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Originally posted by Atmosphere
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I will give you the chain of events as it proceeds.
All devils are bound by the first agreement that Asmodeus made with the gods of law & Order, the Pact Primeval. This gives him the legal right to do soul business, make pacts, garner power from souls, and to run the hells with devils and such. It is actually unlawful for gods to break this agreement.
The process for the agreements are as follows.
Find a devil
This is actually pretty easy. Harvester Devils are the most common devils to make agreements with. They often appear as mortals or something very close looking to one. They will hang out in taverns, crossroads at midnight, etc. They might even find you. Other devils who traffic in souls and corruption tend to be Erinyes and Brachina (Promoted Erinyes), but Brachina are particularly adept in corruption clerics/paladins, etc, so they go for those.
The Faustian Pact
First, the agreement is negotiated. What the mortal wants, what they get, etc. This is drawn up quite literally a scroll or contract that is made to denote the agreed upon terms. The signature is always in blood of the mortal to be binding.
The pacts are as follows:
Pact Certain - Mortal basically pledges themselves to a lord of hell and to corrupt themselves. Once signed the individual IMMEDIATELY switches to Lawful/Evil, no matter what alignment they were before. Often once it's signed, the devil will try to setup the mortal's death as quickly as possible because usually them continuing to live means cost and devils try to minimalize cost for getting a soul. This is the favored pact among devils since it damns people right to hell. A lot of mortals will sign this pact to send themselves to hell in order to free someone else's soul.
Pact Insidious - This is an agreement where the mortal does services for the devil and the devil will reward them. The devil usually carefully sneaks in extra services that must be preformed after the first for each step in the reward, and the final result of these actions will often lead to one damning themselves to the hells anyway. Often these pacts have a nondisclosure agreement so that the mortal cannot speak of it with others.
The Mark
Once the pact is signed a soul is marked by the Arch Duke the devil was trading under. This is important later on. Any devil is able to see this mark on a soul.
Death
Once the pact is signed and the mortal is setup to go to hell they are dropped off on the steps as a soul husk on the river Styx and devils man ferries to collect these souls from the steppes and float along the river Styx. The IMPORTANT part of this is for the souls NOT to touch the river Styx. If one comes in contact with the river, their memories are erased and they are basically an empty soul which is worthless.
After going down this river into Avernus, there are cages where the souls are dumped and one by one they are tortured into a writhing pulp of flesh. This tears the memories and identity from the person (Their divine power) which goes to the Devil who was marked on the soul, and empowers them.
After being tortured, the husk is generally dumped into the maggot pit which is a yucky pool of goop and husks of once souls that have no idea who they are or what they are and are generally in agony (NOTE: Tiamat's lair is right at this big pit).
Aftermath
Here's where it gets interesting. When new devils are needed, they come from two sources, one is Larvae which are what the souls who go to Bane, Beshaba, Talona or Loviatar often become. Literally heads on grub-like bodies (Hence the name). The other place is from the Maggot pit itself. This doesn't happen often enough for either of these beings to be happy and it's like a lottery. As the book puts it, these souls do their best to stand out from a pit of garbage so they'll be selected when they are garbage themselves... good luck.
After that the souls is often promoted to a Lemure and then they go about doing what Lemure's do in hell with no conscious idea who they used to be in general.
Some people can specifically bargain to bypass the maggot pits, but everyone gets tortured.
Fugue Planes
Souls in the Fugue plane can bargain with devils there. People who bargain with devils are often people afraid their gods are going to punish them when they get to them or that are afraid to go to their evil god like Bane. The Devil has to tell the soul they are dead and that their god will pick them up eventually when they are on the fugue, which was the agreement with kelemvor. They can't lie about those things, and they have to give what they promise.
Rewards
Often times people will get these rewards, some OOC (With IC results) and some IC period.
- Gold for themselves of their families/friends, etc.
- Experience points
- A feat or two
- A spell slot or two
- Bonus Skill Points
- Save someone else from Hell
- Promotion into Lemure or sometimes an even stronger Devil after torture
- Other crap DMs come up with
Devil Cheated Me!
Now, sometimes these devils don't uphold their bargains or trick people into coming to hells unlawfully. There are only two ways a devil can do this. One is not upholding the agreed upon terms of the contract on their end, and two is using force to get the signature which includes third parties. They cannot say "Sign this or I kill your wife."
When this happens you can go to the Diabolic Court where a pit fiend oversees the case and makes a ruling. To ask for this a soul must know they can! This requires Knowledge Religion or Knowledge Planes ranks so most souls don't know they can do this if they were cheated.
You can call witnesses to the court and an arbiter, but the devils DO NOT have to give the person a ride to the court, but they must inform them. Then arbitration begins where you argue your case which is generally more knowledge rolls unless you want to RP it out.
Devils are Slick
Don't underestimate devils. They can cheat and convince people to sign in ways you can't imagine. Here's an example: Often times devils will do something like beat/threaten/scare a loved one into signing and then taking them to hell. This is an illegal contract, but they still have a chance of keeping the soul.
What they will do next is go to a loved one and have them sign to save the first from hell. Which will be a legal contract, so they have a chance of getting two souls.
Other ways they work is getting people to do the jobs of gathering wealth for them, with a chance of getting that person's soul from their deeds, and then use that gathered wealth to get someone else to sign over their soul for it. Kill them, then keep the wealth left behind!
They have all kinds of sick and tricky ways to get souls.
And that is what devils do to people.
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