The Nine Hells of Scarterra
Each of the Nine maintains a sub-realm in the Aetherial Realm for the purpose of punishing the souls of mortals who displease them, often called the Nine Hells though they may be more analogous to Purgatories than Hells because few if any mortals are there eternally, though the finite stays there are usually measured in centuries.
Whether motivated by justice or by spite, the Nine don't keep near as many souls in the nine Hells as one would guess. This is largely for the same reason that most Scarterran kings and queens do not keep large prisons or dungeons: large prisons are expensive to build, maintain and guard. This is also a major reason why sentence in Scarterran punitive afterlife are more akin to purgatory than Hell, eternal torment is a lot of effort on the part on the Nine that the Nine don't want to deal with.
Historical Basis
The Nine get no real pleasure from torturing the souls of sinners, however they define sin. The Nine hope to use their Hells as a deterence.
The Nine are usually more than happy to give the souls of the damned "paroles" to let them communicate with the living as sort of a "scared straight" program similar to how Jacob Marley warned Ebineezer Scrooge "Don't be like me!"
Variations & Mutation
The specifics of the nine Hells to most Scarterrans but some legends are consistently told. The three "evil deities: Phidas, Greymoria, and Maylar arguably have less vindictiveness towards the dead than they do for the living and the three "good" gods: Hallisan, Mera, and Zarthus have surprisingly harsh punishments.
Maylar's Heaven and Hell realm are the same. The Hell residents get the "privilege" to serve the Heaven residents in chains.
Mera's Hell is nicknamed the Desert of Deprivation. Normally the souls of the dead do not require food or drink, but in the Desert Deprivation they feel both hunger and thirst, but there is no thirst.
Korus' Hell is said to showcase the brutality of nature letting the souls there experience pain and death from natural causes over and over again.
Nami's Hell is said to be sensory deprivation. Nothing, no torture, no joy, no distractions. A mind-numbing lack of stimulation.
Greymoria's Hell is said to be the most realistic of the Hells, resembling a brutal dungeon and featuring forms of torture that one might see in a brutal material plane dungeon.
Khemra's Hell closely resembles a medieval Earth depiction of Hell. Fire and brimstone.
Zarthus's Hell resembles a modern ironic Earth depiction of Hell. Hell has frozen over.
Hallisan's Hell is sort of an amalgam of Mera's and Greymoria's Hell mixing deprivation with torture.
Phidas' Hell allows the souls of the punished to work off their debt with drudging toil.
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