#verma

Thanks for the ask! I’ve been looking for an excuse to rattle on about these guys this is the perfect opportunity! This beast took a while to come together, but I’m pretty proud with how it turned out. Sorry for the wait! Hope you enjoy!

P.S. I debated including the various angel characters we’ve come up with, but I decided to include them in a “Vol. 2” of my own, so be on the lookout for that.

Note: Tiamat and Baphomet were initially conceptualized by @prof-ramses. All I have done is helped to flesh out their characters and as such all creative rights go to @prof-ramses.

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Hellborn

The Ars Goetia

Belial Gillespie

One of the three Kings of the Ars Goetia stationed in the Pride Ring, Belial is… an odd sort, to say the least. Having been a close friend of Lucifer since before The Fall as well as contributing his services to the Seven Deadly Sins’ old circus troupe, Belial has been entrusted with a great many duties and secrets by the rulers of Hell, duties that Belial carries out faithfully and without complaint to this very day, even as he engages in his passing flights of fancy and whatever eccentricity has made its way to the forefront of his mind.

As for the nature of Belial’s duties within the framework of Hell, the simplest description would be that he serves a dual function as the head of Hell’s deep state as well as the primary overseer of the containment, cataloguing, and distribution of the countless artifacts as well as other “projects” crafted and utilized by the upper echelons of Hell over the realm’s long history. Aiding Belial in his duties are the 80 legions worth of sinners and hellborn he has assembled, which are comprised of a motley gallery of those that have been disenfranchised and rejected by even the debased realms of Hell, as well as a number of demons sentenced to serve under Belial because of the high turnover rate, all of which reside within his own personal realm within Pride known simply as “The Foundry”. As for the The Foundry itself, the realm takes the form of an impossible collection of shifting abstract shapes that come together to form an impossible work of architecture, possessing internal dimensions impossible for even a building of its size that contain untold secrets and horrors its inhabitants have to keep under wraps on the daily. All in all, while The Foundry is not an ideal place to live nor work within, Belial is nothing if not an accommodating boss who actually sees the value in his “employees”, even if he expresses this appreciation in odd ways.

As for Belial himself, he inhabits a strange liminal space between obscurity and being a public figure around Hell given both his duties and close proximity with a number of big names within the accursed lands. All the same, he is a jovial and welcoming sort, presenting himself as a lively and larger than life master of ceremonies in a manner befitting of a carnival barker, albeit one with an admitted edge. Often lost in his own little world, Belial is more than a bit scatterbrained and just as liable to go off on wildly bizarre tangents that loop around and go nowhere as he is to say something truly, cryptically profound within the greater context of the celestial order. An enigma of a demon despite his openness, even those closest to and above him have a hard time truly getting a bead on him, unable to truly gauge how much of his demeanor is legitimate eccentricity as opposed to a facade meant to obfuscate his deeper thoughts. Whatever the case, the fact remains that Belial is a pivotal member of Hell’s hierarchy despite his tumultuous relationship with a number of his contemporaries as well as Hell’s greater public, not to mention his ties to forces even higher then the Morningstars…

Royalty Unaffiliated with the Ars Goetia

Mephistopheles

The former chancellor of the Wrath Ring, Mephistopheles’ infamy and his impact on the greater reaches of Hell are felt well into the modern era despite his dying in the Antediluvian War.

Having been the rival to Satan himself for the position of the Sin of Wrath back during the Founding of Hell, Mephistopheles was a shrewd and cautious warlord that preferred to act through careful planning and strategically stoking conflicts over the application of raw might. Despite this shrewd approach to war, Mephistopheles’ pride would be his undoing as he made an attempt on Satan’s life at the climax of their war, leading to the other demon, in a fit of blind fury, utterly beating him into submission. Rather than kill Mephistopheles, Satan would spare his life and force him to bear the title as chancellor that he would forevermore be forced to watch his rival rule the Ring of Wrath.

Following the torrid periods following The Founding, Mephistopheles would continue to prove himself a thorn in the sides of various other high ranking demons, more often then not earning the chancellor some measure of misfortune, even in the odd moments when his plans did succeed. Eventually, Mephistopheles would press his luck for the last time come the tail end of the Antediluvian War. It was here that in an effort to usurp his oldest rival that Mephistopheles attempted to kill Satan after the Sin of Wrath had been left beaten and exhausted by the rallied forces of Heaven. To the misfortune of the traitorous chancellor, even in his weakened state Satan was easily capable of overpowering and killing him, something that was achieved while Satan was eerily calm and focused.

Cerberus

Gluttony’s acting general, the primordial hellhound(s) collectively referred to as “Cerberus” embodies the primal ferocity and power that has long since been bred out of the species. Something of an anomaly born amongst one of the earliest generations of the hellhound species, Cerberus quickly managed to climb the ranks of Gluttony’s ancient court, eventually managing to ascend to the rank of a greater demon through currying favor of their queen through countless daring exploits, something that also managed to earn them the much sought after position of being her lover. With the days of Hell being locked in perpetual war having long since passed and Cerberus now in a forced semiretirement, the trio pine for the days where they were more than just a simple celebrity stuck in the friend zone.

It should be noted that unlike the case with Leviathan’s two heads possessing a singular mind, albeit one that is “filtered” through two distinct personalities, the three heads of Cerberus (respectively called Sir, Beau, & Russ) have wholly independent minds and personalities that make up a sort of Freudian trio which are just as prone to infighting and disagreement as they are in cooperating.

It should also be noted that aside from their three heads and their personalities, Cerberus’ tail is live snake named Little Pickle that, albeit non-sentient, has its own personality and is treated as something of a pet by Sir, Beau, & Russ.

Moloch

A high ranking demon in the court of Lust, Moloch is an integral member of the Ring’s industrial complex that to this day suffers from a critically tarnished reputation.

Once lauded as “the Flame of Industry”, Moloch first came into power back during the early days of human civilization. It was through ingratiating himself with the Canaanite people that he managed to amass a large cult of personality through which to conduct activity on Earth as well as garner the support to move up in Asmodeus inner circle. Between the adoration of his human and demonic followers, the sacrifices made in his name, and the resource and influence that were at his disposal, Moloch was truly living the dream, only for everything to come crashing down when, high off ass from his own hype (and narcotics) he ate a baby alive. It was through this one incident that the Canaanites took to child sacrifice in the name of Moloch, but at the same time his reputation amongst his fellow demons took a nosedive as even they saw what he did as beyond the pale. Even now in the modern era as one of not only Lust but the greater domain of Hell’s industrial heads he hasn’t been able to shake the bad publicity and stigma that comes with his past, a fact that greatly irritates him, especially as the modern climate of Hell prevents him from fully acting on his frustrations.

Tiamat “Ty” Marianna

The long late King of Envy and husband of Leviathan, Tiamat, or Ty to his friends, was renowned across Hell as one of its greatest scholars with his reforms in the pursuit of developing Envy’s culture and forwarding its rise in standing amongst Hell’s hierarchy still being felt well into the present.

Having known the Primordial Seven since well before the The Fall, Ty’s activities in his lifetime and the fallout of his untimely demise cast a long shadow across the seven Rings, the landscapes of Envy and Greed in particular. It was he who first created the Loan Sharks in tandem with his wife’s creation of the Infestors, the two races of aquatic demons living in relative prosperity under their rulers. It was because of Ty’s fascination with the cultures of early man that would spark the first great the exchange between the native inhabitants of Hell and the souls that found themselves confined to the realm. Efforts that would later be built upon during the Antediluvian War as the King of Envy would go on to try and document as much as he could about the human world as he could during the occupation on Earth. While a diplomat and scholar at heart, it should not be overlooked that Tiamat was by no means harmless and through the few engagements he participated alone he garnered the title of being a scourge of the sea that could cleave through ships and sheets of ice with nary a second thought using his dorsal fin. Tragedy would would later strike the royal family of Envy as Tiamat would be cut down at the hands of a certain angel, an event that would have a domino effect going forward in the war efforts of Hell.

While in the present day the long deceased King of Envy is more of a mythical figure to the denizens of Envy, there still remains a number of people that remember what Ty was truly like. While the common demon would paint the picture of some great strategist and genius without compare, those that were closest to Ty remember him as something of a stuffy, competitive, and something of a dandy despite his intellectual pursuits. All the same, in both life and death, Tiamat has had a tremendous hand in shaping the landscape of Hell and a number of those who rule over it.

Baphomet Low

The husband of Belphegor and King of Sloth, Baphomet was once the acting general of Sloth’s military that acted on the frontlines. However, after Hell’s recession away from Earth, Baphomet has long since gracefully accepted retirement and currently acts as the Sloth Ring’s foremost organizer and tour guide, tasks that he performs aided by his easygoing charisma and seemingly endless wardrobe of medically themed Hawaiian shirts.

While most are a bit taken aback at the pair Belphegor and Baphomet make, the truth is that the two complement each completely, as Baphomet’s steadfast efficiency are tempered by Belphegor’s more methodical and measured machinations. Furthermore, it should be noted that much like the placid atmosphere exhumed by the Sloth Ring and Bel’s seemingly slovenly manner, Baphomet’s unassuming appearance and behavior belies something much darker. While he’s undoubtedly proud and devoted to his duties as a tour guide, the fact remains that this particular job serves a secondary purpose as the King of Sloth is constantly vigilant for prospective test subjects for his wife’s more clandestine experiments.

Lesser Hellborn

Griff

An incubus hailing from Lust, Griff once aspired to become an actor and in pursuit of this dream he moved to Pride… where not long after he was caught in the middle of a turf war between two kingpins. In any other circumstance the injuries he sustained on that day would have killed him, but unfortunately for him, the intervention of a certain doctor would see Griff continuing to live in a much altered state. Through monstrously unethical and inhumane experimentation, a heavily scarred Griff would later awaken to find his mangled arms replaced with the claws of some great demon crustacean, an artificial larynx implanted within him, and other unwanted augmentations, such as a gland that allows him to spit acid and a total distortion of his species natural aura of lust into one that incites revulsion and terror. His dreams utterly dashed, Griff has since bounced from one job to the next all across Hell, ranging from anywhere between acting as hired muscle to bit parts doing voice work, all the while nursing an intense, burning hatred towards sinners.

Sinners

Jackknife

The closest thing Belial has to a second in command when it comes to running the more physically intensive facets of The Foundry, a job Jackknife is all to happy perform.

Real name Dustin Heller, Jackknife grew up in a stable household in Texas during the 80s. Having a lifelong fascination with music, particularly the genres of Rock and Metal, Dustin spent a number of years in his young adult life working at a music store before eventually striking out to try and start a band of his own. While moderately successful in this endeavor, it would be during this period on the road that he found his true calling as a roadie, and quickly grew to claim amongst a number of bands of the time for his skill in this area. But with success comes excess, and Dustin quickly found himself leading the hedonistic life style of sex, drugs, and rock & roll… as well as occasionally street fighting. While it was a fun and wild ride for a time, Dustin’s life would come to an abrupt end when he engaged in a cocaine fueled rampage that culminated in a high speed chase with the police that ended with him crashing the motorcycle he’d stolen into an animation studio.

Coming off his high in Hell not long after, Dustin would discover he’d now taken on the form of a diminutive toon rabbit, a fact that he initially hated, but eventually grew to revel in as his demonic body runs on toon physics and is capable of shapeshifting in bizarre ways. For a while Dustin, now going by Jackknife, would bounce around from place to place selling his services to whoever needed his particular skillset, all the while trying and failing to maintain the same habits that had landed him in Hell. It wasn’t until his lowest point when he was living in the gutter that he was found by Belial who, seeing potential in the young sinner, decided to hire him to see just what he was capable of. While initially off to a rough start around the compound, it wasn’t very long before Jackknife managed to fast track his way up in the organization, time and again using his own brand of street smarts, unorthodox thinking, and good old gung-ho brawn to keep order in the chaotic bowels of Belial’s realm. Because of this, Jackknife remains an exemplary employee that enjoys popularity amongst both his boss and coworkers.

Dr. Igon Drane

A surgeon and biological engineer whose wide spanning acclaim and infamy are of equal measure.

The kingpin known to most as either “Dr. Drane” or simply “Drane” was once a medical practitioner whose skills were known the world over as being able to bring people back from the brink of death itself. The truth is however that Drane was a deeply prideful and callous man who simply mastered his craft as a means to accrue wealth and status, both of which he quickly grew bored with. To alleviate his deep and abiding malaise, Drane quickly began to treat each operation as nothing more than a trivial game, often times testing how much he could draw procedure out or whether he could beat his personal best times. Eventually, even these little “games” were not enough, leading Drane to engage in an even more twisted “game” wherein he would choose whether or not his patients would live or die. The not-so-good doctor’s life would go on like this for a time before he eventually lost his attempting to perform cardiovascular surgery on himself.

Eventually awakening as a towering cockroach demon, a riff on how he saw the patients he left to die on his table, through a combination of Drane’s ingratiating himself towards a number of prolific names of the time and his reputation in life quickly saw the demonic doctor becoming a kingpin in his own right, with a sizable territory and fully staffed practice to go with his status. Unfortunately for him, one of his victims that had also been condemned would eventually find out about their killer’s place in Hell and confronted him with a swift holy bullet to the head… But this would not be the end of one Igon Drane. Unwilling to lose their meal ticket, Drane’s battalion of imp orderlies worked through the night to save their boss’s life. After a long, arduous procedure, Drane would rise a changed man with a renewed passion for his work, as well as a drive to conduct all manner of sadistically creative experiments, with a new accent to boot.

Verma

Born Erma Schwartz, Verma is an… “eccentric” woman whose life has been marked by her desperate search for companionship. A search that has been stifled in no small part because of her own tendencies.

Born into a family that went out of its way to ignore her and her existence, it wouldn’t be until the birth of her brother that a young Erma actually found any semblance of companionship. However, as the two grew older and Erma remained unable make any new friends, she became more and more protective of her brother and focused on limiting how much contact he had with others, eventually culminating in her parents kicking her out of the house after attacking one of his friends. Living on the streets for years following this, Erma fell into a pattern of obsessively stalking anyone that showed her even the barest shred of decency, which would come to a head when she became obsessed with maintaining her “friendship” with a woman that volunteered at the homeless shelter she was living at. Seeing the woman’s husband as an obstacle, Erma would break into the couple’s apartment and kill the husband in his sleep. What followed was a short altercation which saw her falling from a third story window into the alley below, slowly dying from the impact surrounded by refuse and vermin.

Manifesting in Hell as a rat demon, Erma quickly found she had been bequeathed with the power to produce clones of herself, something that still deprived her of the companionship she so craved. Living as a vagrant much as she did in life, a fateful encounter with a certain monitor headed demon and his moth associate would see Erma developing a new pair of people to obsess over. An obsession which would only grow in strength after the duo added a third to their partnership, so much so that she changed her name to V-erma in homage to her idols. To this day, even as she remains an ardent follower of the Vees, Verma can be found pursuing any new “friends” that so much as give her the time of day.

Hamburg

A social outcast and pariah even amongst the most reviled of Pentagram City’s populace, Hamburg is a self styled gourmand when it comes to matters regarding fast food and cannibalism, something that has gotten him blacklisted by the denizens of Cannibal Town.

Hamburg’s path to Hell can be traced all the way back to his childhood growing up in his family’s butcher shop in some podunk town in Texas. From a young age he was enamored with his parents trade to an obsessive degree, but it wouldn’t be until his father’s untimely death that the young boy’s interests took a dark turn. Grief stricken at her husband’s death and enraged at the drunk driver responsible for it getting off easy, Hamburg’s mother would go on to kill and sell the perpetrator’s butchered remains in the shop… but not before Hamburg himself got a taste of the new “mystery meat”. Later in life, Hamburg’s mother would be found out and given the death penalty, something that, much like the death of his father, didn’t really phase him, especially as he endeavored to feed his unnatural appetite, something he achieved by moonlighting at his job at a local fast food joint. In his life, Hamburg was never caught for his crimes or brought to justice for the upward of twenty people he killed, instead perishing after being caught in a grease fire while working the night shift.

Landing in Hell as a hulking, grease soaked fusion of man and animatronic that resembled a mockery of his human form, Hamburg simply picked himself up, brushed himself off, and set about to sampling the new cuts of meat the realm had to offer in all their varied forms. It wouldn’t be long before Hamburg eventually managed to procure himself a new restaurant situated on the outskirts of Cannibal Town as its denizens absolutely loathe the grease saturated culinary abominations he cooks up. To this day the brutal butcher stalks the back alleys and byways of the accursed city, finding new exotic meats to experiment with in the dark confines of his nightmarish eatery.

Breakneck

A serial carjacker, street racer, and all around adrenaline junky in life, Richard Vogel was living life in the fast lane by riding one stolen car after another… at least until he was run over while jaywalking. Manifesting in looking like he’d just stepped out of an Ed Roth drawing, the now dubbed “Breakneck” was quick to get back to his old habits, something now aided by his newly developed power to merge with any vehicle he comes into contact with, turning them and himself into high octane monster of meat and metal that can cut trails at blistering speeds. Without any real direction guiding him in his afterlife, Breakneck is content to simply chase his next highs as he races from one end of the Pride Ring to the next.

Other

Frazzle