The Nexus
Roleplayer Training
The second layer, Dis, is both a layer and a burning city of iron known as the Iron City of Dis. The walls of the buildings of the city radiate extreme heat, as do the stones of the streets; more than brief skin contact results in severe burns. The Archduke Dispater rules this layer from the Iron Tower, an impregnable fortress that reaches far into the sky and can be seen everywhere on Dis (literally; by looking to any direction in the skyline one can see the Iron Tower).
A notable feature of Dis is God Street, a place filled with buildings that are actually the godly realms of various lawful evil deities that have not earned enough worshipers to earn a realm on another layer of Baator or another plane entirely.
Although the Iron City of Dis has a wall, the transition from plain to the city itself is imperceptible. One moment a traveler is passing an iron spur, the next the traveler is in the middle of the city with the mighty iron walls surrounding everything that can be seen. It is thus much easier to enter the Iron City than it is to leave it; to leave, one must pass through the heavily guarded city gates (unless the traveler has means of crossing planes of existence).
The iron walls and streets of the city smoke with intense heat, burning those who touch them without protection. Abishai, erinyes, spinagons, and lemures are common - so are soul shells, petitioners who retain their humanoid forms and memories, the better for Archduke Dispater to torment them. Bezekira, kocrachons, rakshasas, and hamatulas are also found thronging the streets of Dis.
The most prominent building in the Iron City is Dispater's tower of iron and lead, a sky-scraping edifice that constantly changes shape. The streets, too, are constantly shifting, constantly being rebuilt by the tormented petitioners, confusing and sometimes choked with garbage.
Despite all this, Dis is the most populous and wealthy city in Baator, filled with plane-walkers of all types who come to sample the city's terrifying delights.
The realm of Druaga, the Refuge of the Fallen, exists on the plains far outside the city walls. Dis is largely flat, with a sky of smoky green occasionally lit up by lightning. Black, stagnant rivers criss-cross its plains. Monolithic spurs of blackened, raw iron - natural formations, as much as anything in Baator is natural - thrust out of the plains, growing more frequent as a traveler approaches the Iron City itself.
Archduke of Dis, Dispater
Dispater is a fallen angel, originally the lieutenant of Baalzebul, who in turn was the champion of Asmodeus. Following his war against Ihys, when Asmodeus led his host to Hell in the Exodus, Dispater fell with his commander, and was rewarded for his loyalty with the status of Lord of the Second.
Alone among the lords of Hell, Dispater believes in the virtues of courtly love, and has taken three wives over the course of his eons-long existence. The first is forgotten, even by the Iron Lord himself, the only token of her existence a shattered statue in Dispater's throne room. He took a mistress, Tisiphone, an Erinye, at the end of his first marriage who gave him twins, Xenda and Gregor. The second marriage was Feronia, an elemental demigoddess with whom Dispater shared a brief, tempestuous relationship that led to the birth of his son, the empyreal lord Ragathiel. Dispater's third and current wife is Erecura, a once-mortal demigoddess who was condemned to Hell for stealing the secret of eternal life from Pharasma.
Dispater appears as a majestic, seven-foot-tall figure with rust-red skin, four horns, and a burning crown that hovers above his head. His skin bears dozens of scars and piercings, each of them a past wound turned into a mark of pride. He retains his angelic wings, though they are now black, and he keeps them retracted within his body at almost all times. The First King's staff of office is the Eclipsing Eye, a bladed staff with a great ruby through which Asmodeus constantly watches him.