Devils play a crucial role in Baldur’s Gate 3, as well as Dungeons & Dragons, the TTRPG which inspired the game. Some of the game’s most important antagonists are devils created for its plot, like Raphael and Mizora, while others, like Zariel, come from the lore of the Forgotten Realms. In any case, Baldur’s Gate uses devils extremely well, managing to depict their twisted sense of morality and the strict bureaucratic system they adhere to.

Devil society is organized into hierarchies, with clear paths to greater power involving deceit, violence and trickery. The Hells are a vast and tangled web of positions and roles, connecting pretty much every devil in the game together in some form or another. While Baldur’s Gate 3 does a good job characterizing each of these devils, here are the ways in which each of the five most important fiends in the game are connected to one another.

Baldur’s Gate’s Depiction Of The Structure Of The Hells

Nine Layers Under Nine Leaders

First and foremost, you can get a better understanding of these characters if you have a better understanding of their home turf. The Hells in D&D and BG3 are separated into nine layers, each governed by a different archduke (e.g., Zariel is the archduke of Avernus, the first layer). These powerful fiends are responsible for every other devil on their layer, and have a complex hierarchical structure for their subordinates.

Many of these devils, especially on the layer of Avernus, are put to work fighting in the Blood War. This is an eternal war between demons and devils, and many devils will barter for mortal souls to conscript more soldiers to their side.

When a damned soul dies, it becomes a lemure, a rotting pile of flesh on the front lines of the Blood War. But devils can advance their station through service in that war, going from a lemure to an imp to a spined devil and so on. Thus, every devil (aside from certain exceptions, including Zariel) started as a pile of ooze and worked its way up to a higher station over centuries of toiling in this bloody conflict.

We know of at least one character who fought in the Blood War in Baldur’s Gate 3 – Karlach. However, since she is neither dead nor a devil, she is a weird exception to the general rule. Mostly, the ranks of the hell’s armies are made up of people who traded their souls to devils like Raphael and Mizora in exchange for power.

Zariel’s Role In Karlach’s Story

The Bloodthirsty Archduke Of Avernus

Strangely, the most powerful devil central to Baldur’s Gate 3’s plot is one that never even appears on-screen, that being Zariel. Zariel was a celestial who, after joining the fight on Avernus against demons and succumbing to the evil of the Hells, became the most zealous and aggressive archduke of them all. She lords over Avernus, where the fighting is thickest, and commands a number of other characters in the game, including Mizora and, previously, Karlach.

Zariel featured prominently in the D&D module that directly precedes Baldurs Gate 3, that being Descent Into Avernus, where she pulled the entire city of Elturel into Avernus to forcibly conscript them. The tiefling refugees, led by Zevlor, from the newly-returned Elturel are obviously important to the game’s story, as is Karlach, another forcibly-conscripted tiefling who escaped Avernus by jumping onto the Nautiloid at the beginning of the game.

Zariel’s web of influence is vast, and her power is beyond reckoning, so it makes a lot of sense she never makes a direct appearance. Instead, agents of hers like Mizora and Florenta the Garroter come to the surface to do her bidding. Mizora is the devil who Wyll signed his soul away to in exchange for his warlock powers, demonstrating how devils can take advantage of well-meaning individuals and sentence them to an afterlife in the Hells.

How Raphael Connects To Two Other Archdukes

Mammon And Mephistopheles Receive Some Mention

Of course, the devil most players will remember dealing with in Baldur’s Gate 3 is Raphael, the smug cambion who continuously offers his “help” to the party. While it’s not made super clear in-game, Raphael is the son of Mephistopheles, archduke of the layer of Cania, making him infernal royalty. Raphael’s obsession with powerful magic objects like the Crown of Karsus is an echo of his father’s own greed, and Mephistopheles was in fact the very devil that originally took the Crown and put it in a vault.

Mephistopheles is also the creator of the Rite of Profane Ascension, as used by Cazador during Astarion’s questline, giving the character a connection to a member of the party.

It seems Raphael is not on good terms with his father, since he states how he hated Mephistopheles for taking the Crown, and he keeps his floating House of Hope on the layer of Avernus, rather than Cania. This also suggests Raphael owes some fealty to Zariel, though their exact relationship is never spelled out. Regardless, Raphael’s storyline involving the Crown intersects with yet another archduke: Mammon, the rich lord of Minauros, whose power aided the Chosen of the Dead Three in stealing the Crown from Mephistopheles.

Mammon’s power is also what allows the player’s party to infiltrate the House of Hope in Act 3, bringing his involvement in the story full-circle and showing that devils aren’t the most loyal of creatures. So all in all, while Zariel and her subjects are the most involved devils in the game’s events, Raphael’s connection to Avernus and two other archdukes complicates matters. It goes to show how much lore lies just beneath the surface of the worlds of D&D and Baldur’s Gate 3.