DEVIL CONTEST
hello it is me YS Voya
Here is a bird devil contest for all of you. The deadline for this contest shall be Tuesday, April the 4th! If you have submissions you can put them in the ksbd tumblr, submit them to ksbdabbadon@gmail.com, or simply post them on this comic page.
May you reach concordance!
Each job fits nicely to one devil. Naturally, these combinations will likely be avoided at all costs. Or perhaps people will fit each devil to a suitable job. Who can say?
Care to elaborate?
Gold = Mastermind
Red = Bruiser
Blue = Face
Green = Acrobat
Pale = Mechanic
If we’re matching trait to role
Living dinosaurs, birds are. It makes sense that they’re paired with the infernal.
Ah yis, birds!
Aaaahhhh!!! I need to enter this!
(I actually know very little about the KSBD world, so I may or may not have to do research before I make my character[s])
“oh fuck where did all those birds come from holy shit.”
-Alfred Hitchcock
https://i.imgur.com/btcrvPg.png
Quiet and pleasant for a Crimson Demon, Cormorant remains an old soldier – and when driven to fight, he’ll keep shooting until his targets or ground to dust, or he is. Wielding the Great Gun Jalakaag, he can be usually be found playing cards in the Red Market.
bird bird bird bird bird
I’d like to see the person from the forum thread who was locked into a set of armour that punishes him/her for being inappropriate come back.
A pestilence and famine brought upon all. When things go wrong, it is this Gremlin’s name that is called. A pale demon who is oft never seen, scurrying behind locked doors and screens. Light and small and bizarre, no space to small for him to squeeze through. He needs no tools or magic, only his body. A living toolbox to open all locks.
Pale Mechanic
Rip and tear. Fly and drop. No place to hide. All will die. He slithers and lurks, and probes the air. A vicious killer in rusty brown green. His terror belies the hidden depths, though used only to plan death. Gnashing teeth, destructive claws, the beat of his wings sounds the drums of war.
Green Brusier
How intriguing. Perhaps I can muster up something mildly noteworthy.
but that’s five???
Two are the same color.
BE IT KNOWN, CITIZEN OF ASHTON
A BOUNTY of ONE THOUSAND AND ONE ASHTON GUILDERS*
is declared on the GREEN DEVIL pictured
(with sanction of the Guild of Terminal Accounting)
for the following TRESPASSES AGAINST GUILD LAW;
I. PUBLIC INTOXICATION
II. DESECRATION OF SACRED SITES WITHOUT LICENSE
III. FAILURE TO PAY USING CORRECT CHANGE
IV. PUBLIC CONTORTION IN THE THIRD DEGREE
V. BREAKING AND ENTERING GUILD PROPERTY (several dozen counts)
VI. ILLICIT MARTIAL ARTS TRAFFICKING
VII. PUBLIC CONTORTION IN THE SECOND DEGREE
VIII. MURDER OF LICENSED GUILD REPRESENTATIVES (three counts)
IX. EVASION OF LICENSED REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GUILD OF TERMINAL ACCOUNTING (five counts)
X. ESCAPING GUILD HOLDING CELLS (twelve counts)
XI. PUBLIC CONTORTION IN THE FIRST DEGREE
XII. MURDER OF LICENSED REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GUILD OF TERMINAL ACCOUNTING (one count)
XIII. BEING SUMMONED WITH INTENT TO DEFAME
CRAZY ULURHAD, NO REASONABLE OFFERS REFUSED, alias NORY, alias REASONABLE, alias FUSED
(as subject was last named)
is to be EXORCISED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE and the shattered remnants of his mask returned to CRAZY ULURHAD, NO REASONABLE OFFERS REFUSED, Vatra In Good Standing, Guild Of Ominous Peddlers
(or the duly licensed agents of the Guild of Terminal Accounting)
*payment also available in comparable value of imperial currency, precious stones, information, or services in the Art. Reasonable offers will be entertained.
* * *
The other crimes are self-explanatory, but Nory’s direst crime is being summoned with intent to defame: a devil created with no purpose beyond blackening a competitor’s name by sharing it. Given the low treatment of such devils, and the degree of power one must typically have to make an enemy of a demon-summoner, it is rare for a devil so summoned to last the month.
Fortunately for Nory, he is an excellent escape artist. While his wings are largely ornamental and papery, the hooks on each wingtip are just enough to give him a briefly-effective third set of limbs for redirection in midair, and his two-kneed legs offer him the ability to go into a full-extension-leap in almost any direction from a sitting start. Nory’s original summoner (now very dead) ordered Nory to get caught a few times after wreaking some name-blackening mayhem, but never bothered to order him to -stay- caught, for which reason he has had opportunity to become extremely good at both getting into and out of places he is not supposed to be.
As such the first time a barkeep, instead of throwing him out after he got into the storeroom, offered to pay him to go break into competitors’ storerooms, his direction in life was almost painfully clear.
His mask is vaguely evocative of a horse’s skull, and his arms are almost disconcertingly human-like, aside from the whole scales thing. He prefers the chain-and-hook as a weapon. He enjoys flute music, gambling on pit fights, and abandoning ostensible heist comrades once it’s clear he can escape and they can’t.
So what would you be? The Mastermind? God, Allison would blow a cap.
I? I would be someone VERY FAR AWAY from this nonsense. There is no profit in going against Mammon, Yabalchoath proved that and proved it in bloody abundance.
That the devil that insufferable churl summoned is just the type to get wrapped up in such a nightmarishly foolish plan is the reason most of my current liquid assets are wrapped up in that bounty. Seriously, for those willing to accept non-guilder forms of payment my offer increases in value quite appreciably.
This is very funny and quite well written. I like the arbitrary ordering of the crimes, especially how ‘public intoxication’ is mentioned long before his three counts of murder. He sounds like he’d be an interesting character.
(As a side note, the Guild of Terminal Accounting’s primary business is, in fact, accounting. But in a universal hub where the wax-drippers have Geas Knights on retainer and the rug-weavers regularly exchange trebuchet fire with the tapestry artists, the line in the Furusiyya of Accounts Receivable reading “the unclaimed credit stains the ledger of the soul” has lead to a certain degree of mission creep.)
Demon role: The Face
Rank: Gold demon
Demon name: Udlr of the Personnel Codex Division
Backstory: Due to a bit of unpleasantness involving the former demon “Ala Alba” trapping Mammon’s employees with predatory loans, Ala Alba was coerced into taking a name fundamentally tied to Mammon and his vault – Udlr of the PCD. This is a grudge Udlr has held for a very long time, especially as he was close to ebon, no longer has his ebon name, and has since had very little contact with the financial services he so enjoyed manipulating. And if you’re aiming to damage your employer, why not go for broke? Mammon can afford it. After a couple centuries concealing your grudge, you can get pretty high up on the corporate ladder – and Udlr gazes at Allison’s key of kings without any thoughts of taking it for himself, merely cackling over what he thinks Allison’s going to do to Mammon, and fantasizing about Mottom’s fate being repeated in his own theatre.
Appearance: He has four arms, one of which is bound tightly to his side with a dark tan cloth that is bloodstained where his arm is bound. He has finagled his way into wearing slightly different robes than Mammon’s usual employees, in an unpleasant shade of acid green instead of the usual off-white or orange, or even the dark green others at his rank wear. Among golden devils, his mask is not particularly facelike; it has two vertically-opening eyes and protruding cheeks, but no mouth or nose (that was another of Mammon’s conditions; just an extra bit of humiliation – some golds like having no mouth, but not Udlr). In its’ place, he procured a mundane lower jaw with pointed teeth made out of silver and affects moving it when he talks. As is the case with other high-ranking employees in his division, he is chained to a large example of a Geas tome containing part of the titular codex, and must lug it around with him everywhere he goes. It is very possible for him to use his pen (tightly chained to one of his wrists) as a knife, which is useful for those contracts which require blood text, or when enemies need killing.
L-R: Eliot, Sophie, Nate, Hardison and Parker
“The rich and powerful, they take what they want. We provide…. Leverage.”
Magellit the green, explosive extraordinaire
Golden masqued Verron a mastermind of smoke an secret eyes
Tengu with his blood red nose we already know
Fhanarr the mute with naught but a lute
Two twinning blues of devils hue both vile as vipers and amorous too
Clearly the Face is the Pale Devil. He speaks through sign language and the Art.
Similarly, the Bruiser is clearly the Gold, because Martial Arts is a path to power, and the Golds are the most powerful rank of devils.
Also because making them those clearly subverts the stereotypes of their devil rank, by making the mute the party social character, and making the smartest type into the dumb brute.
In the course of my travels, quite some time before my service to the Haberdashers, I spent a duration in the court of the Turquoise Prince, offering my blade in exchange for access to the rarer tomes of his personal collection. During this time I was privileged to make the acquaintance of a courtier there–who, for the sake of brevity, I shall refer to with only a few of her names–the blue devil Vincenza Carmina Mezzira del Astragath.
It is difficult for a devil to shed their names and climb the colors, and it is often hardest for the blues. They tend to have comparatively little in the way of power, and often have only their cunning to truly offer. But should a blue devil seem too cunning, too clever, many potential bargainers will become wary. Such was the case with Vincenza, who had been a blue for a very long time, because for all her exceptionally charming manner, when speaking to her you could not help but feel she was five steps ahead of you (having played many games of Go against her, this is a gross understatement. She was always at least twelve moves beyond my best efforts, and I am far from a novice player). She had simply run up against a glass ceiling.
That is not to say that she had stagnated, mind you. Far from it. She had applied herself to the Art with a fervor that rivals my own pursuit of my Geas. She could work truly stunning illusions, from those black and white stones somehow pulling every color imaginable. She constructed plans of battle and diplomacy for the Prince, every variable and contingency accounted for. She curated a truly brilliant wardrobe, carted around by her poor servant, Ludo.
I lost touch with her when I left the Prince’s service. We kept correspondence for some time, but then his court was burned down–I never did find out why–and our last game is yet unfinished. I wonder, sometimes, if she is still a blue. If she has overcome that barrier, I have little doubt she would be Gold in short order.
Devil contest submission.
Perhaps a little straightforward in regards to roles, but oft-times Occam’s Razor cuts true.
The first of the devils was the Golden and refined Sathasranavka, who did gather and speak for the rest. They stood fifteen arrows tall and four arrows wide. With but two arms did they grasp, though both were twenty arrows long with three crooks each, both ending in two four-fingered hands that oft clapped. They bore no tail, but instead had a growth in the shade of a face centered in the small of their back. Their mask bore the semblance of a sneering embalmer, with pock-mocks of a beautiful, luscious carmine hue oft mistaken for freckles. They spoke gently when angered. They were never known to speak otherwise. She did gather together the rest of the devils by various means, from the twenty-six corners of the the red city.
The second of the devils was Emerald Yukabaceram, who did conceive of what certainly would not be. They stood but three arrows tall and but half an arrow wide, with the frailest of forms. Their arms were severed cleanly at the shoulders as a favor, tendered in trade for a truth worded so that the recipient would come to believe it false over the course of twelve days. His long hair-thin tail, nearly hidden in the air, was tipped with the pinching claw of a crab. Their face resembled the skull of a serpent, and when pried with honey could be convinced to invert their mind. He fought with the shades of future uncertainties, til naught was left but precisely one certain plan for victory and 20,736 certain plans for failure.
The third of the devils was Sanguine Andromache, who did away with adversity. She stood six arrows tall and two arrows wide, with a form fair and sculpted as would please any artisan. Their form was regular, albeit many red creeper-tendrils of razor’ed hair did grow like waves to fall like a gown down about her arms, sprouting from her shoulders and collar. Their face resembled that of an old woman, expression poised in eternal apathy wrought by disappointment in their choice of foes, and was crowned by six long, thin, straight thorns that did protrude all about from their head. No matter what armament or manner of transient art was brought against her, she did shatter the group’s foes and vanquished all seals against their cause.
The fourth of the devils was the troublesome Feyiakka Guiodem Wrakkatom, who did cavort and indenture the more toilsome aspects of the world. She stood three arrows tall and four arrows wide, with many sagging pockets of flesh about her form where she would secrete away her most prized and worthless works. While they once bore a tail, it was unduly crushed and suffocated beneath their buttocks and withered to rot. Her face is an unpleasantly cylindrical plate with unsettling egalitarian knobs wrought on its surface, as one might find on a grandfather clock, their mouth covered by a horn broken so as to unfortunately permit her speech. She did acquire many useful items and curiosities, and did carelessly make many delicate artifacts of note. The most useful were told by her scorn of them, and were put to horrifying, singularly tremendous use.
The fifth of the devils was the oft-hidden gray, whose names were unknown to most and who did only the impossible. They were a centipede of but two arrows in length and a fifth of an arrow wide, with 72 segments and 144 legs. Though colorless as their kind was wont to be, in total darkness they glimmered with a captivating starlight-hued brilliance. They were kept fed on a diet of impossible colors, and their direction was prized for their ability to writhe and tred across thin air using gossamer-thin threads of wind-borne treachery. Unfortunately attracted to richly dyed silks as well as fine oils, and known to to disturb those with long hair by braiding it without permission.
This one remembers the tale of a devil who would aptly fit the description of a “bruiser”. As this one recalls, it was a devil of the pale variety, those that it accompanied simply called it Hook. Simple and mute like all its pale kin, this monster had a large stature by Pale devil standards and was prone to great fits of bloody violence in which it would rip apart those it perceived to be enemies. Simple as this creature was, it was capable of following basic instructions, so long as it continued to regard one as “friend”. As this one recalls, the last group of fiends that attempted to harness Hooks incredible violence ended up as red and black stains themselves.
Leverage http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1103987/
Ah, finally our heroes see the value of a good burglar team. I shall query my contacts, although finding beings up to the task shall be difficult.
Well, clearly the mastermind is a Verdant demon named Hannibal Rakshasa of Oo-oh.
It’s a contest! 😮
This concordance deprives me of my 8 temporal dimensions, the better to enjoy the suspense, but I am sure on a few points.
I’m sure the Mechanic was the Green one. All that thinking, and traps, inside traps inside of traps. That became a part of me, so I could never forget it. The others ever realized how many layers of traps their were, or how much thinking went on, until they found themselves in the center of the spider’s web.
The pale devil, I am sure I will like this one. No Face or Mind to speak of, but certainly I can see such a thing dancing with death.
Secretly, they must yearn for a Reaper’s caress. Being bound in a shape so far from what they truly are, the fire inside must be howling for freedom. Alas, my sickle is not for thee, cold black flame.