Of the two Fiendish Codex books, I prefer Tyrants of the Nine Hells, probably because I prefer devils to demons in general. I am an orderly guy at heart. The Nine Hells, being just nine planes instead of an infinity of them, seem a bit more self-contained than the Abyss and structure is a lot easier to describe than chaos.

The book isn’t much interested in devil physiology, so instead it favors economy and politics. Chris Pramas’ Guide to Hell forms a basic framework for the book, though there is a good deal more detail here. There’s a little bit of everything – devil worship, deals with the devils, appeals to the infernal courts, hierarchies, power structures, guides to each of the nine layers and more. We also get another (contradictory) origin story for Asmodeus and learn that his daughter, Glasya, has taken over as Lord of the Sixth from the hag countess Malagard in rather gruesome fashion.

Tyrants downplays much of the meta-story of Hell that emerged in earlier books. That makes this version of Hell both more approachable, but also a bit less quirky. Which is just as well, since 4E jettisoned the traditional D&D multiverse a few years later. 5E, of course, brought it back, but thus far has not tackled the fiends in any depth. Which is probably for the best – after all the attention in previous decades, I think demons and devils deserve to preserve an air of mystery in the present. At least for a while…