Answering the Famed sites of disastrous battles of the Blood War for Glogtober 23'
Katechon Gulf
Formerly, a sea of acid on Cathrys, a layer of Carceri dominated by deadly scarlet jungles.
To the north, a shapeless peninsula dominated by spiritual representations of all the sin committed during plagues, happily inhabited by dribbling, multiplying Tanar’ri.
To the south, a harsh shore cleared of jungle and rendered to acidic maroon soil, dotted all over with Baatezu earthworks, under the eye of a massive central battery.
This was the hold-point for the entire network of Baatezu defences on Cathrys - the demons couldn’t get through the water, and the devils’ copper ships could raid the enemy with violent impunity, lancing the jungle with explosive harpoons and devastating seizure-spells.
The Tanar'ri often made efforts to assemble bridges their usual way (from stacked corpses), but the acid consumed the corpses too quickly for it to be feasible.
Eventually growing sick of being throttled by ship attacks and pecked at by the silver-shot artillery of the mortal Dreg Legions on the high shore, the Tanar’ri retreated into the jungle and tore open a portal to an unprepared Prime World.
Tearing through a place with too few paladins and too many distracted lords, the Tanar’ri Wormed the locality, and dragged a huge section of it into Carceri, dribbling with Tanar’ric matter and occupied by screaming, unfortunate Primes.
Nearly instantly the acid sea became a stone block, and it all went to Hell (ha, hah) from there.
Zhulgor Escarpment, Fort 6
On the front lines near the Styx, in Avernus.
A row of forts on a gigantic block of godstone (the calcified remains of a god, apparently a god of mortification and starvation, judging by the remnant prayers extracted by theoalchemists in Hell’s employ.)
A catastrophic supply-depot explosion tore through Fort 6 for unclear reasons - official Hellish sources attribute it to mortal sabotage, and not, say, improper storage of explosives. As they say, the road to Hell is paved with nitroglycerin.
The explosion was about seven miles tall at the highest point, and it was hot enough to rip a temporary portal into the Plane of Elemental Fire - a little screaming, burning exit wound in the fabric of that which is.
The influx of stone, molten devilbone and flaming mortal souls on the other side shattered the beautiful molten-metal pleasure gardens which a lava-ifrit of significant age and power had been slowly perfecting for around six millennia, and his rage was so, well
Volcanic
That he made the inadvisable decision to invade Hell and kill Asmodeus, for the slight. He raised his fire-elemental vassals, his firenewt janissaries and his explosion-cavalry (explosionry), and made his way blazing and catastrophic right into the middle of the clash between the fiends over the ruins of the Zhulgor Fort.
Turns out, getting shot in the side of the head by volcanic ejecta will kill you even if you are immune to fire.
The situation stabilised eventually - the lava-ifrit is recognised King-President of Zhulgor, respected peer in the Hellish aristocracy of Avernus, because the resources needed to dislodge him are just a mite too high to spend willy-nilly, and he’s actually rather polite. See him sitting in the Citadel of the Generals, on a visit, sipping on hot uranium tea.
Zhadzhadgor
A minor town in the Grey Waste, a halfway spot between the City at the Centre and the line of Baatezu fortresses that control the black nettled plains.
In the centre of town was an old ruin which occasionally opened a portal into Sigil, the City of Doors. There was a little camp of enterprising Sigilites doing their usual thing (that is, poking around all the aeons of ruins and digging up gold baubles and magical trinkets).
The war came to Zhadzhadgor in five brutal pitched battles. Neither side was winning - utterly pyrrhic on both sides, the Abyssal hordes splattered against shieldwalls, and entire Hellish legions were consumed in acid rains and lightning-chains. But, when both sides of the Blood War suffer 90% casualties, the demons are winning by a country mile, because they’re swimming in reserves.
Something had to be done. If the demons took the town they’d be impossible to dislodge from the plain. So, the Pit Fiend in charge of the operation contacted the Yugoloths, and said: “wipe Zhadzhadgor off the map”.
The Oinoloth conjured it up - a plaguebomb. A random Sigilite was selected and infected, compelled cordyceps-like to head for the portal. On the other side, the devils made a show of retreat - the cannier adventurers in the area knew something was up and cleared out, but the frenzy of looting kept many in place.
The infected stumbled through the portal as the demons smashed into the ranks of looters, and the virulence was released. Within minutes, Zhadzhadgor was an uninhabitable death-zone, a worse-than-death-zone, covered in piles of treasure and the suppurating bones of demons.
The plague didn’t stop there, of course - it slid out of the old town, like a greasy shadow, and poured along the roads of Hades. Eventually, there was an intervention - Celestials descended from the Seven Heavens and arrested the sickness in place with powerful magic. They were later commended, and then demoted for acting without orders.
The air in Zhadzhadgor is sick - chunky vomit falls instead of rain. The fog reeks. The walls are splattered with pustulous tanar’ric slime. And all the treasure left behind leaks a foul miasma.
Don’t visit.
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