Jezebel, Calabite Princess of Alienation
The world is full of weakness clinging to weakness. Force them all apart and be done with it.
One doesn’t see many Calabim who identify strongly with the female gender, and if Jezebel is any example, this is fortunate. One of Malphas’ orphans, she’s used the chaos to propel her to the very top, and will do anything to stay there. Jezebel is one of the new breed of Diabolicals, less caught up in her Word than in the power it gives her. She annoys more traditional demons no end.
Jezebel’s pretty contemptuous of most of her Band-mates, thinking them unsubtle dolts who completely overlook the most satisfying aspects of being a Destroyer. Smashing and breaking things is all very well, but humans will just rebuild or replace that which they hold valuable. It’s treating the symptoms, not the disease.
For Jezebel, the true way to destruction is to take a human and steadily, exquisitely erode every link that he or she has to everything else. If you guide people down paths where they eventually care about nothing at all, and would not lift a finger to save anything from destruction or degradation, they will destroy their own beloved objects and institutions themselves. Not from hate, but from sheer indifference.
That’s a worthy project for a Calabite.
Dissonance
It is dissonant for a Servitor of Alienation to encourage cooperation among humans. Jezebel doesn’t mind celestials banding together, but her demons must at least make some kind of effort to spread dissension whenever possible among mortals. This condition does apply to Hellsworn, which is one reason why she has so few of them (and why most of the other Princes forbid her to go near their own pet Soldiers).
Also, emphasizing physical over mental or emotional violence isn’t dissonant, per se, but it’s not a good way to advance in her service. Jezebel wants artists, not brawlers.
Organization
Jezebel has had real problems with acquiring experienced Servitors. Unlike her former Prince, she insists on demons who can distinguish between furthering her Word among humanity and just furthering her Word. Many Servitors of Factions have real difficulty with this simple trick, so she can’t really recruit from her old organization. She copes by upgrading as many imps and gremlins as she can, with the occasional fully created demon added to the mix.
At this moment, she runs her organization like that of a coalition of street gangs: her most experienced Servitors each have responsibility over a motley bunch of newly fledged demons. On the plus side, at this point a demon’s prospects are wide open: do anything intelligent or successful and you’ll be sure to get rewarded. Jezebel also comes across as more tolerant of mistakes, as she really doesn’t have much choice in the matter.
The down side is, of course, that with rewards comes higher responsibilities, which usually translates to a bunch of immature, unskilled, idiotic demons of your very own. The Princess of Alienation expects her lieutenants to keep their charges under firm control, and if they make you look too bad … well, Jezebel can always use some seasoned Forces. The situation can get so tense that experienced Servitors of Alienation often rely on each other to an amazing degree for Hell, just to keep everything quiet. Such treason to the Word of one’s Superior, while not dissonant in this specific case, is profoundly frustrating, irritating, and sometimes even painful for a celestial: however, they usually take it out on humanity, so it all works out in the end.
Band Attunements
Note that it is quite possible for a Servitor of Alienation to not have their own Band Attunements: Jezebel likes to experiment. Her rawest demons have no Band Attunements at all, having to prove themselves worthy of the honor (which usually occurs about the same time they acquire their 9th Force).
Balseraphs
Balseraphs get a +2 to their resonance rolls whenever they are trying to convince someone that their affection for an individual or group is not reciprocated.
Djinn
Djinn of Alienation can cause their attuned, on a Will Roll, to obsess over one thing, to the exclusion of everything else. The target gets to make further Will Rolls every day to snap out of this state. To reuse this ability on the same person, the Djinn must re-attune himself to the target.
Calabim (Restricted)
A Calabite of Alienation, on a successful Perception roll, always knows the most effective way of permanently breaking up an organized group of humans. Note that the phrase is ”most effective”, not ”most likely” or ”safest”: also, this Attunement does not take into account the skills or power of the Calabite using it.
Habbalah (Restricted)
A Habbalite of Alienation can automatically succeed in inflicting Emptiness, if they spend 1 Essence (roll anyway for Interventions). They use this to attack humans who are enjoying life too much, but their fellow Servitors have found that the mere threat of this Attunement is enough to keep other Prince’s Habbalah (and their potentially lethal ”initial testing rituals”) far, far away.
Lilim (Restricted)
Jezebel doesn’t get many Lilim, and doesn’t trust them at all. Lilim receive +2 to any attempt to detect the Need of someone to be left alone. The Princess of Alienation has also been noticeably stingy about handing out rewards to Tempters.
Shedim
When faced with a group, these Shedim always recognize the lowest member of the local pecking order, and can automatically use their resonance on them (roll anyway for interventions and the check digit).
Impudites (Restricted)
Whenever an Impudite of Alienation successfully Charms and drains Essence from someone, he may choose to leave his victim subconsciously aware of the violation. For the next day, that person will react at -2 to every other person he or she meets. Anyone who knows of the existence of Impudites will not suffer from this modifier.
Servitor Attunements
All Servitors who have received Band Attunements must also buy one of the below.
Fear and Loathing
The demon can, once per day, make a human distrust a specific person, group or idea. When the target encounters the object of his distrust, he must make a Will roll or else act out his reaction in a manner appropriate to the target’s personality. This induced state only lasts for a day, but the target might end up feeling the aftereffects for a long time…
Disaffection
This causes the target to have a general dislike of everything, vaguely dissatisfied but not knowing why. It translates to a -1 on all reactions. Appropriate Celestial resonances and Songs have a -2 penalty (oddly, there’s some sort of feedback). It lasts an hour for every Essence spent by the demon.
Distinctions
So far, Jezebel has only two Distinctions: Sergeant and Lieutenant. She is apparently working on more sophisticated ranks and abilities for when her organization has the numbers to justify them.
Sergeant
These Servitors watch over the mob of raw demons assigned to them. They know when one’s been killed, and can, at a cost of 3 Essence, cut in half the amount of disturbance that caused by their charges’ antics.
Lieutenant
These demons have anywhere from four to twenty Sergeants reporting to them. They have the ability to instantly locate a Sergeant that reports to them, and may mentally communicate with them (one Essence for each minute of conversation). Most prefer to simply use a telephone.
Lieutenants also have a +3 to invoke Jezebel (with a +1 on reaction).
Relations
Allied: Beleth, Valefor
Associated: Kronos, Leviathan
Neutral: Andreaphlus, Asmodeus, Mammon, Nybbas, Vapula
Hostile: Alaemon, Baal, Fleurity, Furfur, Lilith
Alaemon: ”No upstart is going to take advantage of me. She’s backed the wrong side, and she’ll end up forgotten for that.” ”So desperate to hide his secrets. I would guess that one is that he knows, deep in his parasitic soul, that he is unworthy for such an honorable Word. Valefor and I will find him easy meat.”
Andreaphlus: ”Useful enough, I suppose, but not particularly interesting, once you get past the novelty value. I have more use for Jezebel’s Word than I do for her.” ”He’s subtle: perhaps too subtle. Why allow them any emotion at all? To win, we must have humanity desiring nothing from each other, not even transient, meaningless pleasure.”
Asmodeus: ”She plays well, but she plays to smash it all. It is wise of her to not try to foster her Word among us. We have do not have the luxury of such ploys.” ”I respect him, more even than I respected my old Dread Lord. He knows much, and reveals it to none. And he has had his own share of broken bonds lately. The lesson is a good one, if he chooses to accept it.”
Baal: ”Stupid idiot. I’m trying to hold the line, and she’s busy trying to shatter it. Yes, I know that Jezebel claims that she preys only on humanity. Does she really expect anyone to believe that?” ”He was one of the great ones, once. I must remember that. But he spent too many years fighting his mirror image, and his corruption has set in, so slowly that none noticed until too late. I would feel pity for him, if I was capable of such a thing.”
Beleth: ”She’s useful. It’s when a human is alone in the world, and knows it, that the fear is sweetest.” ”She knows the way, and her own obsessions have not yet broken her as they have Baal. We will accomplish much.”
Fleurity: ”Jezebel is ultimately doomed to failure. Even if she can actually manage to shatter the bonds that link humanity, they’ll just recreate them, out of necessity. Necessity of me: in the game that is humanity I’ll see your ’utter contempt for other mortals’ and raise you ’two days since a junkie’s last fix…'” ”Do I really need to concern myself with him? If I wait long enough, there’ll just be another pompous Prince of Drugs arriving in a decade or three anyway. He’s not worth my time.”
Furfur: ”Stuck-up bitch. Thinks she’s better than the rest of us.” ”I am better than most of them. I’m particularly better than him.”
Kronos: ”Jezebel has embraced her Fate and used it to make her strong. She refuses to whine about lost glory, ruthlessly excises any trace of sentimentality, and shows a healthy contempt for the more useless lessons of the past. She will go far. But not too far.” ”My only complaint about Kronos is that he is wasted as a Balseraph. He would have made a perfect Calabite. If only someone could have shown him the way…”
Leviathan: ”Different methods, contradictory styles, and completely opposite plans for victory. Of course we work together. We want the same kind of victory: one that shows the War for the nonsense that it is. Neither of us need justification for what we are. We are.” ”He has achieved as much as any Calabite of his stripe could hope for. The fact that my way is obviously superior is simply something that we do not discuss. He has imagination, even if he lacks subtlety.”
Lilith: ”I knew that eventually we’d see demons like Jezebel, but I had hoped that they wouldn’t win Princedoms quite so soon, and certainly not at this state of affairs. Even those of my peers who hate her do so for all the wrong reasons. The real danger in Jezebel and her ilk is that they believe in nothing besides power. Hell’s propaganda has succeeded all too well.” ”Traitress to her kind, which is sensible, but it will not save her in the end. Once we win, Hell will be free, and humanity … and Lilith … won’t. Which is as it should be.”
Mammon: ”People will always want other people around, if only to show off their wealth. She does useful work, but she’ll never have her way with mortals.” ”He’s a fool, but his Word can be useful. He’s not worth the trouble to oppose.”
Nybbas: ”A little is good. A lot is better. Too much, though, and the ratings go down, because nobody’s watching anything anymore. The ratings will not go down.” ”His Word is a useful tool, but merely a tool. I am unconvinced that most Impudites make proper Princes, but Nybbas has proven himself. But he fears my Word. I can taste it.”
Valefor: ”Such anger, such contempt, such wonderful, wonderful pragmatism. A rare flower, to be battened on the finest elixirs, until she blooms.” ”He is an inspiration to all of us. Would that more of my Band followed his path.”
Vapula: ”An interesting example of Darwinist theory, adapted to celestials. We must see whether she succeeds to breed.” ”Uninteresting to me, mostly, though the threat of his toys can be quite effective. We have little to say to each other.”
Role in the War
As little as possible, at least in the traditional sense. Jezebel is more interested in wrecking humanity, rather than in engaging in wasteful conflicts with opposing celestials. Some fights are unavoidable, of course, but Jezebel feels that Hell has spent altogether too much time subordinating strategy to tactics. If Heaven chooses to be inflexible, the proper response is to take advantage of this foolishness, not accommodate them. The entire point of the Rebellion was to show that humanity wasn’t worth God’s favor, not to engage in a twenty millennia grudge match.
Servitors of Alienation thus attempt to corrupt communities from the bottom up. They much prefer subtly eroding the shared bonds of family, country, religion and culture. Rooting them out can be exquisitely difficult for the Host: Servitors of Flowers and Stone are usually the best counteragents for an infestation of Alienation, which has led to some odd alliances.
Rites:
: Cause a person to reject utterly something he once loved or respected.
: Go an entire day without interacting with anyone.
Chance of Invocation: 2
Modifiers:
Anything marked with a * must have been done by humans for the modifier to work.
+1 A book on nihilism
+2 A couple arguing
+3 The middle of a riot started for no good reason
+4 The corpse of someone who was killed for being different*
+5 The actual murder of someone because he or she was different*
+6 At the exact moment that a depressed human commits suicide.
Personality and History
Jezebel is cold, cold, cold. Like Leviathan, she incorporates the new but regrettably common (among younger demons) Celestial Discord Megalomania. Generally, sufferers of this Discord tend to believe that they are more powerful, more skilled and more worthy of favor than others. At Superior-level, this Discord isn’t too noticeable (Demon Princes are more powerful than just everybody else), but the arrogance that comes with said Discord would be an effective bar to promotion (or continued existence) … unless, of course, various disasters have depleted the ranks of Princes. When that sort of thing happens, even Superiors tend to be less choosy.
Both of the new Calabim Superiors handle their Discord by directing it mostly towards humanity: while Jezebel and Leviathan disagree on tactics, and even strategy, they both agree on goals… and that their ’peers’ are mostly locked in the past. Their unlikely alliance allows them to work more effectively, even if they refuse to admit it. This is still Hell, after all.
Jezebel was once a powerful Servitor of Malphas, before his completely unexpected Redemption (to this day, a small part of her hopes that it’s really just some kind of deep stratagem). She weathered the troubles quite well, and soon made common cause with Valefor (whom she has come to respect … and some whisper, more than respect) in his war with Aleamon over Stygia. Jezebel’s promotion to Princess was intended to stop this conflict, but has merely driven it mostly underground. She has nominally taken over Malphas’ old Principality, and a bare few of his old Tethers, but the balance of power in Stygia is still unclear.