Baalzebul
Lord of the Flies Triel (a.k.a. Baalzebul)
Biological parent of Father Gabriel and Lucuis Mordrake
Triel was once renowned as among one of the most beauteous denizens of Celestia but was physically altered after his corruption. His new form was that of a 12 ft (3.7 m) tall humanoid with shimmering, sable skin and the jittering, compound eyes of a fly. Still angelically stunning even after his fall from grace, Asmodeus put a curse upon him as punishment for a later crime, forcing him into an even more demeaning form.
The former celestial's mutated form was that of a 25 ft (7.6 m) tall slug, a grotesque abomination infamously unpleasant even to other devils. The Lord of the Flies was constantly surrounded by swarms of the buzzing, scuttling creatures that earned him his title. His body glistened with mucus and thanks to his curse, fecal matter and other rancid filth manifested in piles wherever he went, resulting in his notoriously noxious stench. His deformed arms rested at his front and were more comparable to prehensile tails in functionality. Replacing his handsome visage was a gross, human-like face with torpid lips, incapable of properly pronouncing words without a slimy, wet lisp
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Baalzebul was originally the archon known as Triel, and one of the most powerful and beautiful ones to be found in Celestia. Unfortunately, Triel's selfish acts in the name of achieving his perfection resulted in his corruption and exile from the Seven Heavens. After his fall, Asmodeus, perhaps out of some lingering sense of sympathy, favored and quickly promoted Triel to the ranks of baatezu nobility.
His ruthless lust for power served him well in Hell, and before long Baalzebul, as he had begun to call himself, mastered diabolical politics. He not only displaced the ancient, original Lord of the Seventh but managed to expunge his identity and accomplishments from infernal history. He had become the only archdevil to rule two layers of the Nine Hells, although he ruled Malbolge through Moloch and even that was a continual struggle,[ and created his own mosquito-like ayperobo devils from lemures.
However, Baalzebul later attempted to take the Dark Lord's throne, although the manner with which he did so to get him punished was disputed. Some claimed that he was cast down for masterminding the Reckoning of Hell, but more recently it was thought that he altered documents to confuse the bureaucracy of Hell and make Asmodeus seem incompetent, a plan upended by the unpredictable Blood War before his actions were discovered. Maladomini was thought to have become a warzone between Baalzebul, who was attempting to hide his actions, and the other archdukes trying to expose his conspiracy, supposedly resulting in the ruined state of many of Maladomini's cities.
Whatever his crime, a series of bizarre penalties befell Baalzebul; a retroactive curse turning him into a slug for a year per each lie he had told to a devil, his inability to strike deals without disaster befalling his associate, having his castle turned to excrement and filled with filth and having his dominion of Malbolge stripped from him. He recently returned to his old form, as his vanity forbade him from further extending the duration of his punishment.
Even as a slug, Baalzebul still held great influence and managed massive feats of deception, such as supposedly creating the meazels by promising to save a kingdom from dying of an awful, hunger-inducing blight. Whether they knew of his identity was unclear but upon agreeing they found themselves rendered immune to the plague but still suffering from its torturous symptoms and only able to feed upon the flesh of sentient beings, although Baalzebul's creations had a tendency to ally with the cults of his enemies.
Morality & Philosophy
Of Baazelbul's numerous flaws, his most crippling was his perfectionist extremism. His unfiltered dedication to achieving physical flawlessness and greater dominion was what caused his initial fall from the Seven Heavens, as such callous ambition was more befitting of a devil. Seemingly incapable of realizing when he had gone too far, his utter arrogance led him to undermine his own plans by overreaching. He might have even been able to defeat his rival Mephistopheles if in his overconfident scheming he didn't also aim to defeat Asmodeus, causing him to fall even further than before.
Baalzebul made an effort to seem calm on the surface, often withholding his true feelings from others. In truth, the Lord of the Lies had viewed his transformation into a slug not simply as an obstacle to be overcome but as a humiliating experience.[ He had become an abusive taskmaster during his time in Hell, a sadistic torturer that displaced his anger on his subjects and loved disheartening them, but after being cursed he became neglectful and miserable himself. Often times he ignored his depressing duties in favor of plotting revenge and fantasizing about regaining his original, Triel form.
Despite his flaws, Baalzebul was still dangerously cunning and charismatic. If not for the interference of Geryon, he might have not only been able to best Mephistopheles, but even oust Asmodeus himself. Even when trapped in his inarticulate, slug-like form, he was still the Lord of the Lies, whose every deception and false statement was made with ease. He was not to be mistaken as a pathological liar as he told each untruth with a purpose in mind and indeed managed to keep a hold on his layer for several millennia without lying, at least to other devils
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
After his mortifying experience as a slug, Baazelbul limited his open plotting to the Lord of the Eighth and focused his energies on sneaking more spies into Asmodeus's court while also appealing to him, primarily by making his rivals look incompetent by comparison.[2] The curses inflicted on him by his master effectively neutralized his ability to properly forge alliances with his peers, so much of his time was spent completing his actual duties as an archduke and overseeing the soul-driven bureaucracy of his layer. Edicts, policies, treatises and other documents were kept in the underground archival labyrinth that Maladomini had made after his defeat, protected by traps, devils and confounding classification systems.
He jealously guarded all the power and secrets he could from the other archdevils, particularly Asmodeus and Mephistopheles, in order to eventually enact his take over of Hell, and at one point hoarded souls with intent to perform a ritual to escape his sluggish form.
Social
Reign
If anything exemplified Baazelbul's legacy of failure and degeneracy in the unending pursuit of unattainable perfection, it was his layer, Maladomini. Once, perhaps, Maladomini was a beautiful landscape filled with grandiose cities, roads, bridges and other symbols of splendor and triumph. No matter their excellence however, Baazelbul was never contented with the cities he was presented with, striving to complete a configuration of form and function worthy of his greatness.
Upon completion, new cities were inevitably deemed unsuitable and either left behind as a symbol of past failure or plundered for materials in upcoming structures, quickening their degradation. As in most of his endeavors, Baazelbul was able to envision his idealized result but unable to bring it into reality. This was partially a result of his endlessly toiling petitioners having had the ability to create such things beaten out of them.
The result of Baazelbul's folly was a druid's worst nightmare, a defiled, suffering world robbed of nature. Where greenery might have forested the land was rotting wood, dead stumps and trees burnt by slag heaps, the only persistent life being the fly swarms said to be Baazelbul's eyes and ears. Below the blood-black sky of Maladomini was a surface spotted with deep quarries and strip mines that scarred the land like gaping wounds and leaked polluted gas into the air. Petitioners and lesser devils alike lacked tools but were nonetheless forced to dig deeper underground for stone and minerals to carve and cut, further contributing to the destruction.
Effluvium and sludge from split canals could be seen all across the plane's surface and anything that might have been living within the polluted rivers normally died on the banks after breathing in the toxic air. Rivers existed even in the center of tunnels, but were so utterly filthy that distilled tar within could light guttering, green flames on the edges.
Maladomini was occasionally wracked with tremors and explosions. Much of the plane was traditionally hellish, consisting mostly of black earth, pits of fire. and an encircling ocean of lava. Within the fiery sea was a ring of volcanoes that fed it through their eruptions, the produced rivers of liquid flame often siphoned off through canals to make molten moats for castles or simply built over with fearsome, arched bridges.
Baalzebul's ceaseless construction projects made Maladomini, while incredibly unpleasant, an excellent hideaway for runaways, deserters, petitioners, defeated baatezu and resilient extraplanar beasts. So many cities existed that trying to run out squatters simply forced them to pick from the wide variety of nearby shelters.
Many structures were aboveground but a great amount of the plane was actually a series of tunnels many miles wide and at least a thousand feet tall, massive curving caverns filled with ancient architecture.[18][6] The labyrinths below were sometimes lit by orbs of sickly-green floating flames. Even the greater baatezu however, were loathed to tread deep below the cities and mines, as such tunnels housed dangerous entities, possibly the ancient Baatorians from before the reign of the baatezu.
Contacts & Relations
Baazelbul had several rivals in the Nine Hells and enough enemies that at some point he was given the insulting corruption of his sobriquet, "Lord of the Lies", although in some cases it was still used as a compliment. His notable foes were Mephistopheles and Dispater, both of which were ancient archdevils whose seniority contrasted Baalzebul's quick upstart and who scorned the one they viewed as an outsider. Both were pleased to hear of his transformation into the Slug Archduke and during his transformed period Baalzebul drove his spy network to discover, or at least plant, evidence of their wrongdoing in the hopes of getting them trapped in even more demeaning forms or, if lucky, completely destroyed.[
Although he feigned subservience, Baalzebul's primary target of hatred was Asmodeus for cursing him, yet the Lord of Nessus occasionally favored him for seemingly no reason, possibly viewing him as a worthy opponent. Despite Baalzebul keeping them in his castles and having them as servants and bodyguards, he only begrudgingly allowed pit fiends into Maladomini, suspecting them of being puppets or spies for Asmodeus.
Incapable of admitting his own fault, Baalzebul placed the majority of blame for his curse on Mephistopheles. The Cold Lord was the greater of his rivals and the two could be said to be quite similar, particularly in their insatiable hunger for power and recognition. Both believed that the key to their success was to defeat the other, making them the second greatest archdevil and strong enough to potentially overthrow Asmodeus. Each spent much of their time either machinating against their archenemy or having their forces engage in skirmishes and battles in a constant stalemate, which ironically was part of the reason Asmodeus tolerated them.
A keeper of many secrets, Dispater's hatred for Baalzebul was the most well-known in Baator as the two constantly fought wars of intrigue. Even with the support of Mephistopheles, the forces of Dispater and Baalzebul slowly whittled down each other and protecting himself from such plots appeared to consume much of Dispater's time and distract him from further plans of expansion. Part of the reason behind his utter loathing of the Fallen One was that he viewed him not as a true baatezu but just an exiled celestial undeserving of the respect he showed Mephistopheles More recently however, Dispater sought to politely distance himself from his allies and make peaceful gestures to his foes, however impossible being a truly neutral party in the Nine Hells was.
One of the curses inflicted by Asmodeus upon Baalzebul was that any deal struck with him would inevitably end in catastrophe for the other party, a decree that generally warded off other devils from doing so.[16] Despite this, Baalzebul still had his allies, such as the Lord of the Fourth Belial, who had been with him both before and after the Reckoning. Their relationship was kept private after Baalzebul was demoted but both sides would come to the other's aid if they were in danger, although in Baalzebul's case that was based on the assumption he could find some benefit in doing so.
Originally Baalzebul ruled the sixth layer through his viceroy Moloch but after he was deposed for insolence towards Asmodeus the Hag Countess took over, ironically the one who convinced Moloch to eventually try and defeat Baalzebul. The Hag Countess did make overtures of peace towards Baalzebul, gifting him with a handservant in the form of the male medusa Vashaak. The Lord of the Flies found the iron-masked medusa fascinating, even if Vashaak saw him as disgusting, but ultimately the attempted alliance failed when Glasya took over Malbolge. Ultimately Baalzebul saw Glasya as a threat due to her friendship with Fierna endangering the alliance he already had with Belial, not to mention that one of his servants, Tartach, defected to join the newest Lord of the Sixth.
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