I Find Hell Fascinating

I have always had a liking for the horrific. It may or may not have something to do with seeing Alien 3 when I was 8, or finding the Swedish Chef of the Muppet Show utterly terrifying. Regardless, exposure to these miraculous things as a mere booger on the underside of life's desk left a lasting impression, leading to the creation of multiple art and writing projects that coalesced into a personal interpretation of a fictional Hell inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy as well as other works of diabolical fiction and nonfiction. This sprawling project is molded by personal experience and study and contains ideas inspired by social and practical sciences, quantum theory, world theology, culture, and real-world ecology.

From 2004 onward this personal project has expanded and grown. Below is a selection of design works created for this project, to be expanded on in the future.

Please note: Visitors are recommended to exercise caution while browsing this section of the site, as some art works and text blocks present or added in the future may be sexual, violent, or otherwise not-safe-for-work in nature.

Hell is a vast, living entity stretched over light-years of space, brought into existence by the conscious of living things out of a belief of punishment of wrongdoing after death. Hell is a series of discs, placed one under the other in order of descending size. Demons and Abyss-life populate the discs in their entirety - varied and terrifying lifeforms whose existence is driven solely by the will of Hell to shepherd the Damned to their individual salvation.

Hell stretches for light-years in every direction, with every mile populated by creatures and cultures shaped by a desire to survive and serve a landscape that chews and grinds everything that walks upon it. Damned and Demon alike co-exist in violence in service to a plane of existence created by themselves to engage in personal suffering, driven by deeply-rooted, faith-founded willpower.

Hell’s surface is pocked by hidden cultures and figures of power. The bottomless desire for riches and taxes demanded by Greed’s ruler, Ellis, has forced a multitude of Uis’ peoples underground to avoid punishment and state-sanctioned robbery. Despite a never-ending shower of true and forged coin, Ellis’ ultimate desire rests on the possession of the Wheel of Fortune, one of the Ten Temptations hidden in Hell’s expanse. Believed to be in the hands of the legendary Golden People, the brutish Xeres, treasure hunting parties financed with the dream of untold reward bounties scour Greed’s mantle, turning over meat and coalesced fat in search of the Xeres underground city and their leader, the Alchemist Aurum Saccularius who, it is rumoured, can transmute any object living or dead, divine or sacrilegious, into solid gold.

Level Lords come in all shapes and sizes, no form is unbecoming for rulership for so long as whatever mangled figure that has chosen to take up one of the Crowns Fair pledges to and honestly upholds the duty the circlet grants. Wrath exemplifies this with its twin Lords, the Godkiller and the Conflictor. Worms by any other name, the pair rule under the shared divinity of the Crown of Anger with a bloodthirsty fist, holding the city of Ais ransom by demanding all of its peoples attend never-ending bloodshed in the mighty Coliseum to keep its Lords entertained. To refuse attendance is to chance execution.

More than a few of Hell’s power struggles are insignificant and petty. Pride’s limited social ladder is composed entirely of the daughters of Pride’s ruler, the Founder. This sextet of Greater Shapeshifters play tyrant over Pride’s woeful damned in the explicit desire to gain and maintain the favouritism of their mother, who ultimately does not and will never treasure one child over another. Zebaucher is the eldest and most powerful of her surviving siblings. An arrogant, a hate-filled monstrosity taking the form of a scarlet scourge, she harasses and bullies her sisters to keep them in line beneath her as the self-proclaimed favourite of the Founder. Her treatment of her limited family breeds dangerous and unnecessary resentment in an uncharacteristically tiny Court.

Hell supports a wide array of inhabitants, ranging from specialised colossi, enigmatic peoples, and virulent pests. Dis is the great collision of such variety, a boorish pot of clashing culture, language, purpose, and wants. Save for its strained cultural centers and compressed ethnic pockets, no two demons are alike in Hell’s greatest metropolis. Janitorial and sweeper occupations focused on its ever-busy streets fetch outrageous wages to compensate for workload and sky-high turnover. Dis’ cobblestones regularly run with blood, but to whom it belongs no-one cares enough to say or guess.

Not all of Hell’s demons are conspicuous. Some of the most insidious and effective taskmasters in Hell are small and unassuming, wearing nonthreatening forms to keep the Damned stooped in delusions of their own making. The veil is thin, however, requiring only willpower to tear it away to see things as they really are. Enlightened beware, as to See is to proclaim “I wish to leave this place.” Those who make such a proclamation will have their meddle tested.

Your demons will howl:

are YOU worthy of your salvation.

Answer:

I AM.

Sketches:

Various creatures and inhabitants, made from 2009 onward.