His Lieutenants

Chaotic and disorderly as Hell may be, the prime movers in the Adversary's war on God have all somehow risen to the top via treachery, cunning, or outright brutality. Positions of power in Hell may be something of a poisoned chalice, but they'd be the first to tell you the lust for power has claimed many a soul over the years.

    If the Board could be said to have a folk villain, a bogeyman they superstitiously watch for out of the corners of their eyes, then "Joe" is it. Resembling a clean-cut, upright young man with a love of historic firearms and fast cars, the only clue that something is drastically wrong about this cheery "student" is his forked tongue...and the way it plays across impossibly white teeth. The mere sight of his smile is said to be enough to drive good men insane. For all the Board know, it does...as most who have seen it in person are now dead.

His purpose on Earth, as far as the Board know, appeared to be exclusively one of seducing Margaret, a matter of the devil assuming a pleasing shape. Speculation remains divided on whether Joe is/was simply a vessel for the Adversary, or actually some form of separate entity. Either way, reality parted for the young man with disturbing ease. Papertrails spontaneously generated, Earthbound records adjusted appropriately, and people just knew the shell-suited figure strolling through their midst. Any attempt at supernatural means of observation (scrying, aura-sensing, etc) has uniformly ended in disaster.

To say the Board hate Joe's guts would be a drastic understatement. His attacks on and aggressive manipulation of several of their dependants would be more than enough to earn him their undying enmity, but his starring role in ambushing Miles shortly afterwards has catapulted him into their number one slot. That night saw him command, if not lead, enough hellspawn to first shoot down and later overrun the experienced General in a bloodbath that bought him more than enough time to leisurely spend the night torturing David Jones.

Memories of the blood on his hands have scarred Board attitudes permanently. Some oldbies visibly twitch at the merest mention of a "J" initial, and false sightings by panicked ground teams remain relatively common. His resemblance to Hazel Green's son Jay was once enough to get the entire Funky Horror on high alert. Even now, Speculation remain edgy — after all, the hazy Green adoption records could be considered similar to the University place so effortlessly conjured out of thin air...

    Duke of Hell and Captain of the Infernal Legion, Moloch is the determinedly modern commander of the Legions of the Damned, holding the millions of damned mortals and twisted creations of the Pit in check and on standby, awaiting the final Big Push that will take all Creation in the name of Hell and Lucifer. Favouring industrial atrocity and the glories of Total War over his fellows' "outdated love of gothic anachronism", Moloch has inspired humanity to ever-greater atrocities and slaughters over the course of their history...and now he's gotten those wonderfully warped minds to start playing with the atomic bomb, he's almost won. At least, that's what his propaganda broadcasts say...

Moloch got his start in "life" with the ancient Canaanites and Ammonites, inspiring his worshippers (and, according to the Old Testament, even King Solomon) to bloodthirsty rites of child sacrifice and burnt offerings, human or otherwise. His reign was long and bloody, until he was apparently unseated in the time of Jeremiah. He then moved to the Carthaginians, sating his growing taste for the blood of children in their own brutal sacrifices until finally toppled by the armies of Rome. From there he appears to have gone to ground, disappearing from "public life" while Judeo-Christian scholars roundly condemned him. He continued to be a well-known, easily-summoned demon for the next two millenia, and Board scholars wonder if he originated the tales of mythical creatures who grant wishes if the victim surrenders their firstborn child.

Moloch's Big Break came in 1914, with the outbreak of WW1, and his swift encouragement of patriotic fervour on any and all sides reached its peak at Verdun and on the Somme, where thousands of underage soldiers slaughtered each other for pitiful gains — it appears he had discarded outright sacrifice in favour of more "refined" methods.

A mere four years after the outbreak of hostilities, enraged that the mortals had managed to actually end what was supposed to be a decades-long holocaust, Lucifer disposed of the previous incumbent and promoted Moloch on the spot. The cunning Duke immediately began laying the groundwork for Somme Mk2, which saw fruition after 20 years in the pleasingly bloody blitzkriegs and carpet-bombing of WW2...but it was atrocities like Belsen and Battain that cemented his status as Hell's Golden Boy. When the Russians blew Berlin into rubble, their soldiers killing children as "future aggressors", and Hiroshima was indiscriminately reduced to radioactive dust, Moloch's cup ranneth over.

And then he started to slip. Try as he might, Moloch just couldn't get those damned mortals to do it again. The 1950s were promising, but ended embarrassingly with the Summer of Love. Vietnam and Korea only sealed Hell's hopes of another bloodbath in the west, and the Cuban missile crisis was an embarrassing slip that nearly cost Moloch his head. It wasn't until the 80 and 90s - SALT, SDI and the fall of the USSR - that Moloch realised someone was actively working against him. It took him a decade further to put names to faces and finally spot the forerunners of the modern Board...just in time for the Adversary to order him to lay the groundwork for His plans for Armageddon. Starting with the destruction of as much civilisation as possible.

With his hopes for another holocaust evaporating by the hour, Moloch revealed his concerns and gleefully lead Hell's legions on the attack when his master finally lost patience and ordered the Board and their meddling mistress eliminated. His "glorious bloodbath" of a strike on Mohaborad caught his enemies totally by surprise, wiping out everyone he could find in a night of butchery that earned him his #1 spot on thousands of Boardies' Little Lists. It nearly worked.

Nearly. His triumphal boasting was brutally cut short within a year with the appearance of the Funky Horror and even more difficulties in forcing through the longed-for nuclear exchange. Just to make matters worse, the Dark Lord has begun to add the words "or else" to the ends of His increasingly impatient orders...and Moloch has plenty of hopefuls in his ranks looking to replace him.

Make no mistake, even with his standing Below badly damaged, Moloch is still a supremely dangerous foe with connections to every military on the globe - and even without WW3, African militias, teenage fanatics, and suicide bombers continue to keep him supplied with bloodshed. Unseating him would require defeating Hell's conventional armies in the field, and not even the most optimistic strategists can foresee that.

    Instability, fear, desperation...these things are so common in Hell, even among the innermost and most secretive cliques of the Powers That Aren't, that they only stand out for what they are when someone walks openly through the Pit lacking all three. For, you see, Todal is the one demon assured that his position is unassailable, and therefore walks openly in the Abyss, constantly scribbling in his little notebook...with a pen no-one dares glance at, on paper even demons would rather not speculate on.

For it is Todal's place, given to him in ages past by the Dark Lord himself, to ensure the fractious, rebellious demons of the chaotic realms of Hell remain loyal and productive. A thankless task, but one Todal performs with efficiency and zeal, ensuring none are below his scrutiny or suspicion...and that all know this.

It is not his role to stamp out intrigue, but rather to control it — to ensure it furthers Hell's ends rather than simply being wasteful attrition. The inept, the stupid, those with the poor judgement to play at diabolical politics and lose...all are dragged before Todal's inquisition and "persuaded" to confess their crimes. It is a sad fact that, so often, the interrogators find the traitor has named accomplices who must also be investigated... A lucky few may be preserved as blackmailed double-agents, informing on their fellows, but there is a reason why "the mercy of Hell" is a mortal cliché.

Todal's duties are not entirely confined to the Infernal plane — his organisation also has jurisdiction over the many mortal agents employed on Earth, ensuring their demonic "handlers" keep them in line or suffer the consequences. Every iota of infernal energy granted to an occultist or sorcerer represents an investment of Hell's resources, and Todal makes it known that Hell expects an appropriate return. Exactly the same standards apply to demons themselves, after all...

Unlike his master, Todal ignores individual mundane humans — to him, it would be like taking an interest in the affairs of bacteria. Inferior bacteria. Thus, his involvement with the Board is relatively obscure. Todal is only seen in the corporeal realms when making an "arrest", but as the Board's reputation has climbed, so has that of the small cadre of former demons in the Goddess's service, many of whom were once quite high-ranking. This puts them at the top of Todal's hit list, and any Boardie encountering his agents is in extreme danger - not just as an avowed enemy of Hell, but also as a potential source of information on the whereabouts of his "traitorous" fellows.