In Forgotten Realms lore, what gods or deities make their home in one or more layers of the Nine Hells? (Asking for all editions of the D&D).
I get that each layer is ruled over by a "lord", which is a very powerful devil (like Mephistopheles for instance), but are there any gods that live in the Nine Hells? Surely there's a Lawful Evil deity that has a cottage in Avernus, along the shores of the River Styx?
PS - I'm aware that in 5e lore, Asmodeus is now a full-fledged god.
The earliest write-up would be from the original Deities & Demigods (1980):
Druaga, No Cha, Set, Hecate, Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, Geryon, Tiamat, Maglubiyet, Kurtulmak, Gruumsh, Sekolah, Inanna
Note the presence of Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, and Geryon, who are or were Archdukes of Hell—Deities & Demigods refers to them as “lesser deities” but their deity-or-not status of the greatest devils would go back and forth a lot.
In Dragon vol. 64, discussing the world of Greyhawk, Gygax muses about moving some of the gods that D&DG puts in Hell to other planes:
Maglubiyet’s plane is Gehenna; Kurtulmak’s plane is Acheron; Gruumsh’s plane is Gehenna.
In Dragon vol. 75, Ed Greenwood refers to the moves in Dragon vol. 64 and considers them incomplete, believing all gods were meant to be moved out of Hell (believing there was some narrative conflict between having both devils and evil gods there). He does not provide destinations for all of them, referring to it as something each DM must do.
Both of these moves seem to have been largely missed, and probably ignored by later publications. Gruumsh, notably, moves to Acheron, not Gehenna.
They might only refer to Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, respectively, but that’s weird in the context of the multiverse. Both worlds were—and are—supposed to share the same Hell.
When the subject is the multiverse, the greatest source is Planescape, and the best source for Planescape deities is On Hallowed Ground (1996). Later authors seem to have treated this source seems as somewhat more authoritative than the very-old Deities & Demigods, or the ideas Gygax and Greenwood mulled over in Dragon. By my reckoning, there are these deities in Baator in that book:
Bargrivyek, Druaga, Hecate, Inanna, Kriesha, Kurtulmak, Sekolah, Set, Takhisis, Tiamat
It’s a long book with a lot of deities in it, though, so I may have missed some.
Many of the gods on these lists haven’t been mentioned in canon for decades, particularly those from real-world religions.
Asmodeus, Azharul, Baalzebul, Bargrivyek, Bel, Belial, Dispater, Fierna, Gargauth, Geryon, Glasya, Graz’zt, Hecate, Hutijin, Inanna, Kostchtchie, Kurtulmak, Levistus, Lilith, Mephistopheles, Moloch, P’kk, Sekolah, Set, Thasmudyan, Tiamat, Titivilus, Zargon
Unfortunately, this list is neither exhaustive—there are very likely other deities not important enough to warrant their own page—nor perfectly accurate for those who are there now. For example, Graz’zt and Kostchtchie are on the list—setting aside whether or not Demon Princes are deities, they’re certainly not in Hell. They’re on the list because Kostchtchie was imprisoned in Avernus for a while, and some of the lore claims Graz’zt is a former devil. Both are definitely in the Abyss now, at any rate.
The Forgotten Realms wiki also has a slightly different list on its page about the Nine Hells, just to add to the confusion. All of those listed on that page but not above have moved out of the Hells, though.
Also—with thanks to @afroakuma for noticing—Pisaethces, the Blood Queen, progenitor of the aboleths, isn’t on the list. That’s almost fair—she’s a weird case, she arguably is a god, but a god from the Far Realms, invading the multiverse (“invading” though it might be involuntary on her part). And maybe she’s not; she’s definitely different from the other gods. Lords of Madness (2005) names her an elder evil, as something separate and distinct from (and older than) that gods. But since the list also includes Zargon—who is also called an elder evil and not a god (Elder Evils, 2007), and Pisaethces is much closer to a god than Zargon is, I think we should include her. Also bear in mind that while she has her divine realm in Baator, but she’s not actually there—aboleths believe she “travels the currents of probability between infinite realities, spreading her seed almost as an afterthought as she moves from one world to another,” (Lords of Madness).
Combining the lists, removing the archdevils and those who have moved elsewhere, I therefore come up with this list:
Even this list has problems, though:
In general, D&D’s takes on real-world deities have not been well regarded by just about anyone from their respective cultures. In particular, two here are especially heinous:
Druaga is just a complete fabrication. It appears to be a misspelling of “drauga,” a Zoroastrian concept meaning something like “deception”—but Zoroastrianism is Persian, not Babylonian.
It’s unclear who “No Cha” is supposed to be. The name might be an alternative transliteration of Nezha, but Nezha is not in any way related to thieves or thievery. On Hallowed Ground doesn’t include “No Cha” at all, but its description of “Sung Chiang” is almost identical—and again, not remotely similar to the actual Song Jiang. Anyway, On Hallowed Ground lists Sung Chiang as having his realm in Gehenna, not Baator.
Kriesha, P’kk, and Thasmudyan are extremely obscure—each is mentioned in only a single publication, and all three of those publications are from 1995.
So you might want to go with just Kurtulmak, Pisaethces, Sekolah, and Tiamat. And Set, I guess; that’s real-world but for better or worse the Egyptian pantheon plays a fairly large role in the Realms thanks to Mulhorand.
Kurtulmak, the Horned Sorcerer, the Watcher, the Devourer, Steelscale, Stingtail, Gnomesmasher, lawful evil patron and creator of kobolds, whose realm Draukari is in Avernus.
Pisaethces, the Blood Queen, whose blood fell and spawned the aboleths, who “travels the currents of probability between infinite realities, spreading her seed almost as an afterthought as she moves from one world to another,” has an empty realm on Minauros.
Sekolah, the Great Shark, the Shark-Father, the Joyful Hunter, the Caller from the Depths, patron and adoptive father of sahuagin, whose realm Sheyruushk is in Stygia.
Set, Lord of Evil, Lord of Carrion, Defiler of the Dead, King of Malice, Father of Jackals, Brother of Serpents, Outcast of the Gods, God of Darkness, God of Desert Storms, the great evil of the Mulhorandi pantheon, has the realm Ankhwugaht on Stygia.
Tiamat, whose many titles forced me to actually copy-and-paste, the Avaricious, Bane of Bahamut, Creator of Evil Dragonkind, the Chromatic Dragon, the Dragon Queen, the Dark Lady, the Many-Mawed, Nemesis of the Gods, Queen of Chaos, Queen of Evil Dragonkind, who really doesn’t need more introduction, has her Lair on Avernus.
D&D sometimes says archdukes—and others among the most powerful exemplars, such as Demon Princes, Slaad Lords, Primus, the Court of Stars, etc.—are deities, and sometimes says they are not. Sometimes some-but-not-all of them are.
In general—and keep reading for important exceptions—“exemplar lords” like the archdukes can definitely sponsor clerics and grant “divine” power. They certainly are worshiped by many mortals. In this sense—which is the sense used by many D&D products—they are gods. However, D&D also has another, more specific definition of deity—one who controls a divine portfolio. In this sense, exemplar lords are not gods. This distinction is what causes most of the confusion, because some products say “they are gods [in the sense that they are very powerful, are worshiped, and grant blessings and magic to their followers],” while others say “they are not gods [in the sense that they don’t control a divine portfolio],” but often without explicitly saying which sense is meant. So for the most part, they are what they are, powerful, worshiped, with clerics, but without divine portfolios. Apply the word “god” to that, or don’t, as you see fit.
There are a few important exceptions here:
For all Tiamat was once an archduke of Hell, Lord of the First, she is not and has never been a “devil” proper, and rather has always been a goddess, albeit one that Asmodeus had chained up for a while.
Lolth has been both a goddess and a demon in every edition of D&D, even when that combination was otherwise impossible, because she cheats like that. Her story is that she lost her divinity when she was kicked out of the elven pantheon, clawed her way through the Abyss and made herself a demon prince, and then reclaimed her divinity. This procedure probably isn’t strictly necessary, but being a former deity doubtlessly made this procedure easier for her, which might be why she was the only one to have done it in most editions of D&D.
5e lore has made Asmodeus another exception here; the story of the Spellplague includes a bit where he steals Azuth’s divine portfolio. This is certainly official—and certainly much more recent than almost any of the lore above—but personally, I’m not a fan:
It centers the Forgotten Realms in a way that is really awkward for other planes (it’s one of the reasons why fans thought the Realms were 5e’s default setting).
I don’t think it makes sense for Asmodeus. Divine portfolios come with far too many strings attached. While he would be personally empowered by having one, it would also limit and control Asmodeus in ways that he had previously rejected strenuously.
5e tries to present this as Asmodeus finally achieving a goal long sought, which doesn’t make much sense with past lore. He literally had Tiamat chained up as a guard-dog for a while; if he had wanted a divine porfolio, he could have had one.
If the story had been that he had some reason to change his mind, or even better, had somehow arranged things so that he could have the portfolio with fewer drawbacks, that would have made a much more satisfying story.
This is probably tangential here, but I can’t help but notice that the FR wiki’s list ends with Zargon. This refers to the Elder Evils supplement for the “v.3.5 revised edition” of D&D, where Zargon is one of the titular elder evils. The wiki accurately reports what that book says, but... this seems to have been a case where an author took a few random obscure words from D&D lore, and slapped them together to give a character some sense of history. To wit, Elder Evils claims that Zargon is one of the ancient baatorians, a mysterious race of devils who lived in the Nine Hells—aka Baator—and then mysteriously vanished, all long before Asmodeus et al. showed up. It’s hinted here and there that a few of the original baatorians still persist, and Elder Evils claims that Zargon is one. The problems with this are many: one, Elder Evils also connects Zargon to the Zargon from The Lost City, a 1982 adventure where Zargon was a chaotic evil, not a devil of any stripe. Also, The Lost City Zargon had clerics and granted them divine power; Elder Evils Zargon categorically and explicitly cannot do that. And ultimately, nothing Zargon does in either The Lost City or Elder Evils is remotely consistent with what (little) we know about ancient baatorians.
Basically, an author tried to take some deep cuts from the lore, but without really knowing the lore. It didn’t work out very well. It’s best ignored. All of which is kind of incidental to this question, since The Lost City doesn’t call Zargon a god, and Elder Evils says explicitly that he isn’t.
