What They Don't Tell You About Levistus, Lord Of The 5th Layer Of Hell - D&D

the fifth layer of the nine hills is a freezing realm of ice within which cold flames burn a frozen sea surrounds the lair and its gloomy sky crackled with lightning arch duke lavistas once betrayed as modius and is now encased deep in the eyes of stygia as punishment he rules this layer all the same communicating telepathically with his followers and servants both in the nine hills and in the material plane today we're going to take the time to delve deep into the iceberg and check into the mind and heart of lavistus one of the most cunning and charming devils now imprisoned forever in a cage of ice but first let's talk of course about our sponsor today this video is brought to you by dungeons and dragons dark alliance it always makes me happy to see more dungeons and dragons games dark alliance is a third person cooperative action game where you get to explore the snowy wilds of ice wind dale as the companions of the hall you might recognize some of these characters that is drizz the ordin from the novels we got brainer battle battlehammer king of mithril hall we got wulfgar king of the reggae barbarians and caddy bree the chosen of miyaliki using these legendary characters you will fight against goblins giants durgar and more as you attempt to prevent them from getting access to the legendary artifact crunchinibon the crystal shard we talked about conscientious a while back in our 10 coolest magic items in dungeons and dragons it's a really cool evil magical artifact created by the spirit of seven evil liches and now the artifact hides a night's win dale and a ton of legendary villains are out to find it that includes of course the mastermind of it all lavistas the devil lord of the fifth layer of hell the game comes out today so check out the link in the description below and give it a shot but now on to the video so lavistas himself is very interesting within the course of the devils of the nine hills because he is in a lot of ways the most different out of all of them see within the devil lords we have the monsters we have the fallen angels we have the straight up normal looking devils we have the nasty looking hybrids we even have a hag a devil lord but what we don't have is the grast of hell a charismatic perhaps funny approachable maybe a more normal feeling devil now don't get me wrong neither grass nor lavistas are normal but charisma is certainly something that many of these devil lords just seem to miss yet for all of his charisma he is the most hated out of all of the devil lords devils are known to conspire against one another to betray each other when possible but to do this sometimes strongly relationships are forged alliances are made every devil lord has an alliance with someone else they have to to survive because it is just a matter of time until you get backstabbed lavistus is the only lord who doesn't and that's curious originally he was extremely close to asmodeus so much so that he helped us modia succeed in his rise to power and was then granted dominion over stygia which was at the time a great boon considering that stygia is one of the two hills that get access to the river styx a fairly beneficial dominion to own considering that the other hell is awareness and you don't really want to be there hey look stevia is really nice now lavistas was known once as a handsome roguish devil who could sweet talk his way out of trouble extremely smart and cunning as well but now he lays imprisoned in a cage of eyes for the rest of time with all of hell against him if it wasn't for the fact that he is completely impervious to damage while on this prison he would have been murdered a long time ago what exactly happened when you look at mordenkinsdum of foes which is the only 5th edition book that talks about lavistas all they say is quote stygia is a frozen wasteland of mysterious origin a churning murky sea covered in a thick layer of ice where the ice gives way to open water immense icebergs drift on the unpredictable currents lavistas is trapped within one of these birds imprisoned there by asmodius for reasons that few can even guess about end quote they straight up don't tell you why he was punished it's interesting because on this very same book they go further to elaborate on almost every single devil lord but they also just conveniently leave out la vistas and there is no stat block for him but there are for others what the hell happened have you ever wondered why there isn't a queen of hell a romantic consort of swords for asmodius i mean even demogorgon the prince of demons has love interest we literally talked about it on his video i mean and look at him if he can do it anyone can do it and you guys of course know of all the gods having children all the time lolth of course being the ex-wife of corylen loretti and the god of elves more than the god of dwarves having bernard through silver i mean this is very common so why not asmodeus well he did have a wife actually her name was been sosia you might not know it because she appeared in first edition a long time ago in an official bonus in dragons magazine and then well things happened it's interesting that they mentioned glacia and more than kidney stomaphos who is the daughter of asmodius and bensossia but they don't mention the mother what happened to her so there are many different stories in fact three different stories some with more validity than others in all of them and with van socia being murdered the story goes that benzosi at the time queen of the nine hells was inspecting stygia on a form of routine checkup of sorts with her entourage of several peat fiends lavistas ambushed her killed her escorts and then attempted to turn her against her husband as modius he figured she might know of a weakness or secret that he could exploit when she refused he killed her nowadays the concept of openly betraying asmodius is pretty foolish but back then it wasn't they didn't really know how much power he really had now all they have to do is look at what happened to lavistas to know that rebelling is futile for his punishment was to remain imprisoned in a block of ice forever now this story appears in guided to hell for first edition and in the book of vile darkness for third edition i believe frostborn also retells the same story but now according to tyrants of the nine hells lavistas did something else to ben sosia okay when she refused but the gods of monetization shackle me and so we shall not speak of it though all the same i did ask my contact at wizards of the coast who told me quote the book of vile darkness is a better interpretation of his backstory and quote so the info on tyrants of the nine hells appears to not be canon for all it's worth now that being said things get far more complex as it is told in dungeon magazine number 197 for fourth edition which so far appears to be the actual canon quote the story goes that lavistas approached vinsosia as she traveled through stygia and offered to make her his queen in exchange for helping him overthrow her master according to the tale she was true to asmodius and refused the offer for this defiance she and all her pit fiends were slain this story is commonly told throughout the nine hills but it is almost certainly propaganda even socia hated asmodius she would never have sacrificed her life out of loyalty to him if she did in fact refuse lavishes offer she must have done so for some other reason another tale whispered far from listening ears recounts a much different version of events ben sosia saw in lavistas another chance to weaken asmodius and the two had been allies for many years she traveled to stygia when she could and whispered secrets to the lord of the fifth to give him any advantage possible those who tell this story do not believe that anything close to love existed between these conspirators each sought to exploit the other for dark purposes despite their duplicity the two managed to keep their christ going for some time until glacia discovered them end quote see lavistas was not just sexing the queen of hell but he had a whole other thing going with the princess of hell he was in fact doing the mother and the daughter quote lavistas always the dashing scoundrel and rake stole glasses heart during one of his visits to asmodus's court lavistas recognized that she might turn even more of us modus's household against them and the two became secret lovers he knew that he was taking a great risk in doing so glassia was young and jealous and would react violently should she discover his ongoing affair with ben sosia similarly the queen of hell would be enraged by lavista's dahlians with her daughter yet he maintained the ruse for as long as he could end quote what happened then was glacia the princess after a nasty clash with her father ran away and fled nessus the ninth lair she ran towards stygia in order to become the open public consort of lavistas but instead found him in bed with her mother in anger when the mother was leaving glassia murdered her quote the pit fiend martinet also called the voice of nessus was the first to discover the murder as modius had tasked him with enforcing order on the nine hells not wanting his master to appear weak through his daughter's rash action martin had pinned the murder on lavistas he destroyed the rest of the pit fiends with the party so no other witnesses remained though asmodius did not love ben sosia he could not let the offense go unpunished he stripped the vistas of his titles sealed him in eyes and granted stygia to gerion the wild beast following martinette's advice asmodus also sent glacier away and installed her in mammon's court to be the archdevil's concubine end quote and that's effectively the story to this day la vista still sits there frozen solid waiting for any possible chance to escape and iglacia also sits obsessed with lavistas but instead of wanting him out of love she just really really wants to kill him or more precisely eat his heart which is how she would put it now this is a picture of how lavistas used to look like before he was frozen basically a suave guy with a goatee he's described as being almost human-looking if it wasn't for his sharp black eyes and his pointed teeth he used to wield a rapier as a weapon and was considered to be incredibly fast and dexterous in fact the lore actually says that nobody could defeat him one-on-one that he was the best duelist on hell to satisfy any kind of wrongdoing or issue he had he would simply perform trials by combat where the other party would simply fight him one-on-one they would of course all die and he would always win because he was just that good his technique was defensive in nature where he would parry a lot and learn the moves of his opponents he was so good at this actually that he could even parry spells now many people might not know this actually but the reason why asmodius chose to petrify him in ice as a punishment wasn't even some kind of symbol of what happens if you defy me it was supposed to be an ironic punishment since lavistas was well known for his speed finesse and agility and now well he will be known forever as well the opposite of that the one thing he loved to do the most had been taken away from him this is actually a very common type of punishment that asmodius loves doing for example as part of his punishment lavistas must accept anyone who asks him for help in escaping in particular escaping dangerous situations so if you're about to die in a battle or if you're stuck in a dungeon room where the walls are closing in on you if you're willing to pledge your soul to lavistas he has to help you escape again ironic because it is the one thing he of course cannot do now if you're curious lavishes have the power to teleport you within a mile of where you are currently into a safe location and then heal you of your wounds it's pretty cool stuff now since we're on this topic i should also mention that warlocks or priests of the lavistas don't even look like clerics they basically just look how lavistas just look they wear simple silk clothing and use rapiers they are called blade reavers and really just look like swashbucklers so if you're a warlock of lavistas like this is technically how you're supposed to do it however by following him you would get access to a really broken spell called bind to hell a spell unique to followers of lavistas as you can see here it is a fifth level spell with a one hour casting time that effectively permanently banishes a person as part of the spell you specifically name or describe the person and then strike it with your blade if the creature is reduced to 10 or less hit points it is then banished to stygia permanently or until rescued what happens here is that the soul of the banished target gets sent to hell and made it to inhabit a frozen representation of itself now the cool thing is that those in stygia can actually animate those frozen effigies of those banished this way and they do that to fight them for fun they sometimes make arenas where they find the most powerful looking frozen soul and then fight them to test themselves and the only way to free these frozen souls would be to then take their souls out of hell at which point and they would go into their normal heaven and then they would be able to be resurrected like normal otherwise only i wish bell could basically save them it's actually a very broken spell for just being fifth level to be honest now with lavista's being frozen solid and being as cunning as he is he has had all the time in the world to conspire and plan for his future release the interesting thing is that because he is on a grand iceberg he is effectively untouchable i mean he is literally the only devil that does not have to worry about being backstabbed and so he basically takes no from nobody basically he conspires against everybody and his favorite way of obtaining servants is by stealing them from other devil lords which has granted him great enmity from everybody because he literally has nothing else to do he just collects and collects and hoards souls he spends every waking minute just thinking about how to collect more souls and then he basically entices devils with banquets of souls to get them on his side if you ever wanted to interact or deal with lavistas just know that he resides on the fifth layer of hell known as stygia what is believed to be a whole realm made out of water with most of it of course being frozen solid since it is a cold realm lavistas himself floats on an iceberg about half a mile across close to the most populated city in the lair called tantlin it is a harbor city constructed on top of one of the biggest icebergs on the lair and it is considered to be a good spot for trading because of course it floats by the river sticks now if the hartford town is close to the river sticks and lavistas himself floats close to the city does that mean yes lavistas does float on the river sticks which is actually kind of cool though i should clarify that it does not happen all the time lavistas just kind of floats wherever the currents go and asmodus actually has full control over the currents so every once in a while lavistos floats into the sticks but then other times he just floats around the icy oceans of stygia now that being said being in control of this layer and having such proximity over the river styx has granted lavista some incredible powers typically associated with the river lavistas with a single touch can actually produce a potent form of amnesia that can force you to forget everything about your life not that he can really touch you obviously well inside of his prison but it is worth mentioning that it is one of his most powerful abilities one of his favorite ways to torment souls back when he was walking was to make them forget and then watch them struggle now i would like to personally thank my 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Channel: MrRhexx

Views: 243,259

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Id: mGcQ1fDnU6I

Length: 16min 9sec (969 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ZhouDa]

Not mine of course, but Mr. Rhexx put out a very relevant video for RoTFM, and I thought I'd share the link.

[u/_K4C33_]

It's actually the sixth layer according to the book. 🤷‍♂️