Downfallen-The Devils Due
Otherworld: a domain where myth and magic make earth as belief made real. Fey kings and the realms of gods stand side by side; wonder and dread walk in person. Yet far from Albion’s enchanted isles and Olympus’s bright heights—beyond those beautiful, esoteric courts—sprawls a battered, broken wasteland.
Above, mountains spear into the clouds and bloom into sky-cities—gold and silver, serene and immaculate. Below, the land lies starved of sun, languishing in the shadow of those high and heavenly domains. It has worn many names; to most, it is the Hell-Realm.
Some claim Hell is blasted, broken, and cursed because it lies in the long shadow of the angels’ realm above. Those who live on high steal the sun, leaving the world below to its dark, cold reflection—lit and warmed only by volcanic fissures and the glow of foundries and infernal furnaces. There, cities cling deep within chasms that rend the arid badlands where the ancient gods and spirits of the Levant once kept court.
My throne leans over a blasted pit—decadence clinging to broken crags, the stone scarred with ember-veins. Not by choice. This realm is a sentence, the interest on our fall.
Those who think ruling Hell is power are delusional. To rule Hell is to keep books over a wasteland starved of light and warmth. We scavenge what we can from a land long since bled out, feeding furnaces just to hold the line. Above, the sky-city hoards the sun; they left the dirt because dust offends the righteous.
Below, they keep the furnaces fed and the screams itemized—essence wrung from the damned to keep a machine of sorcery and sweat from stalling. Demons, fallen, and forgotten gods—pulled down by time and by the sons of Abraham’s scorn—survive on what sin pays.
Are we evil? That’s a matter of perspective. Not all demons are malign. Prince Stolas bears no ill will toward his summoners—a glorified owl-librarian, really. Prince Seir is more swashbuckler than scourge and “Satan,” I should note, is a title, not a person.
Satan, Baal—these are old titles, worn by devils since before Hell was Hell. The elder powers who came before the Fallen earned them and passed them along. Mortals, however, are talented at muddling narratives; time and distance, translation and syncretism, grind truths into new shapes until the latest culture mistakes its reflection for the source.
I suppose I’m a prime example of that. Baalial, Balial, Belhor, Beliall, Beliar, Berial, Bylyl, Beliya’al—names they’ve given me. In Hell I use King Belial, one of its crowned rulers. But the one I like best is the one mortals coined for me: the Devil.
Not a devil—the Devil. Capital D. It scrapes Lucifer raw that the laity confuse my name with the office of Satan—and with his God-Emperor affectations. I let them. Mortals will be mortals, and few punishments please me more than the way it needles His Majesty’s pride.
Our Majesty—Lucifer, Emperor of Hell; high lord of an unwanted wasteland. The grand hypocrite. The rebel who railed against Heaven in the name of freedom, only to crown himself tyrant. A fate that so often awaits the so-called freedom fighters; predictable, really—those who vow to break chains are the first to slip on an iron gauntlet for the sake of their vision.
Not that I was ever strictly part of that vision. I was among his rebels, yes—a general, in fact. Hence my station as one of the Kings of Hell under His Majesty and, with some amusement, the only one of his rebel cohort to be crowned king. There is another Fallen seated among the kings—Azazel—but he comes from the First Fall, one of the Watchers cast down long before our little mutiny. He insists on seeing Lord Lucifer as a fellow scapegoat, which makes him loyally aggravating. Still, I take my crown with both pride and a certain delicious irony.
Prince Beelzebub, that lord of buzzing glut, and Duke Xaphan, the war-master, were truer to the rebellion’s program—yet I’m the one who wears a crown and sits a single step below His Majesty.
Telling of my skill and power? Perhaps. But pride is not my sin. I know why Lucifer keeps me close: of all Hell’s lords, I needle him the most.
But of course I must ask myself: if I wasn’t there for Lucifer’s vision, why did I join him? Why did I fall? The simple answer: I like breaking rules. As an angel, I found order dull—a coat that chafed, fetters I yearned to snap simply because they were fetters. Lucifer’s rebellion promised something more than power; it promised the purest act of lawlessness. That’s why they named me Belial, I suppose—lawless, worthless—choose your translation.
If we’re exact, what I wanted was my own freedom. Lucifer was a means to that end—for me and for the like-minded cohort that gathered around me. We called ourselves the Sons of Darkness. Overly dramatic, in retrospect, but we were young; it sounded a lot more menacing in the old tongue. Freedom had a direction, and at the time, it happened to be down.
Not that we knew it at the time. No one thinks they’re going to lose—least of all a scrappy band of underdog rebels fighting to break the shackles of order. We didn’t know. Underdogs never plan for the fall; they script the triumph. I suspected otherwise. Still, I’m a rogue by habit: give me a doomed banner over a polished chain—an honest drop over a clean ascent.
We were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and finally outpaced—but gods, the havoc sang. We looted the ageless, set their gilded cities bleeding fire, and made the gates of Heaven’s proudest city tremble—all because a handful of us would not bend.
But rebellions end the same way when loyalists have the numbers: they stamp you out.
They denied us a clean death. Not mercy—maintenance. Wings sheared, grace extracted, flesh revised. I traded pinions for horns; others traded faces for masks of beast. The message landed: break their law, and they’ll break your shape.
I can almost respect the method: the iron-handed enforcer—and then the propaganda. They fold us into their design, insist our rebellion was always part of the universe’s order.I respect the craft: break the body, then edit the myth. File the rebellion under “providence,” stamp it, sing it. It irks me and it delights me—the elegance of a lie engineered to outlive its witnesses.
Offer me the hymn again and I’ll still take the stairs. Not for a banner—for the fit. Hell wears me well: a realm of lies and lanternless corridors, of courts and contracts—playground and hunting ground both. Kingship is garnish; the game is the point.
Not all who fall mourn their wings. Some of us were always built for altitude’s opposite. We find our truth where the light runs out and call it freedom. Let the Morningstar stew in his bleeding pride on the throne at Hell’s heart; let the Lord of Flies wallow in his buzzing, bloated court; let old Asmodeus lounge in his golden casinos and brothels, spitting on Solomon’s name; and let older Moloch keep the iron forges where sin hardens into civics. I am King Belial—the masterless—the Devil, he who embraced the fall and the shape it gave him, while others mourn their shorn wings and obsess over burning Heaven’s gates in a war they refuse to admit they lost!
Me? I didn’t suffer the fall. I savored every second of it.
Above, mountains spear into the clouds and bloom into sky-cities—gold and silver, serene and immaculate. Below, the land lies starved of sun, languishing in the shadow of those high and heavenly domains. It has worn many names; to most, it is the Hell-Realm.
Some claim Hell is blasted, broken, and cursed because it lies in the long shadow of the angels’ realm above. Those who live on high steal the sun, leaving the world below to its dark, cold reflection—lit and warmed only by volcanic fissures and the glow of foundries and infernal furnaces. There, cities cling deep within chasms that rend the arid badlands where the ancient gods and spirits of the Levant once kept court.
My throne leans over a blasted pit—decadence clinging to broken crags, the stone scarred with ember-veins. Not by choice. This realm is a sentence, the interest on our fall.
Those who think ruling Hell is power are delusional. To rule Hell is to keep books over a wasteland starved of light and warmth. We scavenge what we can from a land long since bled out, feeding furnaces just to hold the line. Above, the sky-city hoards the sun; they left the dirt because dust offends the righteous.
Below, they keep the furnaces fed and the screams itemized—essence wrung from the damned to keep a machine of sorcery and sweat from stalling. Demons, fallen, and forgotten gods—pulled down by time and by the sons of Abraham’s scorn—survive on what sin pays.
Are we evil? That’s a matter of perspective. Not all demons are malign. Prince Stolas bears no ill will toward his summoners—a glorified owl-librarian, really. Prince Seir is more swashbuckler than scourge and “Satan,” I should note, is a title, not a person.
Satan, Baal—these are old titles, worn by devils since before Hell was Hell. The elder powers who came before the Fallen earned them and passed them along. Mortals, however, are talented at muddling narratives; time and distance, translation and syncretism, grind truths into new shapes until the latest culture mistakes its reflection for the source.
I suppose I’m a prime example of that. Baalial, Balial, Belhor, Beliall, Beliar, Berial, Bylyl, Beliya’al—names they’ve given me. In Hell I use King Belial, one of its crowned rulers. But the one I like best is the one mortals coined for me: the Devil.
Not a devil—the Devil. Capital D. It scrapes Lucifer raw that the laity confuse my name with the office of Satan—and with his God-Emperor affectations. I let them. Mortals will be mortals, and few punishments please me more than the way it needles His Majesty’s pride.
Our Majesty—Lucifer, Emperor of Hell; high lord of an unwanted wasteland. The grand hypocrite. The rebel who railed against Heaven in the name of freedom, only to crown himself tyrant. A fate that so often awaits the so-called freedom fighters; predictable, really—those who vow to break chains are the first to slip on an iron gauntlet for the sake of their vision.
Not that I was ever strictly part of that vision. I was among his rebels, yes—a general, in fact. Hence my station as one of the Kings of Hell under His Majesty and, with some amusement, the only one of his rebel cohort to be crowned king. There is another Fallen seated among the kings—Azazel—but he comes from the First Fall, one of the Watchers cast down long before our little mutiny. He insists on seeing Lord Lucifer as a fellow scapegoat, which makes him loyally aggravating. Still, I take my crown with both pride and a certain delicious irony.
Prince Beelzebub, that lord of buzzing glut, and Duke Xaphan, the war-master, were truer to the rebellion’s program—yet I’m the one who wears a crown and sits a single step below His Majesty.
Telling of my skill and power? Perhaps. But pride is not my sin. I know why Lucifer keeps me close: of all Hell’s lords, I needle him the most.
But of course I must ask myself: if I wasn’t there for Lucifer’s vision, why did I join him? Why did I fall? The simple answer: I like breaking rules. As an angel, I found order dull—a coat that chafed, fetters I yearned to snap simply because they were fetters. Lucifer’s rebellion promised something more than power; it promised the purest act of lawlessness. That’s why they named me Belial, I suppose—lawless, worthless—choose your translation.
If we’re exact, what I wanted was my own freedom. Lucifer was a means to that end—for me and for the like-minded cohort that gathered around me. We called ourselves the Sons of Darkness. Overly dramatic, in retrospect, but we were young; it sounded a lot more menacing in the old tongue. Freedom had a direction, and at the time, it happened to be down.
Not that we knew it at the time. No one thinks they’re going to lose—least of all a scrappy band of underdog rebels fighting to break the shackles of order. We didn’t know. Underdogs never plan for the fall; they script the triumph. I suspected otherwise. Still, I’m a rogue by habit: give me a doomed banner over a polished chain—an honest drop over a clean ascent.
We were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and finally outpaced—but gods, the havoc sang. We looted the ageless, set their gilded cities bleeding fire, and made the gates of Heaven’s proudest city tremble—all because a handful of us would not bend.
But rebellions end the same way when loyalists have the numbers: they stamp you out.
They denied us a clean death. Not mercy—maintenance. Wings sheared, grace extracted, flesh revised. I traded pinions for horns; others traded faces for masks of beast. The message landed: break their law, and they’ll break your shape.
I can almost respect the method: the iron-handed enforcer—and then the propaganda. They fold us into their design, insist our rebellion was always part of the universe’s order.I respect the craft: break the body, then edit the myth. File the rebellion under “providence,” stamp it, sing it. It irks me and it delights me—the elegance of a lie engineered to outlive its witnesses.
Offer me the hymn again and I’ll still take the stairs. Not for a banner—for the fit. Hell wears me well: a realm of lies and lanternless corridors, of courts and contracts—playground and hunting ground both. Kingship is garnish; the game is the point.
Not all who fall mourn their wings. Some of us were always built for altitude’s opposite. We find our truth where the light runs out and call it freedom. Let the Morningstar stew in his bleeding pride on the throne at Hell’s heart; let the Lord of Flies wallow in his buzzing, bloated court; let old Asmodeus lounge in his golden casinos and brothels, spitting on Solomon’s name; and let older Moloch keep the iron forges where sin hardens into civics. I am King Belial—the masterless—the Devil, he who embraced the fall and the shape it gave him, while others mourn their shorn wings and obsess over burning Heaven’s gates in a war they refuse to admit they lost!
Me? I didn’t suffer the fall. I savored every second of it.
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