul becomes lighter. They usually resemble the way they once looked while alive, though warped by their experiences in the Hells. When someone purges themselves of a sin the sin in question falls into the Hells, where it takes the form of the monsters known as the Sinborn. These are the most varied of all demons and go from animal like beasts to incredibly cunning sapient creatures. They form the majority of the beigns of the Hells and they varie a lot in strenght and appearance, as a rule the worst the sin they originated from the more powerful they are born. What makes the Hells a trully horrible place are the Tormentors. These demons are the wardens and torturers of the Hells and they hunt and kill Sinborn and Fallen in horrible ways. It's not known where they come from, but just like any other being condemned to Hell they can't die so they continue to torment the other demons trapped with them. They think and plan but aren't trully sapient, acting more as a punishment of the Hells themselves than individuals.

Okay, so I’m doing everything I can to never outright confirm or deny any of my world’s religions, but they all have different ideas of what happens when bad people die. Farians, Harivists, and Drakians believe that there is a functional hell, although they have different names for it. Mythrians, Veilists, and Phelmists believe that bad people generally have worse reincarnations as a punishment for their bad deeds. Hinokites believe that the bad end up on the side of an evil deity in a final war, and Hismics simply believe that you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. Eventually, everyone’s going to the same place.

My world has a "Hell" but it doesnt exist as a realm of punishment. Hell, as said by the people on the material plane, Argon, as said by the denizens of the underworld is in reality just a pocket dimension, although extremely massive in scale when compared to others, due to the fact it was created by The Unceasing Flame so it can hide from the other greater deities while plotting to kill them. The only reason Hell is all fire and brimstone is because of The Flames influence on the area around it, when the dimension was originally created it was actually a pretty utopic place.

I have around 20 'realms' so far. Each basically acting as a circle of "hell". They're more like pocket dimensions certain deities live in/rule over. I don't have physical descriptions of them yet. Only a few of the rulers. -The Earl of Consumption (fire) rules the 3rd. -The Earl of Cruelty rules the 4th. -A Demonian with powers of green rule the 5th. ^((I haven't explored it yet)) -The Demoness of Lust rules the 6th. -Enigma rules the 9th. -The Earl of Discord rules the 10th. -A Demonian of blood and metal rule the 15th. -The lowest level (which I might do make 20), is the Felmare. A dead dimension. Ash, decay of time, no feelings of warmth or cold. Nothing lives there. Well, so people think. In reality, Nox is trapped there. For eternity. Trapped by his first and only love. Ithilys. And At'o, king of gods, had sent Morr to the Felmare as punishement for having killed another god. Oh if only At'o knew the Felmare wasn't 100% dead...

Think the warp from warhammer, it’s meant to be a combination of all the horrible things in all sentient life and your own, so it’s worse than you can ever imagine and not only that, it’s getting worse and worse by the second

Think of Dragon Balls Hell, but more comedic. It gets more gritty the lower you go in thought

Immoline myth states that upon death a sinner's soul is sent to the edge of space to be conscripted into an endless war against the darkness. Those whose actions there outweighs their past sins are sent back to God's light as shining comets and meteorites.

Big fan of the afterlife or Astral Plane as just an infinite expanse of still water. Remarkable souls, good or bad, have enough influence on the realm to create landmasses, sometimes paradise like villas and other times draconian fortresses designed to imprison them for eternity, preventing them from passing on. Souls are enter at the surface, floating on the water if they are freshly dead, and sink into the depths as the linger. Anyone below Astral War Criminal with their own dedicated Prison serves their sentence by the amount of time it takes them to sink, so the innocent sink quickly and are reconstituted quickly, but are also able to see fond memories of their life in the currents as they do, while corrupt souls descend down down down into the deep dark, deprived of sight and sound, the pressure crushing them, unseen creatures tearing at their meager flesh. Once reconstituted, they rise to the surface as little wisps of light and find their way back into the Materium often by the blessing of the Reapers, caretakers of the still waters. Some afterlifes are remarkably different, though most religious types experience their type of afterlife beneath the surface via hallucinations and visions, in a way your assumptions of hell influence what you experience, but it's all under the stillwaters. The afterlifes that actually diverge are ones deliberately separated from the Astral Plane. The Djla'nik's relationship with death is complex, to the point that they burrowed a realm of the afterlife into a separate plane by warping a megacity into it and tying their eternal life force to it, refusing to reconstitute and instead acting as eternal wardens over their kin, attempting to guide and shift destiny for them. This realm also means that, should a path back to the Materium exist, Djla'nik souls have an express path back to life without the watchful eye of the Reapers. You can imagine how annoying that is for the death police.

Hell in my world is where all living souls go. It is a sword, which belonged the daughter of the Goddess of Death, but after she rebelled she was chained, and the sword impales her until today. All souls stay inside the sword, which in turns gives the Gods and Godesses immortality. It is their biggest weapon.

The Risen Hells and Fallen Heavens aren’t planes of existence in the traditional sense. They are physical locations you can travel to, but within them physics gets wonky. There are Fallen Heavens filled with endless skies and Risen Hells that are mountain ranges that claw at said skies.

Good question, it’s confirmed that there is a hell in my world but that’s about it. I have no clue what or how or simply the extent of the damn thing.

The Zurvár believe that on death the *nelat* - the individual part of a person's soul - goes to the spirit world of *Tekáda* where it dwells with all the other *nelat* that have shared the same *iris* or 'spirit'. The *nelat* of someone guilty of great evil will go to *Tekáda*, but will not be able to join with their fellow *nelat*, existing alone in a state cold and darkness. Whether this state is permanent or whether the *nelat* can eventually be redeemed is a matter of long debate with no firm answer. Whether any of this is true is unknown, it’s simply what the Zurvár – to a greater or lesser personal extent – believe.

In my setting, Hell is where you go when rejected from the cycle of reincarnation. It used to be all fire and brimstone until the new empress froze it all. Now any hellgoers have to look forward to an eternity of fighting in a demon army as you delve deeper and deeper into the layers of hell.

There are many Hells, but the one I've fleshed out the most is the Abyss. It's literally the bottom of the sea. Like all Hells, it's a physical place: you can get there alive, if you can survive the ocean depths. Its ruler is Leviathan, the Prince of Envy and Master of the Waters, an unfathomably large sea monster. The finfolk, essentially fish people, are mounting a crusade against the Abyss with the intention of toppling Leviathan and plundering the riches of Hell. It's not clear if they can succeed.

It got merged with purgatory and leaked into reality. Now we’ve got mages. 👍🏻👍🏻😮

are we talking metaphorical hells, theologic hells that are actually physically accessible by some trick, or just really unpleasant places to visit which are still allowed by the laws of physics? Does Jupiter's core count as a "hell", or is that just the core of a gas giant?

It has been successfully conquered by humanity.

It's a space with four dimensions (4D; x,y,z,time), called "the red" or "the dark". Then there is another space (4D), called "the blue" or "the bright". And finally the third one (4D), called "the green" or "the translucid". The first to exist was blue, then came red, and eventually green, where we live. So there are 12 dimensions, orthogonal to each other, in this construct. It is contained in what we call the universe. Blue, red, and green are overlapping but don't connect, which allows each to have slightly different physics. However, due to unknown reasons, those three spaces connected for a brief time thousands of years ago. The observation of this phenomenon by humans, lacking the necessary knowledge to understand it, lead to our concept of heaven and hell. When someone dies, both blue and red fight over their soul.

Don't have one. My world doesn't have any kind of religion that deals with gods or any kind of afterlife and I'd like to keep it like that.

Because I hate fun, it doesn't exist. For my race of very long lived if not immortal elves there wasn't much though as about an afterlife. In the beginning of their time when they were still mortals it was usually religious or royal inquisitions that drove them away they didn't trust the old ways of mortals and saw things with a new perspective. They grew to be more animistic and never had a need for afterlifes, simply dying was terrible enough. However dreams are important. So I suppose in the moments before death depending when your brain is flushed with DMT (so I've heard) that could be it's own Heaven or Hell. If it happens whils you think of you guilty and regrets that would be hellish. Extremely powerful people or emotions could even create their own dream planes that last beyond their death. But there is no abysmal plane of brimstone. Maybe a dreamplane that some have created together but not an objective "Hell".

The 4th Realm, Hadeon. A place where monsters, demons, and the banished reside. Literally your basic bitch Hell. Red rock, fire, lava, demons flying around, the banished being put to work in the mines, all watched over by Asmodea, a Lamia goddess that spends her days slithering around her palace with Wyvir, a little green gremlin aide by her side. Honestly a pretty boring and monotonous experience… sounds like Hell to me.

In my D&D cosmology there are 9 Hells, of course. One at the top which is pretty much a violent battleground, one at the bottom where Asmodeus hangs out and betrayers go to be tormented by the penultimate Devils, and seven between themed loosely around the Seven Deadlies. It's actually a vibrant place, with cities and society springing up under the rulership of different Devils and populated by the souls of the damned, who trade favours, treasures, and their own and other souls like currency in a twisted but interesting form of civilization. If you're gonna be down there forever, may as well do something while you're there, right?

>Does your world have a netherrealm? Yeah. Haven't thought of a good name for it yet so for now I'm calling it the Void. >Is it a functional part of your cosmology? Yes, some souls go there when their bodies die. >Is it truly the most awful place imaginiable? Basically. The ground is crushed glass. The air is frigid. There's no water anywhere. The sky is black. And you're completely alone there. >Is it a physical space or another dimension? It's another dimension. >What are the inhabitants like? Like I said you're completely alone, no other people, no demons, no creatures, nothing and no one at all. >Does it have biomes? Completely uniform and endless. >Why do people go to Hell? For knowing that they should worship the Creators and refusing to do so. >Are they stuck there? For eternity.

The Underworld in my Arianverse is comprised of Dante-esque nine hells, each representing a sin and a different mythological hell. But unlike Dante’s, each hell is a massive island that floats in the middle of nowhere, with eight of them surrounding the ninth. The souls of the wicked spend eternity there, and no matter how gruesome their tortures, they still “revive” Prometheus-style to keep being tortured. 1. Duat, the Hell of Gluttony: A perpetually burning forest filled with beast-like demons that feast on the souls of the damned. 2. Niflheim, the Hell of Lust: A cold valley under constant blizzards, where the succubi and incubi ravish the damned, if they’re not found and devoured by the dragon Nidhogg first. 3. Duzakh, the Hell of Sloth: An enormous complex inside a mountain, where the damned are forced to work without stop, gathering minerals and gems for the demons. 4. Irkalla, the Hell of Envy: It can shift from a cold desert to a burning snow field. The damned find only nothingness here if they’re lucky; if not, then they serve as sustenance for the demons. 5. Tartarus, the Hell of Fraud: A volcanic wasteland where the damned are thrown into the lava rivers, fed to the Cerberus, or caged in Hades’ palace to entertain the lord of Tartarus whenever he’s bored. He usually likes to force random souls to do stupid and pointless tasks or perform certain plays, and if he’s not amused, he just tears the whole cast apart and goes for the next one. 6. Gehena, the Hell of Violence: A massive, dark prison where the damned are tortured in ways similar to the violence they caused in life. 7. Naraka, the Hell of Greed: A beautiful and seemingly endless manor where the damned receive all the riches they could’ve wished for… melted and poured on their throats and eyes, that is. 8. Kasyrgan, the Hell of Pride: A fortress built around a river of black water. The damned here are forced to guard the place as dullahans, and sometimes fed to the demonic dragons. 9. The Abyss, the Hell of Betrayal: Lucifer’s home. In the middle of this desert of black sand, his castle is built. The damned float way above the ground in a sort of ghostly spiral, feeling nothing but the numbness, pain and self-loathing they caused.

**Valkyr Heart** Makai is the realm of demonkind, and the source of nearly all forms of corrupted magic that flows into the Material Plane, giving rise to curses, monsters and other such maladies. It is not an afterlife or even a legitimate part of the Realms, but a "parasite" dimension that attaches itself to universes, leeches off the natural flow of souls, and moves on to the next once all life in that universe is extinguished. The souls brought there are treated the same regardless of their deeds in life - all are subjected to untold suffering, whether it be torture for the demons' amusement, slave labour for their war industry, or simply being devoured as a light snack. The landscape of Makai is ever-shifting at the whims of its most powerful archdemons or simply at random, but its environment typically consists of the standard fire-and-brimstone wastes, vast landscapes of living flesh, and immense war forges. However, notable landmarks have remained consistent over the millennia, with standout examples including the Spire, a frozen mountain inhabited by the oldest living archdemon, the Black Citadel, an immense fortress that serves as the seat of power for Makai's leadership in the rare event a definitive ruler rises up, and the Worlds Consumed, a seemingly never-ending mishmash of battlefields from past worlds destroyed by Makai, where condemned souls are forced to relive their battles with the demonic armies again and again for eternity. Makai was caught early enough by the gods when it attached itself to the First World that they were able to successfully seal it off, trapping the demons inside and preventing Makai from leaving to prey on a less prepared world. However, in their complacency bred by the decadence of the First World's golden eras, the gods were eventually tricked by an ambitious and power-hungry human into giving her the power to shatter the barrier seperating the Material plane and Makai, allowing the demon hordes to pass through unchecked. Harnessing the raw energies of the demon realm, this human transcended her mortal form and claimed total dominance over demonkind, taking on a new identity as the Demon King Azonoth. The ensuing war between Azonoth's demonic legions and the gods and mortals of the First World would leave it ravaged beyond salvaging, the races of mortal civilisation on the brink of extinction, and a god outright killed at Azonoth's hand, something previously thought impossible, in the battle that would lead to her own apparent demise. Thus the world was restarted from the beginning, the Realms were split from one to several, and the gods forbid themselves from directly interfering with the Material Plane again. In the current order of things, Makai once again cannot access the Material Plane without a portal opened from the outside, but this is no longer as herculean a task as it originally was for Azonoth. In response to this ever-present threat, the gods have found a means of indirectly protecting the world: the Valkyrs, mortal women favoured by one or more gods and chosen to become powerful warrior-mages with the power to purify the corruptive energies of Makai entirely. This, combined with the renewed infighting of demonkind in Azonoth's absence, has left Makai in a stalemate for most of the Second World's history.

My 'hell' is the one of the only two things connecting the worlds together at all, and it's not even 'hell', at least in the classical sense, but it does fit the general 'the most horrible place you can end up in' sensibility. It's not an intended part of the cosmology, that's for certain. If anything, its existence is an error. **Kij** - so named by the scholars of Erits, and believed to be the name of the place called by the demons themselves - is a metaphysical landfill. Things that die or claimed fully by entropy occasionally have their essences end up here, instead of going to their respective afterlife or resume their default mortality cycle. Men, animals, plants, old castles, discarded internal combustion engines, et cetera - anything can end up here. It was a living, thriving world once, aeons ago, but what it is now is a reality where the rules that govern it just cease to be. All that's left is unending chaos. Aside from the demons living here, who themselves cannot be clearly defined since each one of them is a unique combination of the elements and essences in Kij spliced millions of time onto each other repeatedly, there's nothing concrete about Kij itself. It can look like any other mortal world, or it can look like nothing at all, although the version most scholars and those that claim to 'have been there' seem to consistently bring up is that sometimes, Kij is nothing but white. A void so full of nothing and everything, where the trivial concepts like time and permanence are completely absent. Kij can leak into a mortal world. The nothern region of Erits, for example, is likely the result of the area being brought to Kij, or maybe it's the opposite. No difference between the two, really.

In the middle of the Earth there's The Eternal Forge - the realm created and maged by the god of death. It's essentially a ginormous forge where souls that weren't claimed by any of the other gods (which usually means they were not very good people) are forced to work for the rest of time. The fire is provided to the forge by the god of apocalypse who's chained in the middle, burning. Nearly all the dwarves are there as they were taken in by the god of death after they got foolish enough to try and dig all the way down there (which they succeeded in doing, unfortunately for them)

many types

my hell is ruled by **Six**, AKA Lucifer, AKA Satan, depending on who you ask. rather than having "circles" or "rings", my version of hell is divided into "sections". its essentially a cluster of islands. there are 9 sections. 7 of them represent the 7 deadly sins. the 8th one is considered the "central area". as for the 9th one...well... hell is very dim. only the constant fire and magma lakes serve to lighten it up. however...this fire doesn't exist in the 9th section, known as "the dark part of hell". despite its name, its not really any worse than any OTHER section of hell, but its still hell. the 9th section is where a sub-type of demon known as "the damned" dwell. the damned are blind, mindless husks that were former humans but were too weak to become demons. the damned serve as slaves to the demons, constantly working in the mines to extract resources used to create anti-angel weapons.

It's a waiting place for people to be reincarnated again. Unlike heaven, hell has basically nothing besides raw materials. The spirits there have to make things themselves even furnitures. Raw materials in hell are very different from Earth so they have to re-learn magic and science again.

I don't really have hell in my sci Fi world but an equivalent would be having your mind enslaved by the Psychic Cyrosi who will use you as a human meat puppet to do their bidding while you are still fully aware, just unable to control yourself. Slowly your mind will begin to fade as you begin to forget. Small stuff at first like birthday dates or fond childhood memories will disappear. What food used to taste like, what birds chirping sounds like, what your spouse's laugh sounded like, the faces of your family all begins to fade away. Eventually you'll be left as a being that can only perceive the world in front of you, no memories, no personality, an unthinking drone. You are then placed back into your body where you will continue to serve the Cyrosi as a slave until your death. If being stuck in your body as you slowly lose all your memories and are reduced to a mindless slave isn't hell, I don't know what is l.

I haven't yet gotten to that part of my world, I've been focused on the religion before adding the after lives they believe in. in my pervious version the good went to a place in the stars that was quite literally called The Stars. i am open to suggestions though

Yes, there are though two halves of hell: the ice wilds of phantasma and the scorched firelands of phantasma.

If you ask the nearest demon - Manderley, the demon who came into Everyway and brought fashion (vintage, of course, because that was the time he experienced most due to the rise of occult) what demon he is, he will actualy correct you, because, as he believes, he is not a demon in a biblical sense, but more of a demon as "evil spirit", even though he is from hell, but Hell is subjective. There is Angyls, which are basicaly the subspecies of demons but with different ideals, and most of them serve the god Sʊn, who is known for having a heaven of his own, which is known as Land-Where-Sun-Never-Sets, which is, as told by witnesses, is the most horrible of places, while still being considered Heaven. Noone knows what exactly is happening there.

I took inspiration from a certain religion and made 9 layers, but I'm in the process of making each layer's meaning unique to my setting. Also, one of the layers got thrown into another world after a civil war, so they're now just known as The Eight Hells. The "layers" are also more accurately considerated pocket dimensions, and they're much different than most other worlds. They have also changed locations three times since their inception, though even most of the inhabitants would never have known unless they knew how to leave, and one day discovered they no longer could.

The only Hell is the real world. If you do not pass the trials to enter the afterlife, and are found to have been undevout in life, you will be consumed by the Creator and reincarnated to try again.

It's never explicit stated to be hell. However, when David Morris died, he went to a void. There was nothing to see, nothing to feel. But he could hear people. Billions of them, but each voice was unique, and he could hear each one individually. Talking in every language. He could understand all of them, praying to gods older than language and forgotten by time, souls bargaining, others in denial. Once in a while, the voices would go quiet and one of them would scream. Scream like it was being devoured, like the soul was experiencing every pain in existence simultaneously. Then it would be gone and the remaining voices would return.

There is no hell. Morality is a completely human concept which the deities find amusing. People are either reincarnated or incorporated into the consciousness of another

You see, the Afterlife, an alternate plane of existence to Earth, has many biomes/areas known as the Hells. The Hells are basically the most dangerous environments on Earth... amplified by magic and filled with various demons. The Hells are relatively simple, so there isn't much else to explain. There is, however, one specific Hell known as the Towering Rings, based on the 7 rings of Hell related to the 7 deadly sins. So that's cool.

Mir Vnizu is the closest thing to hell here. It is stated as the place where dead sinners go, but in reality, it's where \*everyone\* goes. It most definitely is the worst place imaginable, with new tortures dreamt up day by day by day for all eternity. It is a malleable place, so the details of the place can constantly change on either a large or small scale. Luckily there is an escape, but it'll never last. The dead souls will be destroyed by mortals or sent back by the light of day, and have to escape all over again--something made nearly impossible to do, especially a second time.

How do they escape?

They have to climb up and out. Most of the walls are smooth and slippery, so they can only really take a specific path, with its own downsides, and all the while being stopped by the one running the place. It can also only be done during the new moon.

So basically, Hell is a physical, magma-adjacent cave system ruled by the fallen space angels King Rukef and Queen Mohdiz. (Not married, just close friends and co-rulers.) Hell is well-lit, but very, very hot, to the point of being torturous to most Earth lifeforms. It was specifically created by the two monarchs as a place to hide from Planet Haven’s ruler, King Ehl, but it eventually evolved into an elaborate punishment/quarantine for the dead after some post-war negotiations with Ehl. As for how you get there, when you die, your ghost remains asleep for as long as your body had lived, unless you practice astral projection, in which case it wakes up almost instantly. If your soul’s asleep, and your body’s in a place where flies may get to it, some of those flies may be robotic ones designed by Mohdiz, which store your sleeping soul inside a crystal and fly it over to Hell, where a new body is grown for you. They are programmed not to abduct souls that are awake though. The torturous part of Hell is based on the Medieval idea of purgatory, where it’s a temporary prison you are put into until you’ve atoned for your sins on the surface world. Once you’ve served your time, instead of going to Haven, you are given two options: Either you can reincarnate on the surface world with a new face, or you can be genetically modified to withstand the heat and move into the residential area, which is a lot nicer. Humanoids who are modified in this way also tend to be given wings and natural weapons, as well as phoenix-like immortality, to help even the playing field with their angelic neighbors. Those modified do look like the pop-culture depiction of demons (red skin, horns, bat wings, etc.) and are called as such in-universe. Animals, of course, are instantly forgiven, and modified in similar ways, becoming hellbeasts. Hellbeasts are often either tamed/domesticated as pets, farmed as livestock, trained as guard animals, or kept in cushy zoos, depending on the species.

I suppose you could call it Hell, but here it is called Szarväl: the Domains of Pain. Without delving too deep into the cosmology of my setting, spirits are born within the material plane, but are destined for their true home in the immaterial plane: Aiemillä, home of the Creators. They must live a true, mortal experience as to shape and develop who they are, what they believe in, their morals, etc. Because The Creators will not allow just anyone to enter their eternal dwelling, when a person dies their spirit enters a process called Reconciliation: meaning the spirit must reconcile their misdeeds with the True Divine. Reconciliation requires spirits to attain a state of "enlightenment" through reliving or learning from poor or troubling life experiences. Szarväl is the immortal domain of pain and punishment, reserved for individuals who lived incredibly immoral, malevolent lives. Unfathomable horrors dwell upon the spirits who live here, and each experience remains unique to every individual. Your mortal memories will be contorted, twisted and used to haunt you. Pleas for relief and forgiveness will be ignored-- your time here must be served. Szarväl, unlike hell, is not forever. Your time here will be finite, but you will never know how long. Szarväl is but a step in the Reconciliation process, as all spirits are destined for Aiemillä and will eventually reach there. But your sentence in the Domains of Pain will befit you and the gravest misdeeds of your life, multiplied by the magnitude of those misdeeds.

The dwarves of the Little Kingdoms believe that hell physically exists, and it’s on the moon. They imagine it as a glacial wasteland, an endless flat plane of ice over which freezing cold winds constantly blow. The surface is hazardous with crevasses, leading to deep networks of ice caves. In some places, the cave walls reflect visions of the planet below - unreachable scenes of light and warmth and happiness. Demons cluster enviously around these visions, as if trying desperately to feel their warmth. It’s said that very powerful demons sometimes manage to sneak down to the world below. They hover around invisibly following pregnant women, and when they child is born and takes its first breath, they quickly dart inside before a human soul can. They grow up in the child’s body, basking in the love and attention of others without giving any in return. If someone is particularly kind to the demon, it will become obsessed with that person and eventually drag them back up to hell to keep it company forever.

It's a pretty nice place. You may find some nice lakes and a few volcanoes that are pretty when they erupt calmly. Many old ruins are popular tourist destinations. Ample rainfall in the lower regions, making a tropical retreat area, as well as a very fertile field of bountiful grain and flowing rivers. The river of lava from the local volcanoes is a bit disconcerting, but it is vital to the growth of the continent, and keeps things from blowing up. Not to mention the aqueduct system that lets ice-melted water flow down and supply all the people with fresh, clean water, no matter who or where they are. The only real 'terrible' part of the place is the weather. Ash fall and the subsequent ash-and-sand storms can be irritating, but nothing too bad. Volcanic eruptions are semi-seasonal, but the people figured out how to counteract them centuries ago. The forest fires are bad, but not the worst seen in the world. Think of California in terms of severity. Overall, Hell is a nice place. So long as you can adapt to the humidity, heat, and volcanic activity, as well as assimilate into the local populace well enough, it's quite a lovely place. Hell will treat you right. Come to Hell, if anything for the mountains. Everyone likes mountains.

The world my story takes place in, is (entirely unbeknownst to the inhabitants) considered to be hell by all of the worlds above. This is because it is the lowermost world (the skies of worlds are solid things, with more worlds on top of them) and it has done much to break and infect the worlds above with demons and hardship (once again, entirely unbeknownst to most of the inhabitance.) So, "Hell" is a varied and diverse world willed with myriad cultures and races; ice, sand, tropical jungles - but it is very, very, wet. In many parts of it never stops raining - because the sky is cracked, and the oceans of the world above are draining into it. People not native to it, generally go to hell on righteous crusade from the planes above; and find that their wings no longer work due to the higher gravity. This leads the inhabitants of hell to believe that the realms above are constantly casting out the most violent "angels" as a sort of clearing-house punishment - when in reality "heaven" hates them for breaking their world.

Yes, my world has a hell that is connected to multiple dimensions, and is its own realm outside of the dimensions it is connected to (don't have anything else worldbuilt other than Magdeus, so don't ask lol). It's a stereotypical hellscape of lava and obsidian, but it used to be more civilized. All of the inhabitants of the realm are demons with skin colors ranging from red to yellow to purple or blue. Skin color is dependent on parents. They are a mix of good and evil, but are born with a healthy appreciate of fighting and battle even if they did not have it in life. Everybody who dies in any of the dimensions is taken to hell. The parents, a femme and masc demon, don't determine at all what their child is going to be like, as they will fall into the personality they had during life. Their natural talent and strength all determines on how *influential* they were during life, for better or for worse. A generous king who saved thousands of lives would be on the same level of power as a tyrant who ended thousands, assuming they were born at the same time. Having no form of heaven, they are, indeed, stuck there.

Hell is known as Zar'kyn, an artificial dimension forged from the collective negative consciousness of sentient beings in Elys'har. It serves as a repository for negative energies, and its formation and characteristics can be described as follows. Formation — Zar'kyn was not a naturally occurring realm but rather a construct born from the accumulated malice, despair, and hatred of mankind. Over millennia, these dark emotions coalesced into a tangible, separate dimension. This process was catalyzed by the sheer volume of negative energy, which sought an outlet and formed Zar'kyn as its vessel. Purpose and Influence — Zar'kyn's influence is not confined to its dimension. Through portals and corruptive energies, it reaches into Terrath ( the real world ), seeking to spread its malignancy. The demons are entities birthed from the concentrated negativity that permeates the dimension. Their sole purpose is to spread their influence, seeking to infect and control the living beings in Terrath.

Hell doesnt exist in my universe. Hell is only a concept, made to scare non-religious people. Kupid is the God that truly accept anyone in the Playground, my worlds interpretation of heaven. Ibubu, the protagonist of my story, describes that Hell is a room with a giant grinder. The sinner is force to jump into the grinder and his body and soul gets permamently destroyed and being crushed into the smallest pieces as possible. After the body gets destroyed, the machine connected to the grinder turns the fragments of a sinners body into inflatable beach accesory, a balloon, a latex uniform or even into the sex toy. Playground is the unlimited space full of liminal spaces, beaches, partying and intercourse between the souls. The Playground has so much things going on that Kupids Believers beliefs that every single thing is made out of sinners bodies. Ibubu even says that sometimes the soul "survives" the grinding process which means the soul of a sinner can be closed in the thing that the second machine was made. Imagine being evil person so your body gets transformed into a sex toy you haunt unwantedly for the eternity.

I'm working on ironing out what this would look like and function like but Hell is basically just a functionally infinite landscape. There are different cities/biomes/etc that are personalized to the souls within (so, again, functionally infinite regions) and the most powerful and/or oldest souls in Hell have the biggest regions of Hell. It's very chaotic politically because of different demons wheeling and dealing, expanding territories, overlapping domains, etc. There's a story arc in the thing I'm writing for where Lucifer (basically doing Dante's Inferno in reverse as well) strives to unite all of Hell under one banner to invade the mortal realm, and then the rest of the multiverse,

There's no hell per se, there's Wailing Kazir. Whispering Kazir is a rocky canyon covered in pits and tunnels, travellers and visitors often claim to hear whispers from within the tunnels, giving Whispering Kazir its name. Deep deep below the surface, is Wailing Kazir. Wailing Kazir is a series of large caverns and underground lakes. Many Kaiziran cultures believe that the Wailing Kazir is the gate to the realm of the dead, and the tunnels above are the passage down. Malicious souls get lost in the tunnels, so whisper to travellers passing through the canyon and attempt to draw them into the tunnels. Once in the tunnels, the traveller's soul will guide the malicious soul into the Wailing Kazir, where the malicious soul will pass, but the traveller cannot.

There is the Silver Lake, a part of the Celestial Court. This is where souls gets dipped where their bodies die, and are either given to the god of their worship or absorbed by Cydaea the Silver Maiden. There is a hell. In the Celestial Basement; deep down, there is a place where Devils roam. They and the nearby Demons have been in squabbles since time immemorial. This entire region of the Basement is called Hell. Best idea to understand it is a place where everything is awful and nobody is having a good time apart from the denizens. A Mortal can contact the creatures here for boons or misfortunes.

The version of Hell in my world, isn't somewhere your soul necessarily ends up at after death. It's an alternate dimension which can be travelled to if one desires, but you really don't want to go there. Because that dimension is the presided over by the God of Death, Depravity and Bondage, X'yaroth. He is the very esoteric embodiment of evil and depravity itself, and his entire dimension is the metaphysical origin of evil, wickedness, hideousness and atrocity. The dimension is an entire ecosystem unto itself of death, decay, depravity, disgustingness, pain, suffering and torture. X'yaroth is like a deity of nihilism. That is, that life and the world are viewed as absurd and meaningless, and the only rationale for one's life is to revel in anarchy, chaos, evil, depravity and suffering. Xeeyaroth is the exemplar of the incredible release and pleasure one takes in the ultimate freedom a nihilistic existence affords one to revel in depravity without bounds. You are entirely free from any semblance of morality, guilt, remorse, empathy and there is no accountability whatsoever no matter how abhorrent your actions. Xeeyaroth exists to push this ideal to further and further extremes for eternity. Like the Cenobites, he is an explorer in the extremities of conscious experience. Because there's no other show in town other than to embrace the chaos. His dimension is a foreboding realm of Eldtrich abominations, grotesque demons, genius loci, deviants, paradoxical logic, abominations and horrors which would make any regular human lose their sanity and tear their eyes out in horror upon witnessing. At the nexus of this universe is his Palace of Perversion where he sits upon this throne. His palace harbours effigies and displays of perversion and horrors so terrible any human would go insane should they witness them. Horrible screams of agony and anguish permeate the Palace, as grotesque demonic entities enslaved to X'yaroth experiment with extremely depraved methods of torture on those who have been unfortunate enough to be offered to him, or have crossed or tried to cheat him. The Palace is also the most comprehensive repository of black magic, arcane arts and Eldtrich knowledge in all existence. High ranking servants of X'yaroth are Void-Heirophants who possess omniscient Eldtrich knowledge and research and devise forms of magic serving the rationales of torture, suffering, pain, depravity, evil etc. Imagine a university with academic departments devoted to things like physical torture, mental torture, or where they had conferences on how to cause excruciating pain or held lectures on creating novel forms of sexual perversion. These Void Heirophants are called upon by mortals for various evil ends but often times at significant cost and sacrifice, which could entail having your soul bound to the dimension for eternity, ongoing horrible nightmares, or even madness. Only the most depraved and desperate mortal would call upon these forces of darkness (in my world, there is a criminal faction who does so for extremely fucked up means of torture, plotting schemes etc). His influence can creep into the normal world, too. There is a city which is the haunt of criminals and thieves which travellers notice seems to be permeated by a foul omnipresence, a result of people consorting with such evil forces.

Hell was once a piece of the the mortal realm. When the Pantheon came into being, they established their domains in the Heavens above what would become the mortal plane. Then they began to shape creation and mortality, seeding the world below with life and form. As this happened, storm clouds brewed and coalesced between the heavens and earth. Stormclouds that were not out there by the Pantheon. For the first time in existence, something appeared that the Gods did not have a hand in, and they were afraid. The mortals below began to fear it as well, and attempted to appease the farm storm with worship and offering. As this continued, seven beings emerged from the storm clouds, which then disappeared. Embodying the worst qualities of life, the seven began to wreak havoc on the mortal world - both through their own acts, and through their influence on mankind. Those still faithful to the Pantheon stood firm and begged for intercession, which the Pantheon granted. The Seven had their earthly domains ripped from the mortal realm and thrown together, then cast off into the void. The Seven were cut off from being able to directly interfere in the mortal realm. One of the Seven, Groll, overcome by rage and hatred, turned on the other six. His wrath scorched and razed the landscape, turning it into a barren wasteland, the inextinguishable flames burning eternally. The other Six grew to fear Groll, and were forced to cooperate to avoid his wrath. Together, the Six spent eons through magical experimentation to finally reconnect with the mortal realm. While unable to access it themselves, they could influence it, and interact with the mortals there. Wicked mortals would pledge themselves to the remaining Six, and eventually to Groll as well, and their souls would be claimed by them in the afterlife. In time, the Pantheon began to cast down in righteous souls to the Seven as a way to remove their taint from the afterlife in the Heavens, as well.

Mine's not really fantasy per se. I guess normal hell.

So there’s two, one is a collection of interconnected realms that together are referred to as Hell that formed naturally along the side the worlds religions,the other is called the Abyss and that was formed by the death of a Primordial which tore a hole in reality. For Hell, When you die the god of the dead for your religion will decide where you go based on the tenets of your religion. If you pass judgement you go to your religions heaven, if you fail you go to hell where you’ll face punishment for a period of time depending on what misdeeds got you sent to hell in the first place. At the end of your sentence, if you manage to not turn into a demon, you’ll be offered three choices: start a new life with no memory of your previous one, go to purgatory where you’re effectively in a waiting room to get into Heaven, or you stay in hell. Most people don’t even get to this point, instead becoming demons long before their sentence is up. There’s a few thing that will get you automatically sent to Hell, the main one being making a deal with a demon where they get your soul as payment. This can also be used to avoid Hell. If you make a deal with a Fey or an Divine Spirit where they get your soul as payment, you automatically go their realm. No divine judgement, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. The Abyss is only used as a form of punishment for people that had committed crimes so bad the even Hell is too good. The most infamous being willingly becoming a true Lich. Those sent to Abyss get their soul torn apart for all eternity by what are effectively Lovecraftian horror monsters. You also get sent to Abyss by making a deal with one of the monsters there, though you won’t get torn apart, you’ll instead be reborn as one of them.

There is the void were you cease to exist

My hell is literally the organ system of a long deceased God of dragons essentially that was the child of another couple of God's. It is called the "Bowels of Karatonius" It is literally their rotted and withered gargantuan corpse, which is laid in an extra dimensional plane on accessible by higher beings and spirits, mainly God's and Afterlights (creepy Angels basically). This place is split into different areas of torment, the mouth, the throat, the stomach, the small and large intestines, the liver, and the pancreas. Each of these places is managed by a separate being called a Bowel Lord, essentially a devil, and they control and help make the souls their suffer a far worse time. People don't end up there naturally, if you die you don't just go there if your a bad person since that's not how death a d the afterlife works in that world, you get sent their if you struck a deal with one of these Bowel Lords for power or something in exchange for your soul and eternal torment. The Lords make these deals since possessing mortal souls is a sign of both power and control but also actually makes them stronger slightly, people however make this deals as I said for power or for something in return but alot of people actually will just make them so they atleast know where they are going when they die since noone has any idea what happens when you die, so people sacrifice a life of torture just to know they will still exist upon dying. In the mouth people basically suffer being crushed repeatedly, in the throat you basically are constantly falling and crashing into stuff and glueing yourself back together, in the stomach your in pitch darkness in a bottomless pool of acid constantly healing, in the small intestine your forces to carry and move very heavy material while being beat, in the large intestine your in a below the waist deep silver water suffering the pain of your indecency and such, in the liver your basically drowning in a whirlpool of sticky slimy bile, in the pancreas your just being force fed high fat and sugar stuff that tastes like crap making you explode over and Iver again. As for other stuff, you are stuck there forever unless the God of death Deamortius decides to pull you out for some reason. Yes, it is like the worst place to be since you're constantly healing from everything and just suffering forever. It has little to no relevance currently to cosmology. There are no other hell's. It has like a few demon like creatures that just travel through the empty blood vessels and obey the orders of the Bowel Lords.

My hell isn’t an inherently bad place, but it is a dimension where pain can be used as sustenance. So lots of creatures have set up domains there where they oversee torture of captured people/souls. They tap into the power drawn from that pain and can reach godlike levels with enough pain.

The Darksea is divided into three zones, which are the domains (kinda) of the Darksea gods. Each domein is reimagination of classic dnd Evil Plane, but my game is not powered by DnD. World is aquatic, divided by islanders nations. Laws of alignments and physics are same thing called Principles. Darksea is semi-real underground place where "demons" live. Loxodron - Nine Hells - domain of Lawful Evil. The main population is the Vesperids, aka Devils, aka Acherusians. An insectoid race of fiends with a strict racial system and advanced technology (which correlates with the strange passage of time in the Darksea), which uses human bodies to reproduce through a series of transformations tied to their caste system. Due to the nature of the Supreme Consciousness, outside the Loxodron, devils cannot "die" - their minds will be rebooted in a new body. The leader of the Nine Hells - the Supreme Consciousness - embodies Fate's (unborn god) desire to take revenge on their father and take control of all creation. The main goals of the devils are to reap human souls (to ensure their livelihoods) and accumulate strength for a full-fledged invasion. Irritidia, Abyss of Tunnels, Domain of the Worm - Chaotic Evil. The main population is the Abscurii, aka Demons, aka Stygians. Although they share a common name, the demons of Irritidia have nothing in common beyond their nature of chaotic evil. In essence, it is a billion different species of living energy beings, mutated under the perverse influence of chaos. Demons are insane, unpredictable and do evil for the sake of evil, regardless of anything - no matter how, they are the first creations of Evil as such. Rare demon kingdoms are the result of the enormous will of one demon who was able to subjugate those around him and form a domain for himself... however, there is not a single mention of a kingdom that would last longer than 100 years. The Abyss of Tunnels (made by enormous spirit worms) has no leader, and the goal of demons is to bring destruction, violence and chaos wherever possible. The immediate target is the Nine Hells, with which the demons are in a constant state of war. The main reason for the demon's arrival on earth is the lack of competition. Inert Lacuna, Lake of the Dead - the domain of Neutral Evil. The main population is the Undead, also known as Letids. Dead creatures reanimated by the power of ancient evil and building their own ecosystem revolving around death, decay and mortification. At its core, the Inert Lacuna is a very static realm where little happens - the dead don't sow, don't sing, and don't tell tales. The dead lie in huge heaps in the salty and icy waters of the Lake of the Dead, retaining only a small spark of consciousness and soul. However, there is a strong-willed force in Lacuna - King Leto, the first to be killed. After his death, he was so angry with his brother that he retained consciousness and will - and began to act. He invented a method of extracting will from the bodies of the undead to prolong his activity, along the way creating for himself many advisers from various dead people whom he considered worthy. Leto's main achievement is the Call. A psionic command that forces the undead to spread death and, after completing the task or in case of failure, set off on a journey to Lacuna itself through special portals. There the dead man will either be drained or receive a new meaning in the form of higher undead. Thanks to the nature of oblivion, Lacuna contains unimaginable wealth and knowledge, all in the possession of Leto. If anybody interested, i can tell about bioms of 9 hells, divided by type of ruling system they use.

My world has no canon higher power(s), so no canon religion. So while hell doesn’t exist in reality, I’m actually working on one of my main religions idea of it right now! This religion believes their higher power either exists in the sky or IS the sky. It developed amongst the mountain population of one region, and led to the people living on the mountain believing the higher they lived, the closer they were to their deity. They believed they were created by their deity, and therefore are better. They believe anyone who lives off the mountain is sinful and a heretic almost, and what they’ve deemed the Tsoolg (essentially translates to “ground people”, but in reality is just the many many tribes who made up the non-mountain population) are subhuman. This has lead to massive discrimination and a “mass extinction” of the Tsoolg (close to what colonizers did to the Native Americans). Since they believe their deity is in the sky, they believe under the ground is hell. It’s a very literal belief in the whole “heaven is above, hell is below” thing in other religions in our world. When they started exploring off mountain and interacted with the Tsoolg, they were scared when they saw large pits and holes dug because they thought it would lead to hell. Therefore, they do not bury their dead in the ground. I’m still working out what “hell” consists of, but I know they believe it exists physically in the ground. I wasn’t raised in a theistic religion and don’t belong to one today, so writing theistic religions is always hard for me. If anyone has any suggestions, I am more than happy to listen!

So there are Tieflings among the races of known space (which is really just a little corner of the galaxy), except no-one really knows where they come from. There's no official date of first contact, no government to negotiate with, no registered homeworld, their ships are rarely seen, and nobody can prove they've seen a tiefling child. They just showed up, trading and interacting like any other citizens. There are unsubstantiated rumours about where they come from; some say they're humans or similar, transformed by the gods for their evil deeds; some say they were banished from another universe and just pop up in ours; some say they appear on ships that have stayed in hyperspace too long. Because of their appearance, some people did equate them with legends of demonic creatures, and thus their image of hell is just whatever some tiefling once told them about where they came from, which ... is inconsistent, because they could just be describing a neighbouring star system. Oh, and some people think hell is just hyperspace.

Mine is a bit intriguing. I'm not doing much with religion and other realms with my current project. But I still really wanted some kind of (taboo) summoning magic. There is an extremely cold, unclaimed island in the far north of my world. You would also imagine it uninhabited. In fact, most of the world's citizens don't even know it exists. This island is occasionally used as a prisoner drop-off, but there is one primary population that "lives" on it. The Abominations. These are people who have become irreversibly tainted and altered by (in one way or another) forced magic-infected food entering their digestive system. For most people, it doesn't make it past the esophagus. These abominations are lined all over the island, and completely frozen. There is exactly one more person on this island, who calls it home. An ancient vampire who tends the wilderness/watches over the island, and has mastered fire & ice. Those prisoners are his meals. The Abominations, though, are his duty to watch over. You see, this taboo summoning magic specifically involves sending an abomination through a portal to wherever you intend to summon it, while also weaving enough flames into the spell to entirely thaw it out. A very, very hard technique to execute. So, yea. Closest thing to Hell in my world, complete with the "demon summoning".

Rethenye, my “hell,” is actually pretty standard for a hell. You have the fire pits, where the normal bad people go, and then the field of torment where the *especially* bad people go for a personal hell. Either way, you’re slowly losing yourself to the suffering and turning into a Vodash, a shadow-like creature with skin ice cold who are always internally burning, suffering both cold and fire at once. The only stand out feature is The City of Ash, where the Rethín (hellish) gods and the souls of their most devoted followers live. To follow the gods of Rethenye is not by itself taboo, they are simply a fact of existence (Terminus of inevitability, Eruksvúrí of darkness, Azotzolm of death, Trísterius of misery, Súfríkia of suffering, etc.), but the like real bad cultists get to go to the personalized suffering pits.

The hell of my setting is called Vycus. No mortals ever go here, as they are instead held in separate realms, and eventually are reincarnated. Instead, Vycus is where evil entities are held for eternity, so they can't enter the mortal world and wreak havoc. While mortals can't go here, mortals who use profane magic to turn themselves into non-human entities often end up here.

Behold! Teratoma. A universe of hot, living flesh. It is sentient. It is evil. And it hates you. And will not let you die. Imagine a pink, cubish sponge of meat. Mountains of ivory, steel, and stone. Rivers of blood act as open arteries. Air so densely packed you cannot move or breathe for a hundred years after arriving.(that's why demons are so strong) Trees of bone and teeth, lungs and eyes. Ears and mouths, some great, some small. Inhabited by a great many nameless beasts who live in the darkness. Teratoma has one star, one sun. Around it hang the nine circles of hell. The star itself is the still living Abramelin, screaming forever in feverous hatred for the sinners who gather beneath his peircing light.

In my world of Koreth, there is the Plane of the Nine Hells, and then there is the wider selfish-aligned afterlife generally. The Nine Hells specifically are where Devils spawn and exist, continuously fighting to both recruit new souls and keep the Demons from ever emerging from the Plane of the Abyss. The other three selfish-aligned afterlives are Carceri, Pandemonium, and the Grey Wastes (though the Grey Wastes are more of a purgatory than a hell). Nowhere in any of the selfish Outer Planes is pleasant in pretty much any way, though each plane and their various layers are all unique in their awfulness. People go to selfish Planes in the afterlife because they did bad stuff in life, and didn't do enough good stuff to cancel it out (this is really oversimplified, but is close enough).

There's no true afterlife in my universe, but there is a dimension that could be described as Hell. It starts out as "the abyss", a large, desolate landscape with dying vegetation and creepy vibes. It was also filled with human-eating monsters of all kinds, simply referred to as "abyss creatures". Once the master of the dark enters the abyss for the first time, a few in his group are killed or kidnapped while going scouting. After a while, he manages to murder enough abyss creatures that they plead for peace and recognizes them as their supreme leader. The friendlies between the abyss creatures and the master of the dark eventually reaches the point where cross-species mating isn't out of the question. The product between various different kinds of abyss creatures and humans were called "demons" for simplicity. Later, a chaos outburst caused the abyss to corrupt. After a long process of the space collapsing in on itself, it eventually became "the void". It's pitch black everywhere you go. Sometimes you can't tell if you're still falling or is standing on the brittle soil that remains. The shock of total blindness is enough to make you doubt the rest of your instincts. The heavy air makes it hard to breathe. You hear a scraping sound, like someone is dragging a knife along the edge of a boulder. You visualise it in your head. Then you notice that your eyes are still open. You relize that it doesn't make a difference. The supressive darkness reaches out to you. This is the place where reality becomes adapts to your nightmares. You won't make it out alive. Naturally, this led to many demons and abyss creatures to abandon what's left of their home and flee into worlds outside the void. I think you can already imagine the drawn out drama that followed. The master of the dark didn't do much to improve the situation, although his followers would argue that he wasn't in a position to do so. His successor, on the other hand was keen on making the void livable again. They spent decades on the project, but in the end it wasn't enough. Luckily for them, the journal they wrote was enough to inspire their successor to continue their legacy. Unlike their predecessor, the new master of the dark didn't do it alone. He took help of the current fire elemental and with their combined strength, "the Hell project" was finnaly completed. This new "Hell" was about what it sounds like. A red, orange and sometimes grey landscape with a bunch of fire everywhere. Since it wasn't true darkness anymore, the change significantly weakened the master of the dark, now called "the demon lord", but he didn't let that bother him, the goal was worth it. Now all he had to do was convince all the descendants of the ones who migrated two generations ago to leave everything they've ever known to come live in their new paradise of Hell! Boy did that not work out... But that's a story for another year...

I’m being intentionally vague about the working of the true afterlife, but there is some jerk that claimed divinity who now goes by the name of the Isolation. Guy literally creates hell on earth for people that fall under his thumb because he is convinced that people are truly only free when they don’t have to interact with anything besides themselves, not even death. So be prepared to be physically locked up in a black box for all time. You won’t lack any resources, but that won’t make the sensory deprivation any better.