Devil Gods

Devil heroes in Orden usually serve the gods and saints of the culture in which they were raised. Few devils in Orden are from the Seven Cities, most are descended from devils who were stranded on Orden hundreds or thousands of years ago. Devils who are from the Seven Cities have their own unique pantheon.

The Seven Cities have saints just like humans in Orden do but in place of gods, these saints serve the seven Archdukes of Hell, also known as Archdevils or the Lords of Hell. Unlike the gods of Orden, the Lords of Hell are corporeal. Giant figures, 30 feet tall, who each sit upon the throne of their city, projecting their consciousness out into the world, dealing with politics, sorcery, and treachery, manifesting avatars when necessary. They are, effectively, the Gods of Hell.

Like the other gods of the timescape, the Lords of Hell are too busy to attend to every petition and request and so employ saints just like other gods. Religion in Hell is superficially similar to religion among the peoples of Orden. There are churches and rites and rituals, but devils tend to view attending church and performing the expected rituals at the appropriate times as akin to paying taxes. Annoying but necessary.

Saints of Hell

Like Orden, there are dozens of saints in Hell, some obscure. These three are some of the most popular and the most likely saints for a conduit or censor to follow.

Thellasko the Great Designer

Domains: Knowledge, War

Thellasko the Great Designer, the Game Master, Saint of Strategy did not invent war—humans in Orden hold that honor. Thellasko invented war simulation. Creating what were effectively games to train cadets and lieutenants at the wartable to ensure victory on the field.

Thellasko served in Dispater's army, rising to the rank of major general. He retired with honors after the Battle of the River Rhye, intending to take what he had learned on the field and write a book about the proper way to conduct a war.

He felt the high command of Hell's armies fought battles on outdated principles. Which side had the best fighting spirit, which side's officers had the greater noble pedigree. Thellasko's treatise, never published, was titled The Proper Application of Force. As he wrote, he created a kind of ideal battlefield to use as his running example. The example became more and more critical to the text, more robust, such that eventually Thellasko put his manuscript down to develop the example into a proper game.

This first game was played on a board of sixty-four squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. There were two armies each with sixteen pieces. Eight serfs, two soldiers, two prelates, two towers, a king and queen. The game was superficially simple but held hidden depths. It taught the principles of sacrifice and territory control, of thinking like your enemy.

The game evolved into the game of Shere, played throughout the timescape. But while the game was immediately popular far outside its intended audience, Thellasko grew dissatisfied with it, and began work on his masterpiece simply called The Game of War. It was complex, using hexagonal tiles to build modular terrain boards, and featuring dozens of different unit types with extensive tables that factored supplies, morale, visibility. Unlike Shere, which was an abstraction, The Game of War was a true simulation.

Expensive to produce, The Game of War was never very popular outside the Academy of Dis, but Thellasko used it to train a generation of lieutenants on the art of war. His students and best players led the armies of Dis from victory to victory. Thellasko taught his students that an army must fight. All other things being equal, the army with the most experience wins.

In Thellasko's time, the most senior noble was always the senior commander, regardless of experience or, indeed, sanity. After Thellasko and The Game of War, commanders were chosen from among the soldiers with the most battlefield experience.

Thellasko was granted sainthood on his deathbed after a generation of successful battles won by his students, all of whom carried a symbol of graduation from Thellasko's school—three adjacent hexagons. The students praised him on the battlefield during his life, and his church continues to advance his theories.

Thellasko teaches the virtue of accepting the battle as it is, not as you wish it might be. To take action based on available data, not what tradition says. That wars are not won based solely on the size of one's army, but based on which side is best able to bring its force to bear against the opponent.

Uryal the Subtle

Domains: Knowledge, Trickery

Uryal the Subtle, Deception, the Hidden Hand, Saint of Lies rose to the rank of senior adjudicator in the Bank of Vorilom in Styx. His manager had been permanent undersecretary of finance for over three hundred years, which Uryal felt was taking the title a tad literally.

A dozen senior adjudicators had tried to usurp the permanent undersecretary for generations. Their corpses made excellent lamps and even better examples. But Uryal believed he was different. He knew the game the finance managers played, and thought it was stale. Lying, double-dealing, and backstabbing have their place, but there are even subtler tools in the deceiver's toolbox.

During a critical trading session, it was Uryal's job to ferret out the text of the upcoming bloodfruit futures report from the Ministry of Goods and Services. Already an accomplished spy before he moved into finance, this Uryal did easily.

Uryal faithfully relayed the contents of the report. Every detail, unredacted, no embellishments. In other words, he told the truth. The permanent undersecretary never considered this, and interpreted the report assuming Uryal had edited it to favor his own placed wagers.

The permanent undersecretary ordered the bank to corner the market on bloodfruit futures, believing the price would skyrocket. Uryal, meanwhile, shorted bloodfruit. When the report was finally published, saying exactly what Uryal said it would, the Bank of Vorilom was left owing billions in futures trades, causing the entire bank to default.

The permanent undersecretary was, of course, fired. Literally. Uryal awaited his promotion and counted the enormous sums he made betting on cheap bloodfruit. He was not disappointed.

Uyral's use of truth in a war of lies attracted Moloch's attention, but lining his own pockets in the bargain and becoming one of the single richest people in Hell earned Moloch's favor. He raised Uryal to sainthood and a privileged position in the court of Styx, the City of Lies.

Uryal teaches that deception is only one tool in the art of lies. That the point is manipulation, and that any tool, including the truth, should

be used to achieve one's ends. Uryal teaches the virtue of flexibility of character and morality. The virtue of unpredictability—always behaving in a manner that is open to interpretation so as to prevent your opponent from learning your tells.

Uryal is the Saint of Hell's diplomatic corps. His unofficial motto, falsely attributed to him but oft-repeated: "Do unto the other guy as he would do unto you. But do it to him first."

Kuryalka the False Principle

Domains: Death, Trickery

Kuryalka the False Principle, Soulstealer, Audacity, Saint of Ambition is credited with inventing the trading scheme known as the Kuryalka Ploy. Daughter and eldest child of Orliath IX—Marquis of Naraka, the City of Blood—tradition held Kuryalka would ascend to the house throne upon her mother's death and rule, but from childhood Kuryalka was obsessed with what was informally known as "the Trade"—the buying and selling of mortal souls from Orden and elsewhere in the timescape.

It occurred to Kuryalka that as long as people saw their soul-power increasing on paper they wouldn't inquire too closely about her stewardship of their investment. They signed their accumulated souls over to young Kuryalka, who promised them great returns. It seemed too good to be true! But she published a report every quarter showing marvelous gains, and while no one could understand her math or references to "integrals," they were well pleased with their growing wealth. Whenever someone complained about the lack of disbursements, Kuryalka would quickly pay them out of her growing hoard of souls.

Of course, there was no investment taking place. She simply kept the souls and grew in power, using new investors' souls to pay out old investors. She was not the first to use this technique, but she became the most famous and successful—and the scheme was named after her—because of one innovation. Kuryalka had developed an equation that showed exactly when the ploy would collapse.

Days before that moment, supreme in the fullness of her soulpower, Kuryalka did not withdraw her souls and escape into the timescape with her near-infinite wealth. She went to the Archdevil Sutekh, Lord of Naraka, and offered him her vast soul wealth in exchange for immortality and a place in the Court of the Seven Cities.

Sutekh's terrifying hollow laughter could be heard throughout Hell. No mortal, he said, had ever embodied such naked ambition. He accepted her offer, making her the first Saint of Hell. Sutekh took Kuryalka's souls and founded the Exchange, making the trade in souls an official government department in Hell, and building an entire bureaucracy around it.

Kuryalka teaches the virtue of ambition—that if you are willing to risk everything, you can gain everything. "The world is yours, if only you tell a lie big enough." That the greatest ambitions are those that are so audacious, no one else has even imagined them yet. In this manner does one avoid competition.

Kuryalka features in many folktales in Hell, including "Of the Childe Whomst Kepte the Sheeps," in which she appears to a young shepherd boy warning him against getting caught telling his first lies. Kuryalka instructs him in the proper use of manipulation: "Never tell the same lie twice!"