Beyond Raphael: My Journey Through the True Hierarchies of the Nine Hells

I remember Raphael's voice, a silken threat coiled in the shadows of Sharess' Caress. He spoke of bargains and power, painting himself as the ultimate architect of fate. But as I delved deeper into the lore, his grandeur began to feel like a gilded cage, a performance for mortal eyes. The Nine Hells are an infinite, layered chessboard, and the cambion we met in Baldur's Gate 3 is but an ambitious pawn in a game played by entities whose schemes span millennia. Their power isn't just measured in brute force, but in the chilling, patient calculus of lawful evil. To understand them is to walk a razor's edge between awe and terror, to see the true scale of the abyss.

Let me tell you about the real powers that slither and scheme in the infernal depths. Forget the singular villain; here, in 2026, the tapestry of tyranny is woven by many hands.

10. The Amnizu: Poisoned Minds in Noble Robes

My first true glimpse into hellish bureaucracy was the Amnizu. Don't let their grotesque, bulbous green forms fool you—these are the aristocrats, the stewards. They don't just command; they infect. I've read accounts of adventurers standing motionless, their minds suddenly blank, easy prey because an Amnizu willed them to forget where they were. Their arrogance is a weapon, sharpened by a cunning so valued that even archdevils keep them close, always watching for the knife in the back they know will come. They're the ultimate middle managers of damnation, and honestly? They give me the creeps more than any roaring beast.

9. The Red Abishai: Tiamat's Crimson Fist

Then there are those who draw power from a different kind of dread. The Abishai, dragon-kin sworn to the five-headed goddess Tiamat. Among them, the Red Abishai are something else. They don't just serve; they wield her blessing like a birthright. I picture them not as solitary fiends, but as the beating heart of infernal legions, commanding cults with a presence that can cow even other powerful devils through sheer force of will. They are living conduits of draconic fury, a reminder that in the Hells, faith can be the most terrifying weapon of all.

8. Titivilus: The Whisper in the Dark

Some devils conquer with fire; Titivilus conquers with a sentence. As Dispater's right hand, he is the embodiment of the silver tongue. He didn't win his place through battle; he planted seeds of paranoia in his master's mind until he was the only one left standing in the circle of trust. Fighting him? Good luck. He's a ghost, using Greater Invisibility and a voice that echoes from nowhere. He'll bargain with you, smile, and make you believe giving up your soul was your own brilliant idea. He's proof that in Hell, the sharpest sword is often a well-placed word.

7. Pit Fiends: The Heart of the Blood War

But let's not romanticize it all. When the endless Blood War against the demons rages, it's the Pit Fiends who are the engine of destruction. These are 12-foot-tall engines of scarlet scale and hellfire, whose very presence smothers a battlefield in fear. They are the definition of hellish warfare—not tacticians in towers, but generals in the thick of the slaughter, thriving where the carnage is thickest. They rarely bargain; they lend their power to mortal warlords, just to sit back and watch the beautiful, destructive chaos unfold.

6. Prince Levistus: Ambition in an Icy Tomb

Now we ascend to the archdevils, and Prince Levistus is a lesson in bitter irony. The great betrayer, trapped for eternity in a glacier of his own domain, Stygia. His body is imprisoned, but oh, his mind... it's free. His network of followers spans planes. He's the wild card, the devil who takes glee in shredding the very contracts that bind his kind. A master duelist and wielder of the ice that binds him, his is a rage turned inwards, festering, plotting a revenge so cold it burns. His story is a favorite of mine—a tragedy of overreach, where the prison becomes a throne.

5. Lady Fierna & Lord Belial: A Family's Poisoned Chalice

If Levistus is solitary torment, the rule of Phlegethos by Lady Fierna and her father Lord Belial is a shared damnation. Theirs is a deliberately crafted rivalry, a father-daughter dynamic so vile it poisons their entire layer. Belial controls the infernal promotions board; Fierna trades in the secrets to undermine him. Souls caught between them aren't just claimed; they're toys in a perpetual, vicious game where the only rule is to make the other look bad. It's pettiness elevated to a cosmic scale, and it's devastatingly effective.

4. Zariel: The Fallen Sword

We've heard her name—Karlach's former master, a specter haunting BG3. Zariel is the fallen angel, the perfect warrior who led a crusade into Hell to cleanse it and was instead consumed by it. Now, she is the merciless general of Avernus, the front line of the Blood War. She combines angelic grace with hellish brutality, a warrior who doesn't just seek to kill, but to conscript. To be defeated by her is to be condemned to an eternity of battle. Her tragedy is her power; her fall is her fuel.

3. Dispater: The Paranoid Iron Duke

In Dis, the realm of eternal punishment, sits Dispater in his impregnable Iron Tower. He is paranoia given form. He sees plots in every shadow, and this makes him incredibly dangerous. He's a patient politician, a master of the long game who lets others think they're winning before he turns their flesh to iron, adding them to his sprawling city. Dealing with him is like playing chess against someone who memorized the rulebook just to find the loopholes. You might think you're outmaneuvering him, but you're probably just walking a path he paved for you.

2. Mephistopheles: The Infernal Innovator

The ruler of frozen Cania is, ironically, the creator of hellfire. Mephistopheles is a wizard-archdevil, a being of intellect and barely-contained rage. His ambition burns hotter than the hellfire he invented. He understands the politics of the Hells intimately—he once led a rebellion against the top devil himself. He is pride and envy incarnate, a strategist whose temper is his greatest weakness and his most terrifying weapon. He doesn't just play the game; he tries to rewrite the rules, and the explosions are spectacular.

1. Asmodeus: The Ancient Principle

And at the root of it all, there is Asmodeus. To call him a devil feels insufficient. He is the prototype, a primordial force from the dawn of time who became the concept of diabolical law. He is patient in a way mortals cannot comprehend. His goal? Some say it's to collect every soul by eroding faith in all other gods. He is the silent architect, the writer of the infernal contract. Raphael's deals are child's play compared to the eons-spanning plots Asmodeus enacts. His is not a rage you feel; it's a cosmic gravity that pulls all sin and ambition towards him, the absolute center of the infernal universe. To earn his personal attention is not to be destroyed, but to be carefully, perfectly, eternally undone.

Walking through these hierarchies, I see Raphael differently now. His theatrics are but an echo of these deeper, older powers. The Nine Hells are a symphony of evil, and each devil, from the lowly Amnizu to the primordial Asmodeus, plays its part in a harmony that has damned souls since time began. It's a chilling, beautiful, and utterly terrifying masterpiece.