ASMODEUS
I had just finished supplanting the governnts of Gruumi, Kushiyama, Hinata, and Opening either with demonic rule, or simply destroying them. So far, my campaign was a relative success. I had no luck with Aiken Monastery, but I probably couldn’t do that.
Soon, I would also extend demonic forces to Phoenix. All I had to do was tell a few small sob stories about the war and tourism, and how Hell had suffered greatly and needed a country to stay in for the ti being. After that, I would work in stages to undermine the centuries of Phoenix's sovereignty. They would welco us, and we would destroy them. They wouldn’t know what hit them.
LILITH
We landed at the town of Phoenix to rest before trying to enter the Universe Egg. But sothing was weird about this town. I don't rember the streets so filled with demons! Especially not Phoenix, which Nevras had told us was known for its sovereignty and indifference to tourist trends. So what was going on here? “We need to go to other towns,” I said, “There's sothing fishy going on.”
ASMODEUS
I thought I noticed Lilith for a second, but then they flew off on their big dragon. They must have had other matters to take care of. All the better, my plans in Phoenix were about to go into action. Soon all that was needed was to take the Council.
LILITH
We checked out Gruumi. It was a wreck. But it was always a wreck, so this really wasn't anything dramatic. Likewise, Opening was always a shithole, so Ambrosia was in fact convinced they had actually improved the town by demolishing the carbon copy huts that had lined the slums. But I'm not convinced that tearing down the walls of their town, killing most of the guard, burning buildings, and reducing the city to poverty and despair was a good solution for the Departnt of Comrce. We saw other towns too, like Hinata, fad for its tourist culture, as a hollowed-out shell of itself. It had money to spare, so probably they would probably be back to their old self the next ti we visited. But for now, its quaint shops were burned by Hellfire, its won and n all looked violated in multiple ways, and its small tourist town vibe were ruined by immigration. This was not the Hinata we rembered.
“We need to go back to Phoenix and stop them,” Ambrosia insisted. Nevras shook his head, “They will never believe us.” Elias, always the thoughtful one, declared after a few monts, “Maybe so, but I think I have a plan.”
GREGORIUS
I am branch manager for the bounty offices around Hinata. I daily accept claims of cris committed, in addition to creatures that are creating a public nuisance, and I even work with assigning other tasks such as guard duty. Bounty hunters are expected to do a wide range of tasks precisely because their rivals are the various clans of ninja. The average bounty hunter has a wide and varied list of tasks, although bounty hunters typically specialize in a few select jobs, since very few have the ti or expertise to perform all tasks. For this reason, we have bounty offices to match jobs with people.
Yes, it is true. Bounty hunters are not an official law enforcent, yet the bounty office keeps official records on them. When they hand in a bounty, their na is recorded in a database, in conjunction with how many hunts they have made, and whether they themselves have a bounty on their head. Because bounty hunters are performing a service for us, even though they may themselves be guilty of cris, they are always given an Alive bounty to allow them to face their cris in court. But more importantly, these records allow us to rank and rate bounty hunters. It actually makes no difference to us, so long as they get the job done, but bounty hunters are by nature competitive. In any case, this database tells us about the hunters based on information they give. It tells us the actual hunter of the bounty, patron (who assign bounties), or any supports (those who assist unofficially in the bounty). In fact, God is on record as support in the bounty hunt of Cthulhu, but we don't have a reliable image, so our artists sketched sothing.
When a bounty hunter visits the office to ask a question or otherwise patronize us in person, their picture is added to their profile. In absence of this, their na and their fingerprints (usually procured when they put parts of a creature on the wanted poster) are used as identification. One of our Bounty Hunters refuses this, and never exposes enough of his face to be identified, so the Black Orchid as he calls himself has to personally bring bounties to us, since our collection system cannot collect bounties without recording who to send the reward to. He doesn't seem concerned by this, though, as we have never seen his face. The Black Orchid delivers bounties to our doorstop, leaving a note, and disappears without being paid. Nobody has ever seen him.
The bounty offices are like virtually any bureaucratic building, they have various form sheets in slots, they have papers required to be stamped and duplicated, and they have a number of people who hardly leave their desk. We do get holidays though.
The first type of paper is a Wanted form, where the patron explains generally what happened, whether it was a cat that ran away or a hydra terrorizing a village. They can do this mostly orally, the bounty is self-filling. The form that was blank except for a single word will imdiately fill after the patron explains. It gains a picture of the creature or person and a marking of Dead, Alive, or Dead or Alive (or others, at the discretion of the patron, or if the creature can’t be killed). It also explains the reason for the bounty, and the reward. The reward is based on the level of interaction with the public, not on danger, so an incredibly powerful creature that only attacks when threatened might have a deceptively low reward. So Wanted posters have prerequisites that a bounty hunter must have completed a certain number of hunts or have experience in a certain area (rescue, guard duty, etc) before taking the quest. Still others have a ti limit. Usually, these sorts of hunts are those with a high failure rate.
If a client cannot pay the bounty (plus our 30% cut), the Wanted poster is discarded, and the patron must instead use our second type of paper, a Private Bounty poster to na their own price, and this bounty is posted only within the local bounty office. These posters rarely get answered, since they are not only hard to find, but few hunters want to do them. Those ones only get answered by a certain temperant of hunter.
Next is a Evidence form. These forms are typically required to be taken to the scene of the cri. The Evidence form takes a sort of picture that replays past events when touched. Below that recorded mory the ti and location is recorded, and the Evidence form adds a picture of the hunt to any Wanted poster if it is not already known. An object can also be placed there, in which case an Exhibit # appears below the recording, demonstrating additional proof of the event. In the Black Orchid case above, whenever we've placed one of these outside our building, we have recorded a masked and hooded individual with a black orchid as a corsage. The petals have been added as evidence exhibits, but everything including his eyes are veiled by black fabric. We have pieces of thread, but none of them have any genetic information on our anonymous benefactor, nor does the flower, a Brasiliorchis schunkeana. They simply leave a note and the bounty, then disappear before we manage to find anything out.
Next, we have Request forms. These are internal bounties, that is to say, only the bounty themselves can collect. Black Orchid, for instance, has one. This bounty reads, ??Request: Black Orchid. Cri: None. Reward: 150 Million Gold (plus future bounties) Terms: Wanted Alive, for questioning. Be prepared to verify identity.?? Since we wanted to pay them back for all of what they had done, this bounty was set up to attract them, but we had to take precautions against impostors, after all. The odds were against this bounty ever being answered though. This felt like another bounty hunter was volunteering to do extra bounties for fun, and to avoid having their record look too good. If that was the case, it was probably linda, who only even participated when there was an Open Hunt and who had the least amount of bounties completed despite appearing to be very skilled. Or Katarina, who hunts with the help of her house cat/Monster. But I suppose it could be Yaqu, who has the highest number of hunts before Black Orchid.
Lastly is the aforentioned Open Hunt form. If a patron cannot pay yet gathers sufficient evidence that the hunt is a major one, or if a hunt involves multiple creatures, an Open Hunt is issued. These bounties are seldom seen, but whenever it happens, it is usually a big event. Such bounties cannot be removed from the board, since part of being open is that a single person can't grab the bounty and complete it. The other feature of an Open Hunt is that it usually cannot be ignored. It's big enough to cover all the other bounties on a board, and takes priority over them. In the average day, we do not receive such bounties. But today was different, because today we had a number of guests.
Ambrosia's group had collectively taken down a great number of hunts, but personally she had very few actual bounties to her na. When I saw them co in and look through our papers, I figured they were going to post a notice themselves, but Ambrosia turned out to be a cheapskate. She had millions in Gold to work with, but she refused to pay anything for the bounty. Instead, her group snatched a bunch of Evidence forms, and ca back a few hours later with ample proof that so demons were apparently wrecking towns. The pictures could probably win so award.
I initially refused, insisting she pay the proper dues like everyone else, but then she decided to pull rank. Apparently due to so of her dealings with the royal family of Phoenix, she had been made a knight. I looked at her identification.
Since she lived in the kingdom of Phoenix, her domain would normally be Phoenix. However, the Island Closest to Hell had long ago deed that “Anyone born within the domain of Hell will henceforth be subject to the mandate of Hell.” Supposedly this also included their fate in the Afterlife. Anyway, knighthood carried with it all sorts of privileges, chief among those the ability to tell bureaucrats to bend the rules. I had no choice but to offer bounty myself. This was now an official Open Hunt.
ASMODEUS
“People of Phoenix,” I carefully crafted my lie, “consider your past. While others in the modern age have begun to recognize that demons are sentient creatures with hearts and souls, those in Phoenix still reject us as creatures of evil. Why, look at the pitiful refugees from Hell. Now that their country has beco overcrowded by tourists, look at the pitiful state their people are reduced to. Now look at the statues in this town, statues devoted to people who obviously hated demons.” So saying, I encouraged them to destroy their own past by smashing old monunts. Many of those of Phoenix were smart enough to see though this, but I had them fight the useful idiots doing my bidding.
I had planned ahead, getting demons covered in dirt and gri, and changing their bodies to look skinny. Any real student of demons knew that they couldn't actually starve to death. I dressed them in rags to complete the illusion. They all looked like sothing straight out of a Charles Dickens novel, complete with wretched expressions on their faces. Demons were natural actors, and those who had gone along with my plan were intent on selling this lie. Of course, now that demons had souls, there were plenty in Hell who elected to stay there. There are good and evil demons now, like all races. But none of those good demons were here, obviously. They stayed in their holand.
Of course, the people of Phoenix were not as easy to sway as tourist Hinata, globalist Kushiyama, or the backwards town of Gruumi. Like Opening, I encountered doubters and hecklers. “Bah!” a woman said, “Nonsense! You demons are here to plunder and despoil our land! I've heard news from other cities, shortly before they fell. They all talked about the so-called pathetic demon refugees who raped and murdered before burning the town to the ground.” Now, I could get angry. Like other demons, my first impulse was to blast people who challenged
to the ground, or throw bricks at them. But this wouldn't sell my narrative, so I had to make it look like she was the bully and I was a poor victim. “Bigots!” I sobbed, a crocodile tear in my eye. “Wherever we go, we encounter these... these daemonophobes. It wasn't enough, was it, that Belial was rejected and locked in an urn? You want to bla all of us for the actions of just a few!” The look in her face changed from skepticism to fear. The charm in my voice was beginning to turn the crowd. I continued, “And look at this woman! She's one of the wealthy, the elite of Phoenix.” I pointed out her fur and her pearls, which I had previously noticed were actually fake, “Behold, Phoenix! An elite among a city of elites! This last war that destroyed such property, it was all your doing! Because of you, the war raged on and destroyed much of Hell. This is why many of us have no hos today.” Everything I just said was a lie. Kushiyama, not Phoenix, started the war. Hell had not been attacked, because most armies feared what demons could do. And there was no property damage, nor was there any real holessness, despite all of our tourism. Yet, they were beginning to believe my voice, as a result of both my natural abilities of charm and the fact that much of Phoenix did actually bla itself for the horrors of war, just as the Christians thought themselves guilty for the Crusades when actually they only had fought at most for 90 years offensively. The kindhearted are easy to sway.
The woman who had objected to my words earlier was being booed as a horrible person, while people had started pushing her and even so began throwing rocks at her. She cowered in fear. I was about to continue with my speech about how demonic immigration could only enrich the culture of Phoenix and increase its tolerance (all while people were throwing stones at soone they couldn't agree with), when I heard a voice say, “That's enough of that.” I turned around to see Lilith's face.
LILITH
“That's enough of that,” I said. I pulled out several Evidence sheets and showed them to people. Even seeing the truth, the words of a demon had a powerful effect of suggestion, and the longer Asmodeus talked, the more people doubted their own eyes. Being a demon myself, it was ti to do so talking myself. It was ti to do sothing that demons aren't good at. It was ti to tell the truth.
The Evidence had a number of physical exhibits attached, rubble from houses, bones, and so on. But this was only support, the real proof was the recordings that each one managed to capture of the “refugee” visits of each town. “Listen to these speeches,” I told them, the charm of my voice partially reducing that of Asmodeus, “see if they don't sound similar.” In fact, they were almost identical. And the crowd got to watch what happened later, when the demons began to rape and murder. They watched as the demons burned their towns. And they watched as the survivors desperately tried to banish the demons, but so stayed as occupying forces. “Do you see?” I said, “They aren't the poor pathetic demons they make themselves out to be. Are they?” I lifted a large rock with one hand, “In fact... being one of them, I can definitely say that demons are to be feared, not pitied.” The crowd turned on the demons all of a sudden, “Get out of our town, you demons!” One of them threw a rock at , along with attacking the others. Not that it hurt much. But still, my pride was hurt. I an, I was trying to help!
In any case, about this ti, so trained bounty hunters ca around and I watched them work. The man nad Yaqu summoned so sort of elental spirit. A girl with a long ponytail and fake cat ears called Katarina let her cat (I guess?) open its mouth, and instead of the soft w I expect was a large tentacled maw that held Asmodeus fast. He struggled, beating back the elental, and managed to land a good hit on Sera, who was also taking the bounty. A girl with auburn hair called linda tried to sneak behind him with what appeared to be a sacred dagger, but his tail knocked her back, and I noticed a small black flower fall from her pocket. Embarrassed by sothing, she fled the scene.
It took
working with the bounty hunters to finally allow them to properly restrain Asmodeus. But to the bitter end, he was trying to get his demonic “allies” to join him against
and the other bounty hunters. “Help
defeat these...” he pleaded, only to watch them scatter. It was no good, all of them had started to flee when they saw that they were exposed. The bounty was for “Asmodeus and Any Allied Demons” so the bounty hunters didn't even bother with them if they abandoned him. Despite demons having great endurance and strength, Asmodeus should have understood a basic truth. When you build a system on lies and distrust, manipulating others instead of cultivating real friendships, the first thing that happens is people distrust and betray each other.
“Wait, stop! No... please help,” he begged the townspeople, only to watch them turn their heads in disgust. He called after the other demons, but most of them were now out of earshot. He even bargained with the bounty hunters, offering to double their pay if they would release him. His words fell on deaf ears, most of them had made a career from following through on their promises to dispatch a bounty. As long as they did good work, they were sure more would co. He was trampled underfoot like mud in the streets then hauled away into the darkness outside town. When last he was heard, Asmodeus sobbed and gnashed his teeth as he was dragged off.
AZRAEL
In any case, it wasn't our business. Instead, after Aqorm had asked around and found a helpful lead about the Universe Egg (it had apparently been sighted west of the Great Library before heading towards the sea), we flew Bahamut to its general direction. We figured we could just charge the sucker but it wasn't that simple. A barrier ford around the egg and knocked us back. Bahamut cursed, and so did we as we lurched backward, hanging for dear life. “What just happened?” I asked, nursing a small bruise from the impact. Elias explained, “I think the Embryo has so sort of barrier.” Now, there are many types of barriers. So just screen out creatures by gender or race or so other characteristic (there's even ones that only allow sentient beings like humans and elves), so are fields of antimagic, so muffle the outside environnt like Ambrosia's Crest, so negate a specific elent (like a fire shield), so separate water and air for underwater breathing, so deflect light/dark, so absorb or disperse energies based on principles of math or science (usually only sorcerers use those though), so reflect magic back at its source, and that's not even all of them. This one repelled magic scattering its energies harmlessly, and appeared to do the sa for physical objects or people entering. Whatever this one was made of, it was a top-notch barrier. Both Lilith's Hellfire and Michael's barrier-breaking Scripts were no good. To say nothing of a vast number of attempts of taking it apart with my magic. I must have tried twenty or so ans of dispelling or breaking enchantnts but they simply rolled off.
Frustrated, we asked Elias, “ Is there anything that we can do?” He shrugged.
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