The Demons of Adulteration

Tags

Adulteration, Andrealphus, Asmodeus, Baal, Balseraph, Beelzebub, Beleth, Cassiel, Djinn, Fleurity, In Nomine, Kobal, Kronos, Legion, Lilim, Mammon, Remnant, Saminga, Shedite, Uriel, Vapula, Wordbound

The first Demon of Adulteration was a Shedite of Beelzebub who had thought to join with Kobal after it’s first Superior died. Baal had other ideas, and conscripted the Demon of Adulteration to assist in The War effort. Few demons had as much direct experience with Purity’s mindset as one of Corruption’s wordbound servitors.

Adulteration’s creative and unethical mind allowed for some early successes and at Baal’s urging it was setting in for a long fight. Then Uriel landed on Adulteration’s metaphorical doorstep and kicked it in. The fight that followed was short, brutal, and not quickly forgotten. Uriel cored the Demon of Adulteration, carving out it’s celestial forces and nothing else. Where once there was March Lord of Hell, now there was a hollow remnant that was still more puissant than most demons.

Uriel posted a picket to guard the grim warning and went about his business of purifying the lands and minds of humankind.

The 2^nd Wave of Adulteration

Eventually Asmodeus and Mammon convinced Baal to mount a raid to recover Adulteration’s “body.” There were no Celestial forces, but just as Uriel intended, the Corporeal, Ethereal, and Word forces were more or less intact.

While Uriel had meant for the Remnant to act like a warning, it was also a treasure trove of powerful Forces and Hell was bent on creating a Corruptor who could possess multiple hosts like a Domination.

Saminga was called in to experiment on the body – attaching one Force here, another there. When all was said and done, no two forces were part of the same celestial. Instead there were dozens of Celestials who had been surgically adulterated with the March Lord’s old soul.

The end result was not a single Shedite, but a host of distinct Corruptors whose minds and wills jangled discordantly off against each other. Several of the first “children” of Adulteration physically tore themselves apart. Another group seemed deaf to their shared Word, but the princes of hell auctioned off the survivors to see who could do what with them.

Andrealphus took one, Asmodeus another, Mammon half-a-dozen. To the surprise of many, Beleth walked away with several of the Word deaf Corruptors with a frightful intelligence glimmering in her eye. The rest basically disbursed into the general population.

Saminga did not keep any for itself – but it gained something far more valuable, practice with Shedite soul surgery. The skill would be used again in the forging of Legion.

Fate of the 2^nd Adulteration

• Lust’s Adulteration was eventually devoured by the more powerful Demon of Adultery and the excess Forces used in part to create the Demon of Miscegenation.
• The Game’s Adulteration was quietly captured and executed for espousing the treasonous belief that there is no pure evil.
• Greed’s Adulterations did quite well for themselves, with many being elevated to other words that weren’t split quite so many ways.
• No one is quite sure what Beleth has done with hers, nor do they really wish to travel into Nightmare to find out.

3^rd Wave of Adulteration

Although several Adulterations did die, the word has not consolidated as much as one might suppose. With the Shedite experiments done, several Superiors attempted to secure a piece of Adulteration for demons of another choir.

• Kronos showed up just in time to gather the Word Force from Asmodeus’s Adulteration. It now lives within a Seraphic Balseraph who espouses the same line that there is no pure evil.
• Fleurity sold Mammon one of his Chinese tethers to get a child off of one of Mammon’s Adulterations. The resulting Djinn has been quite profitable for the Prince of Drugs and has started sponsoring other demons for Words.
• Vapula tracked down one of the unhinged Demons of Adulteration and fused it with a Lilim in his employ. The resulting abomination is an affront to Lilith, but Vapula seems to like it and has started searching for more Adulterations to work with.
• Cassiel is also rumored to have shown up in hell to haggle with Mammon. Supposedly he purchased one of the Word Forces from Adulteration and used it to create Camaysar, Angel of the Marriage of Contraries.

What’s She Building in There?

While Beleth frowns upon Vapula’s Ethereal laboratories, it is more of a territorial than an ethical concern. Her own tower is full of laboratories studying impossible geometry, eldrich physics, and the like.

While the other Angels fought over Adulteration’s Word Forces, she made sure to keep track of where its Ethereal Forces were bound. Most were pulled apart so she could engage in hybridization experiments – but at least one is in a surgeon for the Order of the Broken Stone.

A Scattered Mind

In theory, the half-dozen or so remaining Demons of Adulteration could cooperate like the Dual Word-Holding angels Daniel and Hutriel.

They don’t.

Each of the Demons of Adulteration believes that they are the one true interpretation of the Word and the others are just pretenders. They will work collaboratively to enhance their joint Word, but will sabotage each other fiercely when they see an opportunity to align the Word with their own outlook.

While there are more than 20 Word Forces of Adulteration extant, no one demon has more than 4 or 5.