One of the most dreaded regions of the The Shadowlands are known as The Hells.
While some realms within the Land of the Dead are places of reward and heavenly bliss, others are places of eternal damnation. Populated by devils, demons and things far worse, they exist for only one purpose, the never-ending torment and torture of the lost souls trapped within them.
The hells are uncountable and innumerable. Colloquially they are often spoken of as "the Seven Hells" or "the Nine Hells" or the "666 Layers of the Abyss", however no one truly knows how many there are. But the number is legion.
The origin of the hells is hotly debated. Most religions claim the hells are created by evil deities, just like the heavens are created by good aligned ones. Secular philosophers and mages claim that the beliefs of the religions themselves create both the heavens and hells, including the supernatural creatures that populate them.
The The Metaphysics of Shadow takes that second belief one further, and claims that while terrible, the hells and religion serve a neccessary purpose, that by giving structure and form to terror, sentient life is actually protecting itself from a far worst fate, the horror of unstructured and unformed darkness and fear, loosed upon the waking world. That the Hells are prisons for more then just damned souls.