Jangling Hiter

One.

There is one. I know he's named in Tales from the Infinite Staircase.

Oh, the Meat District?

I like that first explanation. However, are the Baatezu friendly with the Kytons, do they have an uneasy peace, or do they fear them? Each one could work with the 'chained prisoner' theory, but in different ways. They could either accept them as one of their own, tolerate them because they have advanced to an equal status, or fear them because they have overcome the bonds set by the Baatezu in the first place. Great idea, though, I always wondered how the little buggers ended up in Baator and why they're so much like humans wrapped in fear.

Nice description there.

Here are some more ideas. Just brainstorming, so forgive my rambling and disjointed words...

Bars on the windows, ironbound doors. Green steel and imports for the wealthy, cheap and rusty ‘pig iron’ for the poor. Wrought iron railings with brutally barbed points.

Chains extending up into the infinite sky, each loop thick enough to camp on, cleaned by teams of unlucky petitioners. Everything’s acid-bitten, the rain and hail forms burning puddles everywhere. The city blocks are made from iron and stone fused together – no ‘solid’ ground, only building upon building crushed together and mortared up. Makeshift sewers channel water down to the swamp as best they can, though it often pools in the lower levels.

At the bottom are rusting masses that swing just above a particularly thick and tangled portion of the Bog of Minauros - as if the swamp were desperately grasping at the city, winding around the chains to drag it down into its bubbling depths. I imagine this portion of the swamp to be hot and bubbling like a witches cauldron, sending steam high into the city, where it clings as acidic fog and condensation. The poor and lawless dwell at the bottom, amid pools of stagnant acid and shadows and fog.

I like your idea of clusters… fused buildings (stuck together at odd angles “like an exploding frozen star of jagged steel.”) Each is connected to the others by ‘bridge chains’, arching highways that curve around the masses, sometimes swinging alarmingly.

Chains are everywhere – forming ladders between levels, strung like washing lines between tenements, used to pull elevators that the rich ride up and down. Lots of prisons and slave blocks, anywhere chains are used. Kytons lurking everywhere, enforcing twisted justice on anyone who catches their eye.

Maybe the triple-towered palace of Panos Qytel is a prison where berks can be chained up and left for all eternity (or as long as the payments come in). And buried somewhere in its bowels the original Hiter and his latest Kyton ‘students’

I like the idea of a trade quarter – the city is famous for its produce across the planes after all, and berks would need some chance to survive long enough to spend their jink! As well as inns and taverns, it could house the cathedrals of Powers that are famous for imprisoning folk (like Greek Hades), or of those whose Powers are imprisoned themselves.

Bladlings and Spikers in abundance, as well as sensei with the Master of Chains prestige class, and wizards crafting magical shackles and iron bands of bilarro. Narzugons buying chains to leash their mounts, khaasta and Barbazu slave gangs haggling over produce. Remnants of the Mercykillers looking to join the Kytons in their punishings. Kytons relaxing in “Dry Houses” (the opposite of a sauna), where they get ‘massages’ from slaves armed with wire scrubbing brushes – ideal for removing the grime and acid damage from your chains.

…And of course lots of chain merchants, selling chains of all shapes and sizes – chains for binding fairies, chains for binding Gods, chains for binding hopes and dreams, or a lover to you for ever more.

I suppose the bubbling swamp beneath it doesn't have to be that warm to cause rising mist and fog, if the rest of the area is very cold...

This would mean that the lower levels, while more rusty/foggy and suffering a rain of detritus from the clusters above, would be technically a little more "liveable" (warmer) than those above, where the cold could be enough to strip off your skin as you brush against bare metal...

Remember that just because exemplars don’t need to do stuff like eat, it doesn’t mean they don’t like to. Good food and drink can still be valuable commodities for the fiends in Hiter, just not necessities. Same applies to most of the comforts of home, with a fiendish twist (like the wire-brush massages mentioned above).

Anyway, the infrastructure ideas:

Goods & Services

Lots of smelting plants and metalworkers, to produce the steel for chains and armour/weapons (although the raw materials will probably need shipping in from off-layer). Quite a warm district, probably popular with beggars (they can huddle beside chimneys and against forge-walls).

Minauros sounds too wet and soggy for actual mining, but there could easily be peat diggers and charcoal burners in the surrounding swamp.

If you’re going with the “iron pyrite-like clusters” theory of Hiter, then the place probably has more chainlink walkways than real roads. Goods and even people would also probably be moved via tunnels running through each clump, probably on railed carts (like in a mine).

Each cluster also houses a least one slave block where prisoners can be bought or sold, and holding areas from which chattel can be transferred between Planes. I see Hiter as being a something of a hub for the slave trade (a good place to rescue kidnapped friends or buy them back!)

Labour

Hey, everyone needs cheap labour. Roustabouts and stevedores would probably run constant risk of being claimed as slaves under one pretext or another however (I imagine kytons using mostly indentured criminal labour). Rather than guilds, workers in Hiter might have far less powerful unions designed to look after each other and keep rival workers from their turf. Individual Baatezu, Kytons, and powerful mortals might act as the official ‘protector’ of each union – although it probably works more like an extortion racket.

The city also needs street cleaners rubbing away rust and applying oil to all those damp chains, as well as ‘rat’ catchers, and fumigators (a must in every large settlement). Particularly unlucky slaves may even be dispatched up the great chains to repair them or affix new ones to the 'roof' of the layer!

Sweatshops also sound like a pretty devilish kind of business, probably located in the Baatezu-controlled areas where mortals have taken refuge from the kytons and are “looked after” by the devils.

Law & Justice

I think Kytons sound like fairly hands-on folk when it comes to justice – when a Chain Devil spots a ‘crime’ he punishes the individual immediately – with either a quick lashing or indentured servitude (hauled off to the nearest chain gang).

The Baatezu might favour a more formal approach, with (utterly corrupt) watchmen and (utterly corrupt) courts – but they’d only get to try those individuals that they personally catch. Kytons would see any wrongdoers as theirs to do with as they wish, and the Baatezu might regularly have to fight to deliver prisoners to their justice rather than the Kytons’.

Relaxation

The city will want food & drink for its fiends (quality ‘normal’ food, fresh larvae, etc). For exemplars however, it’s about the dining experience as a whole. While reasonably normal food is probably available, Fiends are much more likely to want a meal that provides an entertaining amount of pain and suffering, such as say tenderloin elf or sugared cour wings. I see eating still-writhing and screaming food as more of a tana’ri thing, but could easily imagine them picking out corn-fed halflings from a cage the same way people select lobsters.

And the city will also need food & drink for its mortals (probably provided by fishermen and hunters in the cold swamp below. All those slaves need feeding too!) so they’ll be plenty of butchers, tanners, etc on the lower levels.

And Everywhere needs inns, taverns, drug dens, and brothels - especially in the mercantile district where visitors would be common. Maybe also a theatre/opera house? Doubt they’d get used by the Kytons, but Baatezu and visitors would need to relax. Maybe bloody shakespearean operas whereveryone dies for real at the end?

For other entertainment, what could be better than gladiatorial combat? They could do straight fights, violent team sports, and public executions by kytons.

Politics/Taxes

The court of the official city governor is obviously the heart of the Baatezu Quarter. Politicking might be especially petty and brutal here given that Kytons rather than Baatezu control the city. Resources would be limited and any area of Baatezu control will be fiercely competed over. I can also see assignment to Jangling Hiter as a punishment – a place to sideways promote the incompetent and those who have displeased their superiors. Its devils could well be among the most mean, petty, stupid, and insecure in all of Baator!

I can’t see Kytons interested in taxing the locals, but they might man numerous Toll Houses on the main chainways between clusters. The Baatezu enclave would also be keen to claim as much jink as possible from the inhabitants, in the form of taxes and levies “for use in the Blood War” – but given the low level of power the Baatezu have in Hiter, they probably encounter frequent resistance.

Transport

Berks who can’t fly will need some way of getting to and from the city – preferably one that’s not by being carried by ‘helpful’ Baatezu! I can see a few chain/slave operated elevators bringing goods up, but more prestigious travellers will probably come and go by air; so docks and stables for those would be needed.

Other than the above, I seem to remember that the adventure Fires of Dis had some nice ideas for Baatezu cities...

There's already a very nice drawing of the Place of Chain-Torn Flesh here. Though I would make it much denser, the "clusters" tied more closely together. Also, the lowest levels of the City of Rattling Madness are just above the marsh.

Tales From the Infinite Staircase says its population is only 6-7000, but kytons are beginning to spread across the planes, and more live in the bowels of the city than anyone had guessed. There used to be many more, but people have been leaving as the reputation of the kytons grows darker and more fearsome. Trade is dwindling, and rumors say the kytons are beginning to leave the city behind. There's a lot more detail in Tales From the Infinite Staircase.

Minauros has volcanic ridges poking out of the swamp, where mining might be possible.

It looks like he used Photoshop to color a photo of the sky automatically. You could probably do it pretty easily; open a new layer, select the Gradient tool, choose Linear from the Type drop-down menu, select an Opacity, choose a gradient from the Gradient drop-down menu, and choose a mode. You can create new gradients by opening the Swatches palette, and then Edit --> New --> pick a name --> Click on the starting color --> Click on the ending color.

While their society is nonhierarchial, it isn't individualistic. Kytons are beings of Law as much as they are of Evil; they exist to punish and control. Jangling Hiter is a city of a thousand laws, and the only punishment for breaking them is excruciating death. In most cases (Quimath is an exception to some extent, but he's still a kyton) they act and think almost as one, as a single elemental force, moving in and out of the shadows like tides, skittering up and down the chains like spiders, nearly indistinguishable from their city. They do not fight among themselves (Quimath and his nine brothers excepted). They seek unanimity in their actions and goals.

I don't think it's better to live under kyton rule than baatezu rule. The baatezu are a boot crushing your face forever (to paraphrase Orwell). The kytons are hooks tearing your flesh apart forever. The baatezu - those few who take the time to interact with them - even fear the kytons to some extent, in part because their minds are so alien and their goals so unknowable.

That sounds good, Calmar.

Those three descriptions rather changed my view of the whole city... rather than have lone kytons following visitors through the gloomy streets of the city, I now see it almost as a hive. The numerous blocks (literally) of the city are held up and held together by great chains, and the kytons scurry about like ever so many silent insects, using roads, chain bridges, and simple chains to get wherever they are going. Petitioners and other poor sods that have fallen into disfavor (or rather, never having gotten into favor) with the locals hang from public chains and are free game for any passing kyton wishing to take out some aggression with a few good whips of its chains. The way the city's chains are arranged, however, leaves plenty of stalking room. This makes the city to resemble both a busy metropolis and a haunted ghost town at the same time. There's always movement, but the streets and shops seem empty except for a few lowly petitioners and Baatezu. The Baatezu embassy, meant to keep tabs on the kytons living on 'Baatezu territory' is a paranoid place where those in power are still at the mercy of of those in the shadows.

EDIT:

Finally got to the end of Tales from the Infinite Staircase! I'm going to summarize the description of Jangling Hiter given therein for those of us who haven't read or don't remember the exact details. It states that the entire city, from streets to buildings, is made of chain. That somewhat contradicts the huge blocks of mineral suspended from chain described earlier (a view, I must admit, that I was particularly fond of). This could, however, be interpreted to mean that everything but the bedrock (in this case, the huge crystals upon which the rest of the city is build) is chain, but that would be stretching it towards our point of view. There's no way to really say for sure short of asking the person that came up with the hellish thing (or finding a more detailed description in another 2e book). The whole thing hangs just above the swamp, held up by chains stretching infinitely into the sky, though chant says that they connect to the bottom of the second layer. TftIS also says that there are only about six or seven thousand creatures making kip there, but then it goes on to say that there are probably a lot more kytons in the bowels of the city than previously thought, further supporting the idea of kytons slinking around the place rather than openly walking through the streets like the rest of the fiends and bashers there. As, I think, rip mentioned above, the place is officially ruled by a hamatula named Pollus Windscreamer, but he doesn't really care for his position and the kytons use him as a puppet figurehead. They never openly attack Baatezu in the street, although the latter commonly disappear in the less populated alleys in town. The town is, however, divided into four parts - Kyton's Quarter, Fiend's Quarter, Merchant's Quarter, and Visitor's Quarter. The first two are rather self explanatory, while the third is most heavily populated and at the center of town (where the chains sway less in the wind). The Visitor's Quarter (also known as the Meat Quarter) is a joke - it's a deserted slum that serves as a place where kytons can hunt down and kill anybody stupid enough to visit the place.

Rip and Iavas' persuasive prose has swung me on the individualistic thing, damn their talented souls to Phlegethos!

Saying that neglected chains eventually rust together into solid lumps sounds like a good compromise, as each cluster would then have a solid centre and peripheral areas to play with.

A long walk through the Outlands to Ribcage, then through the first three layers of Baator would definitely make "a worthwhile journey" and make the characters appreciate the distinct 'flavours' of Hell. Set it up right and they might even view Hiter as some wondrous refuge, and be desperately looking forward to their eventual arrival!

(BTW the adventure Fires of Dis deals with this kind of expedition)

The PCs might also arrive on Hiter after following a series of portals that connect to the slave trade, tracing it back to a trade hub in one of Hiter's clusters.

Then again, the PCs could just end up in the dark underworld of Hiter, at the centre of a cluster. They could spend a long time in the darkness (attacked by Kytons and monsters) before even realising they're in Hiter or reaching the surface... only discovering the truth when they finally break through to the surface that they're in one of Hiter's slave pits.

I've been thinking, how did the materials for these Pyrite-ish buildings reach the chains?

I always thought of Jangling Hiter as being like a spider-web (not an orb web but one of the more complex, messy, 3D ones which you sometimes see). Following this through, bits of material sometimes fall into spiders webs from above - from what they're supported by.

I'm pretty sure you can see where I'm going with this.

Now while spiders often trim their webs so objects like this drop from the web, there is no reason Kytons would not use them as material for buildings, possibly cutting just enough chains around them so that areas could be dropped from the city should problems arise.

Furthermore this shower of material could have happened relatively recently thereby explaining the changes since TftIS- the presence of solid platforms among the chains and the related increase in population. This change could also be making inhabitants a bit nervous - why the shower of metal? Was it a natural occurrence or are the chains above pulling free from their anchorage? If things have fallen that means that the layer above might not be an infinite distance away, merely very, very far.

Oh, and by the way, you can't climb far enough up the support chains for slaves to work on them - or rather they can climb forever but when you turn around and look back the base is only a few hundred yards away (Planes of Law).

They're fully integrated into the baatezu hierarchy. Less powerful baatezu are promoted into kytons, and kytons are promoted into more powerful baatezu. Kytons appear on all layers of the plane, and are along with torture devils (and presumedly kocrachons) the primary tormentors of souls. They also help promote soulshells into lemures.

Jangling Hiter is described, but the map is really uninspiring. From the map and description, it looks like the city is built on the ground and the chains only prevent it from sinking. Pollus Windscreamer is gone, replaced by a pit fiend.

As with many other things in FC2 I'm going to chalk it up to propaganda. Of course the Baatezu want everyone to think that the Hells are united and all part of the same hierarchy, of course the Dark Eight are under Bels control...

I'm actually kind of enjoying doing this to the FC's as the falsehoods and contradictions could form good rumours and plot hooks.

I know it's not a perfect solution but it does kind of make sense and there's no reason that this 'ruler' couldn't actually just be a puppet for the Kytons

Yeah, but you owe the Baatezu enough to at least expect them to lie coherently, rather than contradicting themselves at every turn. Not to mention the fact that we are dealing with a book that is supposed to outline the race for new DM's, and at least a nod in the direction of the original Baatezu canon would have allowed such DM's to incorporate the inconsistencies as lies.