Hell: There and back again.

Baator, of the Nine Hells, is the sort of place, every smart planewalker wants to avoid - but sometimes you have to go to places and do things you don't wnat to in order to get by.

The easiest way to get to Hell is to die with an alignment of lawful evil. The spirits of the dead are known as petitioners, and each one re-forms on the plane that corresponts to its alignment. Long ago the baatezu discovered that lawful evil petitioners could be made into lemures and nupperibos, the lowlies members of their race. It is for this reason that diabolic agents ply the Prime Material Plane tempting mortals into evil.

Other ways, that do not involve dying and spending several millennia as a lemure:

• travel via Sigl
• use gates
• spells (e.g. plane shift)
• macial items (e.g. amulet of the planes attuned to Baator)

Sigil sits at - above, really - the Spire at the center of a plane called the Outlands, or the Land. Technically, the Outlands are part of the Great Ring, but since they exist at the "center" of the Ring, nobody ever thinks to include them in it. As things count on the Outer Planes, the Outlands are realms of true neutrality, but most folks think of them as places with no alignment at all. The Outlands serve as meeting places and common ground for any berk from the Outer Planes. Oh, the Land has its share of natives, and a good number of powers, but most folks steer clear of actual Outlander settlements except for the gate-towns.

Situated about the Outlands are burgs that contain gates leading to the various other Outer Planes. Each gate-town opens onto the first layer of its respective plane. The areas around the gate-towns, as well as the burgs themselves, take on various aspects of the plane to which the gate leads.

So the town around the gate to Avernus is Ribcage. The gate to Baator is protected by a fortress city, nestled unter the curving "ribs" of the Vale of the Spine mountains. The people are a peery bunch who work hard and keep their eyes open. Fail in either, and there'll be music too harsh to pay.

Hell looks like an inverted mountain (an apt metaphor, as more than one commentator has mentioned). The plane consists of nine layers: Avernus, Dis, Minauros, Phlegethos, Stygia, Malbolge, Maladomini, Cania, and Nessus. The broadest part of the plane is the first layer of Avernus, and Hell comes to a tip on the ninth layer of Nessus. The farther down a traveler goes, the better his view of the layers above. The nine layers fit together like the pieces of a puzzle; each subsequent descent allows a traveler to see more of how the puzzle comes together.

While it is easy to get to Hell, getting out is an altogether tricker proposition. Gates are heavily guarded by diabolic forces, who can always gate in assistance when needed. Gates that change location are difficult to locate. It's possible to spend years blundering around the landscape of Hell without stumbling across a portal out. Then there's the River Styx. It's more reliable, but only travels through the Lower Planes. You can get out of Hell, but is Acheron or the Abyss any better?

Most travelers discover that a good way to escape is to make a deal with a local. The righteous, of course, have problems with dealing with the devils and usually refuse to do so. They also tend to stay in Hell longer than those with a more realistic outlook. If they get out at all, that is ...