Exemplary Service - A Quest of Mortal & Immortal Politics

One hundred years recovering from the battle with adventurers - the Plainswalkers, the cheeky things - and a hundred & change more working your way back up into the good graces of your superiors. An expensive lesson, even for you, but one well-worth learning. If it weren't for your unique circumstances, the mortals might have tracked you down here and seen to your permanent end, and that would have been that. Still, despite your diligence, it is something of a surprise to receive the summons borne by a red-winged imp, its armor serving as both writ of passage and mark of station. You almost smile. You remember, and yet you do not remember, a time when you were as this creature was.

"Thank you, Kezzix," you greet it, as you take the heavy parchment in its claws. It bears the seal of Furcas, your master, to whom you have the pleasure, responsibility, and terror of reporting personally, and when you break the seal with a ritual affirmation of your oath of loyalty the contents inform you of what you already suspected: you are being assigned, though that you are being assigned a command is more surprising, raises your perfect eyebrows. You have one hour to attend upon His Eminent Darkness, the Minister of Mortal Relations; tardiness will, as usual, not be tolerated.

You dispatch some of your cadre of imps to explain things to your current ad hoc superiors, doing your diligence, and tug on a pair of heavy leather gloves, the better to hide the withered and skeletal left hand that is the blessing of an old...acquaintance. That may be a chip you need to cash in. Your armor gleams already, and your weapons - blade, bow, and rope - are as much as part of you as your own flesh, and so they need nothing to be perfect, and glorious, and beautiful, and steeped in perfected violence, uplifted brutality, mechanized pain.

You could fly, but the hour is a generosity on the part of His Eminent Darkness, time to think and comport yourself. A kindness, and such a gift is not to be wasted. So instead, you walk.

Oh, excuse me. Did I not mention, Exemplar? It must have slipped my mind.

Directions into the presence of Furcas are not needed; though the Ministry of Mortal Relations maintains branches on every layer of the Nine Hells, very much to include the primary citadel of the Dark Eight on Nessus in the presence of the Lord Below, he has been visiting this one on Avernus for some time, and you would have been one of the first to know if His Eminent Darkness had chosen to take his leave. You whistle sharply as you take the catwalks outside, blackened things of iron that provide a perfect view of the battlefields below, and are attended upon by a cringing spined devil. "Jax," you greet. "Take my regards to the bursar, and inform him that I may be in need of my stipend."

"At once, your Grace," the pathetic little thing hisses, and it wings off. You smile to yourself. He'll learn. Or he'll die. His absence affords you an incredible view of the blasted landscape of Avernus, a land of surging lava flows, great fortresses, and vast, seemingly endless armies clashing for centuries to gain mere inches of ground. There is no sun here, and there are no stars, but from the empty sky there is a rain of fire and brimstone, the incarnate wrath of Zariel, again ascendant as Lord of the First. Poor Bel. She didn't even give him the mercy of death after she escaped his little trap. It was, as an example, instructive. One might say it's why you swore yourself to the Dark Eight.

The screams and battlecries are so soothing.

You salute the gelugons standing sentry outside the office of His Eminent Darkness; they return it, and then let you in. Furcas is, as always, an imposing figure; the pit fiend looms, as is his way, and the shadows of the room bend towards him the way flowers bend towards the faintest shred of light and hope. He is dressed today in one of those business suits you've seen on certain worlds - you still have one, in fact - and for a brief moment you have hope that you might be going back to one. They'd been intriguing, and an education in the dizzying breadth of the cosmos's technological and magical paradigms. It is a law of the Planes that one receives what one expects, after a fashion, and so it pays for the Ministry of Mortal Relations to have a breadth of experience. Still, let's not get expectations high; you are still disgraced.

You sink to one knee, head bowed submissively, and wait for your master to speak.

"Rise, factotum. Sit with me," Furcas rumbles, in a voice like steel picking and chipping at stone. He gestures expansively to the table between the two of you as you sit (forced to hunch painfully forward because of your wings), and in an instant you recognize the map on it. "What is it you feel we are here to discuss? Speak."

You chew the inside of your cheek. "...I'm being sent back to Exandria, Your Eminent Darkness," you hazard. "To support one of the Ministry's operations."

"Humble. I appreciate that about you, Nilaisha; you have learned humility, at great difficulty but, perhaps, to great benefit. But not to your benefit here. You are incorrect." Your master gesticulates with one hand, producing an iron figurine that has your exact likeness, and he offers it for you to take; you clutch it, uncertain but with a growing suspicion. "You are being sent to Exandria in order to establish a beachhead for the Ministry's long-term interests. It's time. You may speak."

You may speak, but can you? Evidence suggests no. "Master, I - after my failure there prior, my arrogance..."

"Flaws that you have corrected. However," here Furcas raises a clawed finger, "I will be generous with my honesty. The decision to send you was briefly contested, though not by any great margin. Two against, one abstaining, five in favor. The general consensus is that if my belief in your abilities is well-founded, then there is no flaw; if it is not, you are no great loss."

Cruel words. And yet Furcas is right; his honesty is, yet again, a kindness. A gift. With patience born of aeons, you do not growl, or sigh, or twitch, or make any aggressive action. The other Ministers have every right to vote on your fate in such a manner, and protests that they do not know you, and have not worked with you as His Eminent Darkness has, is tantamount to an accusation of incompetence. A worse shame than failure.

So you nod, tightly.

Furcas claps his hands together, and smiles with his fanged maw. He'd taken you with him once, on a trip through Sigil, where all he'd done was talk, and talk, and talk to mortals, asking them what they thought of the Blood War, hearing them hold forth every kind of opinion about the Nine Hells, and the Outer Planes, and the nature of Law and of Evil, and it had been an enlightening experience. That weaponized candor, a vulnerability that is itself a method of attack, is one you have promised yourself will be yours.

He'd even let you print out survey cards for your summoners, after that trip to one of the worlds with guns.

"Now, there is some preliminary intelligence available to you," here Furcas indicates a stack of tomes, "and testimonials from other field agents, including intelligence from the Ministry of Immortal Relations. Look them over. Meditate. And then indicate to me where you would like to begin, and what resources you will require. Whichever objective you choose will be your responsibility, factotum; any other resources in the field, or allies thereof, will be tasked with our efforts against the others."


By the pit this world is infested. Choose your starting location and its attendant problem

[ ] Emon, Capital of the Tal'Dorei Republic. Focus: The Breach
The city of Emon is a thriving, cosmopolitan trade city somewhat recently destroyed by dragons and even more recently rebuilt, thanks in no small part to the League of Miracles. They are not, the intelligence emphasizes, currently agents of Hell, but are earmarked as interesting recruits for causes infernal; additionally, Emon's endemic poverty, ancient social strife, and chronic gentrification of access to magic make it nearly ideal for an infernal cult or organization to begin flourishing and propping up a veneer of legitimacy. There's just one massive problem: a nascent breach in the substance of reality itself, an opening into the Far Realms, festers beneath the city, and if it is not shut the catastrophe will be noticable. The last time this happened an entire pantheon died. You won't survive it. No one on Exandria will survive it. If you're looking to solve this problem, you're going to need to raise, buy, or manipulate - oh, no. Adventurers. You're going to need fucking adventurers.

[ ] Kymal, City of Vice. Focus: The Chained Oblivion
WHAT DOES FURCAS MEAN, PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO LET THARIZDUN OUT OF THE BOX? HOW IS THIS NOT PRIORITY ONE IN ALL OF HELL? THE CHAINED OBLIVION? THAT CHAINED OBLIVION? THE END OF ALL IN MADNESS AND FURY? THAT ONE? Okay. You need to calm down enough to - BUT SERIOUSLY - calm down enough to read this. Kymal is a city in the Dividing Plains, itself rife with allies of chaos and evil here to include some kind of pan-racial alliance that venerates...are you reading this correctly...Gruumsh. What. You hate Exandria so much. Kymal itself is all-but-openly run by criminal interests, but contrasts this with a strong community that is, like most of the Dividing Plains, shockingly and stridently anti-racist, which interests you. It's not a lever you can turn against the residents, it's true, but it's one where you can wheedle your way in, pointing to the big obvious problem - to wit, people are TRYING TO LET THE CHAINED FUCKING OBLIVION OUT OF THE BOX - as a justification for your presence. If you think your boots are big enough to openly operate...

[ ] Rifenmist Peninsula. Focus: Cockblocking Bane's Stupid Ass
Wow. You haven't thought about Bane in ages. Some upjumped mortal became a Greater Power, died three - no, wait, this report says four - times on Toril, got replaced several times, the usual. Toril is Toril, you don't get away with being the GOD OF TYRANNY, FEAR ME on fucking Toril. And it looks like sometime between his second death and his third Bane noticed because he got in on the ground floor of Exandria only to eat shit and die like the clown he is there too. His influence is weakening across the Planes and it's only a matter of time before someone puts him down for good and the githyanki build a city on his useless corpse. It'd sure be a shame if that slave empire he left on the southern border of Tal'Dorei went to waste in the process, wouldn't it?

In addition to your starting stipend, amounting to 5 Supply, Furcas is furnishing you with 10 "phantom" Supply to get you started wherever you're going. Any extra will not carry over, so spend it while you have it; however, it may be wise to keep some of your personal Supply around so you can be flexible when you hit the ground running.

Supply Options

[ ] Portal to Hell (4 Supply): A permanent link to your "native" Ministry branch on Avernus, permitting you to freely travel to and from Hell and Exandria. Will begin the development of Lair Actions, but make it more difficult over time to hide your operations.

[ ] Local Agents (2 Supply): Local sleeper agents will be activated and begin providing you 1 Supply per turn.

[ ] Home Base (Underground OR Aboveground) (1 Supply): A reasonably secure location to hang your boots, threaten your underlings, file your surveys, and plot world domination.

[ ] A Cohort of Imps (2 supply): Why only summon your cohort when you can take them with you? They're smart, they shift shapes, they're useful as spies, and unlike with a mortal summoner they're not going to betray you. Look at these lil' guys. They're so adorable when they feast on the innocent.

[ ] Study Materials (1 supply; repeatable): Gain Precocious Lore in your choice of: your chosen starting location, Exandrian religion, Republic politics, the League of Miracles, or Exandrian adventurers

[ ] Kill & Replace (4 Supply): Furcas's agents will kidnap, mind-scan, and murder an obscure noble and provide you with her identity. You'll still need to use illusions to appear as her, but the doors that could be opened, especially if you can learn proper shapeshifting...

So, I wanna have a bit of a frank talk about this twist. If you've caught my other Quest, you know I'm not shy about horrific writing, and certainly I've been in D&D long enough to have some firmly developed opinions about its depiction of Outsiders and Exemplars, about Hell specifically, about Evil in a fantasy context and in D&D's context specifically as well. Even a cursory reading of just the dog shit 5e lore will turn up some pretty awful fucking shit; slavery (already mentioned in the context of our options above), torture of the body, mind, and soul, mind control, desecration of the dead (that's the necromancy), and violence, just, so much violence. Hell is not good for you! It is in fact Evil for you! That's kinda its whole deal!

But.

I am not a shock jock. I am not Paizo, cursed be their wretched names. It is not my intent or my goal to simply slop brutality onto a page and then tell you that it's "mature" writing or that an "inability to handle it" is some failure to face evil on your part, and for those of you wondering, yes, I am in fact responding to things Paizo has said and keeps saying about its own content. My goal here is a nice blend of horror, action, and comedy, which you may recognize as the pulp blend native to D&D itself, but here I need to cut a fine line; you're playing a villain here, a villain rooted and steeped and invested in a cosmic, systematized evil that has no regard for the well-being of its victims or its participants, an evil which has proven successful, dynamic, and sinister since before recorded time. To sell that, you're gonna do some evil shit to advance your goals. Advancing evil is, in fact, a goal, in and of itself. That's the whole thing of the Ministry of Mortal Relations - peddling damnation to the innocent and the virtuous.

I have a high tolerance for dark topics in my fiction, to the point where I, at times, have difficulty remembering what a more normal one is like. I am asking, and empowering, you - my audience & players - to inform me of when something is a bridge too far. Though my intent is to handle things with a certain amount of taste, there is a point at which "taste" is toothlessness, and that line is one I'm aiming to walk. I'm not familiar with where the culture of SV draws that line, and while I was encouraged in coming up with this concept when I saw the various 40K and PMoon Quests around, I am still a newcomer here. I am asking for a certain amount of grace, yes, but also genuinely imploring you for a certain amount of communication as I feel things out, and adjust, and refine.

Thank you for your time; votes remain open.

Let's take over the world.

Hell Itself
This part is at least a little bit OOC; Nilaisha doesn't fully understand what I am about to frankly lay out, because such understanding is part of her spiritual evolution. That refinement of her spirit deeper into the principles of Lawful Evil will involve, over long centuries and millennia, promotion and demotion into other kinds of devil, and if she is successful, eventually becoming a "unique" devil or even an Archdevil...but she's not there yet.

Baator, the Nine Hells, is commonly considered the Plane of Lawful Evil. This is not quite correct; Acheron is LN(e) (law tinged by evil), while Gehenna is NE(L), Evil tinged by Law, but Hell is certainly most concerned with the perfected marriage of the two, and every expression thereof that can flower from it. It is not, contrary to common belief, a monolith. While the Exemplars of Hell - the Baatezu - are certainly its dominant culture, there is a dizzying variety of life in Hell, including cultures that are not the Baatezu - most famously the Kytons, or "chain devils", who maintain an alliance with the order of the Lord Below but do not swear fealty to him. This, then, is where I need to start cutting some fine lines.

Systemic evil of any kind finds a home in Hell. Slavery, racism & sexism, classism, it plays all the hits from the Things That Hurt You Personally In Real Life soundtrack, but Baatezu culture is not, shall we say, omnivorous about this. They are more than happy to exploit such evils, especially when they plan conquests which make such injustices useful levers and sources of fifth columns, but they don't really practice many of them. Baatezu culture is mildly sexist at the highest levels (the consorts of the Archfiends are...not having a fun time, but then, they do live in Hell), but ultimately the belief advanced by the Baatezu is that the Law can empower and corrupt you, that you can make and break your bones by it, that you can become one whom the law protects, but does not bind. The spiritual evolution of any given Baatezu is the struggle to gain enough power and influence to throw the boot off of your neck while grinding yours on the people below you so that they don't usurp you, only to discover that success is rewarded with a larger, more elaborate boot that goes right back down on your neck as the power of the Law to force you into common cause and common identity is turned against you. Even those who become Archdevils are not truly free, for there are none who escape the will of the Lord Below.

As an erinyes, Nilaisha is part of a sort of "middle class" in Hell, outside the typical chain of command and with the luxury of choosing her own master(s). That she chose Furcas is significant, but while she is intrinsically a valuable resource, she is not an irreplaceable one. Erinyes are permitted to be promoted into many kinds of devil, often far up the chain, so in a sense she is experiencing a CEO apprenticeship...by way of running one of the CEO's mob businesses on the side.

The Dark Eight & The Ministry of Mortal Relations
The Dark Eight are a council of eight ancient, loyal pit fiends whose joy and responsibility is the prosecution of the Blood War. Though not free from infernal politics by any means, each of the Eight are notable for their genuine loyalty to the Lord Below and the cause of Hell over their personal power or spiritual advancement, serving a twisted vision of the communal good above all else. The council is democratic, with the members able to vote on contested actions of any of the other members, and each Minister is responsible for some part of advancing the Blood War and seeing to the defeat and scourging of Chaos and, eventually, the damnation of all the Planes.

The Ministry of Mortal Relations, led by Minister Furcas, concerns itself with the damnation of mortals. It is a PR firm, recruitment branch, diplomat corps, and army all in one, and has many needs seen to by a vast array of agents. Notably, those who work for the Ministry of Mortal Relations - or any of the Dark Eight, really - are not rewarded for treachery in the manner of other devils. If you reveal yourself as the sort of person who will advance at all costs, you also reveal yourself as a shitty employee, and they'll simply demote you, fire you, and hire someone else. This, ironically, makes working in the Ministry somewhat "safer" than many other options in Hell, as while someone might scheme to outperform you and take your job, they're not going to have you locked up in a wizard's whiskey bottle for one million years or eat your immortal soul or get you killed on the field of battle. They'll do their job, or they'll die with you. And isn't that comfort?

As a field agent - a factotum - of the Ministry, Nilaisha's duties are A. to do whatever Furcas tells her to B. to identify high-value mortals whose damnation might be of worth C. to advance the soft power and image of Hell as a preferable evil in comparison to the Abyss or even encourage mortals into true belief in infernal ideals D. harry the goals of Chaos at all turns and grind it into submission E. to identify and secure valuable resources for the Ministry (or other Ministries) F. to provide intelligence relevant to the Blood War & G. to get people to fill out those surveys. Another devil with another master might have the time and leeway to indulge in, I dunno, kidnapping a princess to torture for fun; Nilaisha has a fucking job to do, and any hypothetical princesses are more useful as pawns, allies, lovers, or victims of conquest than they are for personal entertainment.

Notable here as well is that the Baatezu broadly do not practice a lot of slavery qua slavery in their internal culture. Certainly unwise oaths of fealty or complex chains of command can make the difference academic, but for the most part if Hell is buying slaves it's to pitch them into the torture pits that turn them into devils, there to become part of their own culture with "the same" chance as everyone else to advance. And while they do buy a lot of slaves on those terms, especially from allies such as the City of Brass...to be frank, Exandria is only worth considering in those terms if you were to find some way of dragging the entire planet directly to Hell, which just is not a realistic goal as far as Nilaisha knows. Local slavers are better as levers, allies of convenience, or sacrifices to "prove" your honest intentions than they are as sources of damnation; the local slaves might be even better. Their list of grievances against the current powers is certainly quite long.

After an appropriate period of thought and reading, and some humiliating losses of composure - Furcas makes an inscrutably amused expression when you go from frowning at the breach into the Far Realms to naked disbelief about the Chained Oblivion - you place the iron figurine that represents you down on the Rifenmist Peninsula, amidst the Beynsfal Plateau. You look up at your master, well aware that you are still being tested, and wait.

"Speak," Furcas invites, at last.

You nod. "Perhaps my humility might serve me in this, Your Eminent Darkness. I am not confident in my thaumaturgy or education in comparison to the other threats that stand in the way of a serious campaign of damnation - but I am quite certain that the resources of the Iron Authority are being squandered by the stupidity and indolence of its emperors. Looking over what you've provided...they're practicing early imperial fascism." You click your tongue behind your teeth. "They need to be whipped into shape. The conversation needs to be changed. If I can unlock those resources, perhaps establish a peaceful naval route to Emon, I can be the anchor upon which my fellows or our allies can depend. As the Archduke Mammon is so fond of saying, conquest is a terribly expensive business." Here you stop talking, wanting approval, fearing punishment.

"...Well-reasoned," Furcas grants at last. "Others will be assigned to lay the foundations in Emon and Kymal. Be warned: the latter may well need your soldiers more, and be more difficult to provide those soldiers to. This is a primitive world, factotum. Armies mostly walk."

Oh COME ON - it's fine, it's fine, it's all fine WHAT ARE THE WIZARDS DOING IF THEY'RE NOT nope it's fine, it's fine, it's all fine. You affect a deep breath, and then a nod, to show your submission to the Minister's wisdom. He invites you to sketch out your initial plan of arrival, and here you settle into more familiar territory; terrifying, yes, but also in a sense comforting. Such lessons have been part and parcel of your service to the Ministry of Mortal Relations for a long time, and while you have no delusions of intimacy - it is the place of an erinyes in the Ministry to be taught thus - you do get the sense that your development interests Furcas. This will be it. Your chance to prove yourself, or face ignoble demotion if not death. Exandria's spellcasters may be arrogant classists, but they still play for keeps.

Securing supplies and resources will be easy enough. Bane and the Nine Hells have always been fellow travelers more than allies - the Lord of Tyranny doesn't even make his home in Hell - but he has long passively permitted infiltration by both devils and infernal cults within his territories in exchange for the benefits of easy access to such for negotiations and the sharing of expertise. You're somewhat surprised to learn that the Iron Authority maintains a necropolis and even permits some very controlled use of necromancy, as this is rarely the style of Baneites, only to learn upon further discussion that Exandria maintains no god of necromancy. Indeed, its local goddess of death, the Raven Queen - by the pit, haven't thought about her in a while either, and you really should have - is stridently anti-necromancy and has been known to send.

Fucking.

Adventurers.

About it. But here there is an opportunity too. Your old acquaintance could come into play, and if you can build him a power base...

You look up at Furcas, not making eye contact, but indicating through subtle body language that you seek his leave to speak. The Minister cocks his head curiously, and gestures to you. "Your Eminent Darkness, it has been some time since..." your eyelids flutter as you go back into memories that are buried amidst a haze of different bodies, promotions and demotions and other forms of your soul, "...the Hasafari Incident." Here you emphasize what you mean by touching the back of your left hand. "The Lord of the Last Shroud is not aligned with infernal interests; is he facing censure at this time?"

"...Audacious," Furcas rumbles, and he smiles. "If you produce results, he is not facing censure. Acknowledge."

You bow your head. "Acknowledged, Minister."

With that business out of the way, there are final preparations to make in the scant time before you are to leave. Mere months! There are some things to figure out about your cover identity, and one of them has to do with the opportunity before you. Two obvious choices present themselves, each with their own drawbacks and advantages. The other three, while certainly important and relevant - the City of the Forge-Lords especially - simply don't have the deep draw and cracks in which you can wedge your skill sets and odd alliances.

Where will your base of operations be?

[ ] Taz'Arrm, Helm of the Emperor
The capital city of the Iron Authority, the site of the death of one of Bane's avatars, and a seemingly limitless source of iron chipped from the titanic armor of that avatar, Taz'Arrm is perfect for an aggressive campaign of subversion and perhaps open rebellion. However, long experience - and the Ministry's own strategic manuals - do tell you that you're still going to have to deal with the other cities before either your puppet or, deliciously, you personally can reign over the Iron Authority; furthermore, the capital will be infested with clerics and entrenched political interests.

[ ] Hdar-Fye, the Necropolis
A vassal-city of Taz'Arrm, Hdar-Fye is a center of arcane learning and where the honored dead of the Baneites are interred. It is also the home of many, many trained necromancers, the most you'll find anywhere on Tal'Dorei quite literally - not even the Lolthites are competing with them here. The distance from the levers of imperial power might be a problem, but being able to cloak a potential new cult to the Lord of the Last Shroud amongst the restless dead - to say nothing of all these corpses if you can break the spine of Bane's power over the city - are tempting targets. You need to exercise a light hand. There will be no alliance with Emon if you show up with an army of the dead that blackens the very land beneath it, but as with all things, it's about changing the conversation at the moment. Conquest can come later.

Preparing your cohort of imps to travel with you is a whole affair. They're eager to go, for while their own glory will be in some senses married to yours, even if you fail they may get separate praise and commendation, especially as you will need to send regular reports. This is a bigger opportunity for them than it is for you, in many ways, which is saying something. Whoever said idle hands do the devil's work never had to look at your payroll forms.

You're doing your reading. The purchase of relevant study materials on the Rifenmist Peninsula has been educational; your target is an empire of goblinoids which, after being freed of magical compulsion to worship Bane, was re-founded by those who remained loyal to the Lord of Tyranny. Internally, they're doing...not well, but there are good roads, no one starves unless someone is starving them on purpose, no slave uprising has ever succeeded, and sitting on an infinite source of iron certainly does them a lot of favors. You make a mental note that if for some reason trying to kill Bane yourself becomes necessary or viable, that armor could be used as a sympathetic connection to the Lord of Tyranny, permitting a magical strike against his very essence. Sloppy work, Bane. Sloppy, stupid work. It would be expensive, and likely require both permission from the Dark Eight and much internal favor-trading with your peers amongst other Ministries to get the magical resources and sacrifices necessary, but you place it on your mental table as an option. It could be a hell of a card to play in negotiations with the societies of the virtuous.

However, the Iron Authority has a perennial problem; it is at war with the Rifenmist Jungle. It has been at war with the Rifenmist Jungle for five centuries. No, not the people living in the jungle (well, yes, actually, them too), the fucking trees. And this shitty little empire has been losing that war the entire time. Your first instinct is contempt, but then you remember having your heart carved out by mortals, and you think instead. And after you are done thinking, you mark the jungle itself down as a deadly threat to be approached with caution.

Let's plan for success, Nilaisha.

What is your driving ambition?

[ ] Power
Like many devils, you seek power, and authority; you wish to use them against enemies and rivals too numerous to name, and to shield yourself from superiors too horrific for even you to contemplate. Your work with the Ministry of Mortal Relations has been a centuries-long gambit to prove yourself worthy of responsibility and the attendant privilege that comes with it, with your ultimate goal being to usurp and replace an Archduke and finally, at long last, reign in Hell instead of serving in it. Playing the part of empress on a conquered mortal world will be good practice for governance.

[ ] Legacy
Devils die. Immortals are anything but; they die too. You've seen comrades on the front lines of the Blood War devoured by demons and smote by mortal soldiers caught up in its madness. You do not trust in the eternity of your supposedly eternal soul. But a legacy? Something you've built, invented, discovered, a true shift in the Blood War, new sorceries that change the tactics of the Hells, innovations in damnation...you could be eternal still. You will be eternal, still.

[ ] Order
Chaos must be crushed. Uncertainty must be stamped out. Mortal things don't understand the horrific spring from which their vaunted 'free will' bubbles, and it disgusts you. You have never lost sight of the true enemy or their goals, and if you perish in the struggle against the foes of all reason, so be it. The Baatezu are the only ones willing to do what is necessary to ensure the persistence of existence, and you are an ardent disciple.