ooo how do the nine circles function in ur version of hell? also like whats the environment like in general?
Okay so! Let’s start here: my Hell is a planet in another dimension. Hell’s universe is elderly, approaching the end part of its lifespan.Â
What little light there is in Hell comes from a red giant - a dying star in the last stages of its evolution. The amount of the giant’s light that actually reaches Hell is so little that to a human, Hell would appear completely dark. Life in Hell - including demons and Lucifer - has evolved to make use of what little light there is; it’s gloomy and dim for them, but they can see.Â
Like Earth, Hell has magnetic poles, weather, and a whole range of terrain types, climates, and ecosystems. Unlike Earth, it’s massive. Using this handy size chart I plucked from Google, Hell would be closer to Kepler 7B than Earth.Â
So really, the environment depends on where you are, what time of year it is (although seasons in Hell are much less drastic than on Earth, and demons don’t really mark the passage of time like we do).Â
Demons live pretty much everywhere except for the extreme poles, where it’s too cold even for a species that thrives in horrible environments nobody else wants to live in. There are supposedly frost giants down there, though - not that anybody living has ever seen one.Â
The circles are basically the Hell equivalent of states/counties/territories. Back in ye olde Hell of yore, each devil would only be able to hang onto as much land as his clan could defend, with boundaries constantly shifting, mostly by virtue of whoever won the latest skirmish with the clan next door.Â
But when Lucifer turned up and took over, he brought a more advanced kind of diplomacy to Hell; he’s got long-term alliances with other powerful (though still subordinate) leaders, and through war and politics and power plays he’s managed to rack up far more territory than any other devil in living memory. And he can’t keep an eye on all that territory, all the time.Â
So he did what thousands of human kings have done throughout history; introduced the circles, divided up his land, and gave chunks of it to his allies to watch over.Â
Each circle can have tens of thousands of demons, and hundreds of clans, covering an immense amount of land. Each of those small clans will have a leader, and the skirmishes go on as they always have, but the demon in charge of that circle is usually the former (either defeated or surrendered) devil of the most powerful clan in the area, and it’s now his or her job to keep all the smaller clans under control, deal with disputes, defend that part of Lucifer’s territory from attack, and contribute to the economy. Basically, they’re the nobility of Hell; the barons, the dukes, etc, and they all answer directly to Lucifer. If there’s an uprising in, say, the second circle that isn’t handled and Lucifer has to deal with it himself, Leviathan will be the one who has to answer for it.Â
The association with the sins came about thusly:Â
Before Lucifer banned possession, demons would come to the surface. They’d come into contact with humans, and end up either getting into fights and threatening to drag the human back to [circle number] as a captive (it’s a great shame, by demon standards, to be taken alive) or sociably talking about where they’re from over some drinks and sex. But if you’re in a very foreign country where nobody will have visited your own land, you don’t say, “I’m from Gorzyce,” because nobody is gonna know where that is. You say, “I’m from Poland.” Likewise, demons would say, “I’m from the [seventh] circle of Hell,” rather than “I’m from [the clan’s name for their own settlement].”
(Not that that’s much more helpful to the baffled early humans, but an attempt was made)
The demons generally associated with the seven deadly sins are Lucifer’s top lieutenants and advisors (mostly. Belial is Lucifer’s dragon, and Beelzebub is one of many names in a thousand different dialects for Lucifer himself). As such, they were the names that popped up most when demons would tell stories about Hell - theirs is still a largely oral tradition and most demons can neither read nor write. And the humans correctly assumed that these were clearly important people, the head honchos of Hell. But somewhere along the line religion got involved and each of them became associated with a particular sin in human lore and became avatars of evil, when honestly they’re just...demons. Like every other demon, except that they’re smart or strong or scheming enough to control an entire clan. Â
(also, if you want a version of the nine circles that is much cooler than mine, go visit @spinner-dolphin because her ideas on that are sick as fuck)