The Nexus
Roleplayer Training
Maladomini is a hell of ruins, the seventh layer of Baator. Everything natural on the layer has been defaced, destroyed, or stripped away, replaced with strip mines, quarries, poorly maintained roads and bridges, rivers of molten lava, slag heaps, wasted cities, and polluted canals, filled with stinking vapors, earth tremors, fire pits, and mines. Petitioners and other refugees hide in the ruins. Underground, the ancient diabolic predecessors to the baatezu still lurk.
The archduke Baalzebul, the Lord of the Flies, rules this layer. He is never satisfied with his cities, always demanding that they be destroyed and rebuilt based on tiny, unnoticeable flaws. Nothing less than perfection will do for him, even if he has to destroy his entire layer - indeed, all of Baator - to achieve it.
The major intact cities are Grenpoli, the city of treachery and diplomacy run by the erinyes noble Mysdemn Wordtwister, a fortress called the Relentless, and Malagard, a city of black spires from which Baalzebul himself rules.
Lord of the Seventh - Baalzebul the Slug Archduke
Baalzebul, the Lord of the Seventh, rules over the layer of Maladomini. He was once an archon of Celestia named Triel, but he was cast down into the Nine Hells, and soon after, Asmodeus promoted him to devilhood in a dread ritual. Baalzebul climbed the ranks of devilry, eventually becoming Lord of the Seventh, deposing the earlier Lord and expunging all mention of that entity. The Slug Lord is the only Archduke to have two official consorts: Baftis, his first and actual consort and Lilith, his viceroy's former consort whom he reined in due to her fairly large amount of worshipers on the Prime Material Plane.
While Baftis is too scared of Baalzebul and too spineless to even think of acting unauthorized, the strong-willed Lilith is not exactly loyal to the Slug Archduke and has schemes of her own.
Baalzebul once strove for devilish perfection in all things. Thus, Maladomini is dotted with ruined, abandoned cities, and petitioners were constantly building new cities for the Lord of the Seventh. Newer cities are built atop the ruins of older ones. As each city is finished, Baalzebul's dissatisfaction forced his subjects to begin anew. Baftis is sealed up in one of these ghost towns that she had refused to leave.
To punish Baalzebul for plotting against him during the failed rebellion known as the Reckoning, Asmodeus transformed Baalzebul's formerly angelic body into a melted, slug-like form. As a result, although Baalzebul now only openly plots against Mephistopheles, Lord of the Eighth, his undying anger still burns for Asmodeus, as does his eternal ambition for the throne of the King of the Nine Hells.
Baalzebul currently resides in the city of Malagard, formerly a beautiful city still under construction, with perfectly straight boulevards, fountains of delicate yet terrible visage, and towers that reach faultlessly straight into the blood-black sky. Recently, Baalzebul has given up on trying to prevent its demise, allowing its archways to droop and bridges to crumble as dispirited devils shuffle through ever-expanding rivers of trash. The fatalistic melancholy of the Lord of the Flies has struck the entire layer, interrupted only by occasional (and short-lived) frenzies of cleaning and repair. Baalzebul spends most of his time in the Palace of Filth, a building-shaped pile of fecal refuse that was once his grand castle. He periodically hollows out new rooms and reinforces slumping ones with layers of slime that ooze from his bloated body.