Let’s consider the Nine Hells as an exemplar and object lesson in how the Outer Planes make use of mortal souls.
Asmodeus is the original architect of Hell’s soul engines, having constructed a massive engine for waging the Blood War and containing the existential threat of the tanar’ri. However, Asmodeus himself is no longer engaged in the soul trade: He merely imposes a quota upon the Archdukes and Archduchesses who rule the other eight layers of Hell (and, by the extension of a fiendish feudalism, all of the devils who serve beneath them).
Zariel, Archduchess of Avernus, is perhaps the most direct example of Asmodeus’ war machine: Evil souls crawl out of the Styx into Avernus as lemures; they are then raised as devils to serve as troops on the front lines of the Blood War.
Dispater, Archduke of Dis, seeks secrets and covets souls which possess them. Having gained these secrets from the souls he controls, he uses those secrets as a temptation to corrupt mortals who, like him, crave secrets. (Or, in other instances, blackmail them into performing evil acts.) For Dispater and the devils of dis, souls are a memetic web of corrupt lore, the acquisition of which fuels its own growth.
Mammon, Archduke of Minauros, is the financier of Hell, profiting from the trade of souls in Hell. His soul-mongers “harvest” unencumbered souls from the Styx and see them either sold through the soul markets of the Sinking City (little different from the slave markets of the Material Plane) or forged into soul coins, the most literal manifestation of the soul economy of the Outer Planes. The regulations and valuations of the soul-monger guilds are managed through The Accounting and Valuation of All Things, a vast mass of ever-shifting regulations which govern the trade of all souls within Hell (and often beyond it).
Fierna and Belial oversee the pleasure places of Phelegethos, where their servitor souls are used as brothel stock, satisfying the terrible perversions of Hell with dark delights.
Levistus, the imprisoned prince of Stygia, is an example of what happens when a scion of the Outer Planes is unable to pay their debts. Levistus has a very limited portfolio of potential souls he can attempt to recruit, having been blocked from more lucrative markets by the decrees of Asmodeus. He is a prime example of how quickly a god’s fortunes can wane if their access to the soul-wells is cut off.
Glasya, Archduchess of Malbolge, is the warden of Hell’s prisons. Here Devils who have broken Asmodeus’ laws or Mammon’s regulations are sent for punishment. Thus the feudalism of Hell is enforced. (Glasya also secretly operates the Coin Legions, which are the thieves’ guilds of Hell.)
Baalzebul, Archduke of Maladomini, oversees Hell’s courts. Here devils are convicted and sent to Glasya’s prisons, but, more importantly, this is where all contracts forged between fiends and mortals are recorded, copied, and filed. If Minauros is the slave market, then Maladomini is the stock market.
Mephistopheles, the Philosopher King of Cania, maintains vast storehouses of lore and focuses his acquisition of souls on those arcanists who can help his laboratories delve deep into the mysteries of the multiverse. What is less known is that Cania is also home to the vast arcane machineries which ensure that the Nine Hells remain aligned with the soul-wells which form the foundation of Hell’s existence.
THE LORE OF LATTER DAYS
You may have noticed that much of what we have built here is based on lore developed in the earliest days of D&D. This lore remained largely self-consistent up until the end of 3rd Edition.
So what about 4th Edition and 5th Edition?
The 4th Edition of D&D fundamentally overhauled a lot of the game’s lore and metaphysics. The biggest change is the introduction of the Shadowfell, which, according to the 4th Edition Manual of the Planes (2008), was “the definition of soul loosed from their bodies. It is the domain of the dead, the final stage of the soul’s journey before moving onto the unknown.” Souls linger for a time in the Shadowfell before passing through the Raven Queen’s maelstrom and the “final veil beyond which nothing is known.
… except there were also a bunch of souls scattered all around what were once the Outer Planes. Plus damned souls in Hell. And also damned and exalted souls in the Astral Sea. And also… Well, there wasn’t really a coherent metaphysic here.
In 5th Edition, what we find (as we often do) is mostly just a tattered palimpsest of the lore which came before. The concept of drift is reiterated in the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual contains the familiar lemure and larvae as entry-level souls in the lower planes. The Monster Manual also suggests that will o’ wisps and a number of other creatures are mortal souls which have “failed to leave the Material Plane.”
Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes (2018) actually contains quite a bit of planar lore. Some of this is contradictory (for example, demons “generally have no regard for mortal souls and do not solicit them,” but elsewhere we find that exactly the opposite is true), but there are also some interesting tidbits:
- With the Shadowfell no longer serving as the domain of the dead, the Raven Queen has been revamped: She now kidnaps souls from other planes, bringing them back to the Shadowfell to serve various purposes. (This rather delightfully ties into our vision of planar power resting upon the soul engine, with the Raven Queen as the mischievous robber baroness of the planes.)
- Elves have a cycle of reincarnation, harkening back to the original soul vs. spirit cosmology.
- Abishai are specifically identified as souls which have been transformed into servitors of Tiamat: “Each abishai was once a mortal who some how won Tiamat’s favor and, as a reward, found its soul transformed into a hideous devil to serve at her pleasure.” This is superficially similar to the lore of abishai in previous editions, but can be tantalizingly interpreted as Tiamat having a personal channel of souls separate from those normally employed by Hell. Is it possible that there is a soul-well housed within her citadel?
In any case, the cosmology of 5th Edition is broadly compatible with D&D’s original cosmology, and fits in quite snugly with what we’ve created here.
This post was requested by Alexandrian patron Glenn Rollins.
“Dispater, Archduke of Dis, seeks secrets and covets souls which possess *it*. Having”
Should be “them”?
Great series of articles. Gave me a lot to think about re: deities and their relationship with worshipers. Also fascinating to see the origin of some of the lore that I just took for granted. Thank you!
Thanks!
Re: Dispater. Yes. Although the idea that he’s ultimately seeking The Secret and covets souls which possess some part of it is such a delightfully transcendent enigma that it feels as if someone should do something with it.
You’re right that the cosmology of 4E was kind of messy. But there were a couple of good things that came out of it. The concept of “unaligned” was very useful, and was the beginnings of D&D moving away from alignment being an essential part of one’s nature, and instead seeing alignment as resulting from choices, beliefs and actions of an individual (“monster” or not). The other thing I liked is the creation of the Shadowfell and the Feywild. In some ways I think they are meant to replace the old “Negative Material Plane” and “Positive Material Plane” of older editions. I never understood what the heck those were supposed to be…but the Shadowfell and Feywild have been described in ways I understand. The Shadowfell is the embodiment of depression, despair, inertia and sorrow. The Feywild is the embodiment of mania, fierce joy and passion and chaos. There are other aspects that have gradually accreted to both of them, but the dark vs. light, two extreme poles concept works for me. Like many other people, I really do wish that they would do a 5E conversion of Planescape. We thought that Descent into Avernus might be a prelude to that…but sadly, no.
Do lemures retain memories of their mortal lives? If not, from whence does Dispater acquire souls that know secrets?
#3: I agree, the Feywild and Shadowfell were among the best new ideas in 4e, and I’m glad they retained them in 5e. Regarding the positive and negative *energy* (not material) planes, the positive energy plane is the source of “life energy” (“radiant” energy in 5e terms), and the negative energy plane is anti-life (the source of “necrotic” energy). Light vs. dark, as you put it.
And although they aren’t mentioned officially in 5e, I like to think that they’re still present “above” and “below” the material plane — with the Feywild bordering the prime material on the side that faces the positive energy plane, and the Shadowfell facing the negative energy plane.
I’m having parallel trouble with Paizo’s cosmology of death and the afterlife. I’m running Tyrant’s Grasp, which starts with the PCs being thrust bodily into the Boneyard, the realm of the Goddess of the Dead where souls are judged and meted out to the various aligned powers. Various psychopomps meet the PCs and are shocked that they are alive and bodily present in the Boneyard. (But the random encounter table has several living humans on it! Apparently it’s not *that* shocking.)
But then the PCs are guided out of the Boneyard and return to the place where they were killed. And someone has animated their corpses as juju zombies, though he notes that the juju zombies seem to be amnesiac.
So the PCs are there in living bodies, and their zombies are also there. I presume juju zombies are supposed to have souls, since they are sentient? These are clearly sentient, if amnesiac. So, we have two sets of PC bodies and two sets, apparently, of PC souls. How?? This is never addressed. In fact nothing in the rest of the Adventure Path ever touches on it at all.
I think the PCs’ current bodies must have been made of Boneyard stuff when they were thrown there (by being caught in the blast of a super-weapon) but I have no idea where the juju zombies got their souls, if they have souls.
Another problem is that the PCs meet the dead inhabitants of the village in the Boneyard, and a count of them is given. The PCs help them pass on to judgement. But…the town, when they return to it, is full of undead created by the blast. Not just mindless skeletons and zombies, but things that seem to want to be souls, like wraiths. (If a wraith is not a soul, I dunno what it is!?) So again, we have a villager whose soul is in the Boneyard and simultaneously is a wraith on the Prime Material.
This is what you get when you turn a bunch of authors loose and you haven’t established the cosmology at all. (Modules 1 and 2, which are causing the problems here, were by different authors.) Happens in TV shows too. But it’s a lot more problematic in an interactive medium; my player likes to figure things out, and keeps figuring things out in a very play-disruptive way (for example, that they weren’t in the Boneyard at all but in Faerie, and everything they were told there was a lie)…. I can’t blame him, either, because there is apparently no sense to be made of this.
@Wyvern — I think the Positive and Negative Energy planes do exist in 5e? I thought I saw them in the back of the PHB but I could be wrong. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the Shadowfell, at least, has been directly confirmed to border the Negative Energy Plane (in the description of the Nightwalker in Mordernkainen’s Tome of Foes, which is a very out-of-the-way place for that bit of planar lore).
As for the Positive and Negative *Material* planes, I think that’s what they were called in 1st Edition AD&D.