Ancient Baator

This is what Baator was like before the baatezu came.

Avernus: Avernus was a battlefield like Acheron's first layer is today, with the gods of the orcs and goblins fighting an eternal battle, the goblins and kobold gods fighting another. Amidst all of this, the yugoloths were active as mercenaries in the wars and in steering the Ancient Baatorians towards confrontations with the tanar'ri. The Ancients spent their time attempting to assimilate everyone they came across, but they could be prodded into great rages against the interfering inhabitants of the Abyss.

Dis: It is believed that the city of Dis predates the baatezu and Dispater, although it may have appeared hive-like then with a great deal of space between cubic mounds. Druaga dwelt there at the time of the Conquest in a city of his own. He resisted for a time with his Ancient minions before the ancestors of the baatezu agreed to a treaty, offering him legions of their own to replace the ones he would lose in the new order in exchange for his political connections and the aid of his godly powers.

Minauros: This layer was almost entirely controlled by the kytons, who had conquered it an age before and filled it with cities of chains. When the ancestors of the baatezu conquered the region, the kytons were able to convince them to preserve Jangling Hinter in exchange for eternal subservience. With Jangling Hinter thriving and in a state of virtual independence while Minauros' city continues to sink beneath the muck, it seems the kytons may have the last laugh.

Phlegethos: Probably was much as it is today. Inanna was the first to welcome the invaders, and it is said that she took one of the generals of the Host as a lover, though it is thought that whoever it was must now be dead (given Inanna's history).

Stygia: This was the layer of Sekolah and Set, who controlled the layer like two contrasting halves. There was probably a yugoloth city on the edge of the Styx as well. Mysterious things lurked beneath the ice then and they may very well continue to dwell there today.

Malbolge: Malbolge was firmly under the control of the Ancients, and they were barely driven underground when the ancestors of the baatezu came knocking.

Maladomini: Maledomini was a realm of green, Edenic beauty. The Ancients on this layer were silvery creatures of evil splendor. All of this is now gone.

Cania: Cania was the zenith of the Ancient civilization, where the predecessors had built actual cities on the ice, bustling about in the beautiful cold (though it may have been balmy in comparison to its state today). This was the plane's greatest manifestation to date, and where it established its most terrible defenses. Bursts of chill energy as brutal as "hydrogen bombs" were launched against the invading armies freezing both the spined natives and the ancestors of the baatezu, who at the time still resembled the archons and devas from whom they were cast out. Eventually, as the desperate, dying plane destroyed the last of its own metropoli, it surrendered, and all the Hells were under baatezu control.

Nessus: This layer did not yet exist; it was built artificially by the first lord of the Fallen from pieces of other layers and planes, which explains the rifts and trenches that cross its patched-together surface. Pieces of Acheron, Gehenna, every other layer of Baator and even a chunk of Mount Celestia were bound together with braces of nearly indestructible metal, forged in the heat of the sacrifice of a million tieflings. With a new layer of ultimate fascist law, the baatezu cemented their forced and brutal rule over their new domain.