By now, you’re probably all wondering whether you’re actually in your home dimension or not. Fallen Archangels are par for the course, in most IN resources: seeing the imperfections of even the brightest Superiors trip them up, while tragic, isn’t too much of a mental leap. Even Bright Princes can be understandable: the seeds for good exist in even the most degraded demon.

It’s just that … these Princes? Lilith, sure: she’s got an ambiguous Word. Beleth is another possible maybe: her old lover is literally carrying a torch for her, and even Djinn Princesses get lonely for what they once had. And of course, half the games out there treat Valefor as Janus’ greatest disguise ever. These Princes seem, if not plausible, then at least not totally unlikely. But … Haagenti? Malphas? Saminga? It’s like a bad joke.

Or rather, it’s like a very good one.

It’s amazing, when you think about it: everybody knows that Kobal was given a mission from God. Everybody knows that he’s a subtle, subtle Prince with a taste for convoluted, elaborate Pranks that go on, and on, and on. Everyone even knows that he’s been jaded beyond belief for millennia. And then they all act as if none of that mattered.

They shouldn’t. This is the best Prank that Kobal’s ever been involved in. And, oddly enough, the best part is that he’s playing it on himself.

Once upon a time, the Angel of Laughter was called forth to see his Creator. Being a very young angel, as such things go, he was still a bright and shiny Mercurian, so if you want to picture him whistling as he went to go see Dad, go ahead.

So, there’s Kobal, and there’s God. And God explained to Kobal exactly what was likely to happen in the near future. God told him that Lucifer was heading for a Fall, taking a third of the Host with him. God even told Kobal that the he might Fall, too.

Naturally, Kobal didn’t find this funny, at all. His first question was, logically enough, "If you know it’s going to happen, why not stop it?" God pointed out that the right to determine one’s Destiny or Fate had to encompass getting it wrong, or else the entire thing was kind of pointless.

Kobal acknowledged the point, and hastened to let God know that he had no intention of personally doing anything that dumb himself, now that God had let him know that he was in deadly danger of screwing up that badly…

… And then Kobal stopped talking, having had the thought that God had just interfered with his free will by giving him a heads-up. Then came his second question: "I’m not going to remember this conversation, am I?"

God shook His/Her/Its head.

So then Kobal asked his last question: "Then what’s the point?"

Then God smiled and explained that He/She/It had a special job for Kobal. A funny job. Maybe Kobal wouldn’t Fall: if that happened, God wouldn’t hold him to it. But if he did Fall, God had a little Prank set up that would only take effect if or when Kobal’s demonic self got completely jaded with doing evil. In fact, the Prank would work even if Kobal didn’t Redeem. That free will thing, again.

And then God told Kobal the Joke. When they had both stopped laughing (and God’s laughter is an ineffably powerful thing), Kobal cheerfully agreed to go along with it. So God handed him an envelope, and told him to forget.

Time passed. The Rebellion came. By then, Kobal had indeed become the sort of angel that would wholeheartedly join Lucifer’s cause, and so he Fell with the rest. He became the Demon Prince of Dark Humor, and set about perverting joy with a will. He was very, very good at his job. In fact, he became one of the nastiest demons that ever existed, in his own quiet way.

But he still kept a dingy old half-forgotten envelope in his desk drawer. Every so often he’d look at it, wonder what it was, and think about opening it, but there was always something more important to do. Some more time passed.

Then, one day, it was the most miserable day that Kobal had ever had. Demons kept walking up to him to congratulate him on the Titanic. Even Kronos had told him that making sure that there weren’t enough lifeboats was an inspired touch. There was talk of a special award.

It drove him nuts. He had nothing to do with the Titanic. None of his Servitors had anything to do with the Titanic. As far as he could tell, there was absolutely no Infernal meddling whatsoever. And he should have seen it. In hindsight, the disaster was precisely his style. It was so glaringly obvious. The best example of Dark Humor in a decade, and it wasn’t because of him.

Truthfully though, it seemed that sort of oversight had been happening a lot more recently. Kobal had missed out on a lot of Pranks over the past two centuries. The Trail of Tears; the Indian Mutiny; Rasputin; all of these were classic gags that everyone assumed that Kobal had meticulously planned out, when in fact he was as surprised as anyone else when they were sprung. It was time to face facts: he was off his game.

While in this profound state of self-pity, Kobal decided to clean his desk, because he couldn’t literally think of anything more productive to do. And he found the envelope. Even the minor little mystery of what it was had palled, so Kobal opened it up, and read the note from God.

The shrieking laughter coming from Kobal’s private sanctum lasted for a week and a half. When he finally emerged, there was a gleam in his eye that hadn’t been there in centuries. Everyone just assumed it was because he had just come up with the influenza epidemic of 1918 (considered a truly great Prank by the connoisseurs). Kobal had nothing to do with that, either: he had bigger fish to fry.

Or, more accurately, "nastier Demon Princes to Redeem".

The setup took forever. Naturally, the targets had to be his closest coworkers (generally considered to be completely, hopelessly mired in evil): nudging them in the right direction took forever. While doing that, he also had to help Malphas fake Armageddon, but that dovetailed neatly with his plans. He needed Malphas capable of self-doubt, and he figured that arranging matters that the entire scheme blew up spectacularly would do the trick nicely. Besides, it would mask what he was really planning.

Haagenti, his dear, dear brother was easy. A mere two decades of research came up with a substance that even the Prince of Gluttony couldn’t keep down. A discreet whispering campaign made sure that all Hell was ready to watch the spectacle, and the rest unfolded like clockwork. Haagenti was humiliated, Haagenti couldn’t Consume his tormentors, and so Haagenti fled Hell. Kobal wasn’t sure exactly what would happen next, but he was ready to trust what was in the Envelope.

When Haagenti Redeemed, Kobal felt justified. God was living up to His/Her/Its end of the bargain. Once out of Hell, Haagenti had been ineffably protected from agents of the Game, allowing him to work out his problems on his own and thus freely choose to go Bright. Now the Archangel of Gusto was shaking up the set ways of Heaven and Hell equally. It was classic comedy.

Next was Malphas. Kobal knew that this one would be the hardest of the three to pull off successfully, requiring split-second timing. At just the right moment, when the Prince of Factions was just a little off-balance from the failure of his plan to start the Last War (and just a little confused about how a Demon Prince raised in Hell could choose to serve Heaven), the Prince of Dark Humor came along and dropped a little verbal time bomb. Malphas may never realize that the conversation he had with Kobal about Legion and that idiot Saminga was indirectly responsible for his later state of self-imposed schizophrenia.

Making sure that a demon seeking Redemption was there at the right moment to shatter Malphas’ solipsism wasn’t easy, but the results were worth it. Malphas also went Renegade, and God again came through and presented Heaven with an Archangel of Individuality. That God chose that Word impressed Kobal to no end. The Seraphim Council was so a-flutter…

Last to be booted upstairs was the aforementioned idiot. Haagenti was slapstick, Malphas was irony, but Saminga … Saminga would be Art. However, Kobal’s mental muscles were fully flexing for the first time in centuries, so he felt up to the challenge. At first, he decided that the best way to do things would be to simply smash the Heart, using a long-lost potent relic, and nudge Saminga along the path of Righteousness. There was only one problem: Saminga was too stupid, too egotistical, and too much the megalomaniac to survive long enough, even with the covert help of another Prince. Besides, the chance of discovery was too great. Saminga had to be prepped first.

And this is where Kobal’s genius sense for humor was revealed. There’s never been much shared research into improving a Superior’s abilities in Hell, that most selfish of places: most Princes work out their own self-improvement schemes on their own, and keep them secret. Kobal knew quite well how to improve intelligence, using very rare and potentially dangerous substances from all three planes: he had raised his own potential milleniums ago by just such a method. He even still kept the materials around, just in case he ever needed it again. But the best Pranks require sacrifice. Saminga got a dose guaranteed to push his mental muscles a little.

The truly amusing bit was that Kobal soon realized that his planned assistance after that was superfluous: Saminga’s sudden boost in intelligence had a serendipitous effect. The Prince of Death was getting bored. So bored, in fact, that Saminga had begun to look into the old Legion enigma on his own. Without any real prodding on Kobal’s part, the Prince began his attempt to recreate the experiment, discarding Servitors and even his beloved undead as useless to his purpose. Kobal decided to wait, and improvise, if needed.

When Saminga began to use a human Circle as unwitting researchers, Kobal began to set up the Prank. Actual success was, of course, would be a disaster: the last thing Hell needed was another Legion. What was important would be the illusion of imminent success: even if Saminga was newly intelligent (without realizing it), he was still a creature of habit, and could be counted on to ignore certain realities while continuing his obsession. Kobal tweaked, and prodded, and influenced that Circle until Saminga was thoroughly dissonant … and absolutely disgusted with everything, including himself. The pyrotechnics were spectacular. Kobal doesn’t know exactly why Saminga just didn’t go fully Renegade instead of Penitent, but has his suspicions. Not that it mattered: his job was just to get the Princes into firing range. Anything after that was up to God.

It was a pang, though, when he realized that the game was over. There was no way that he could get a fourth sucker to self-destruct without getting caught: already, certain Princes had a vague disquiet over what exactly was the involvement of Dark Humor in all of this. It was a good game, though: the best Prank of his existence. Kobal wondered, though, what joke could possibly even compare to this…

…And then the conflict in Shal-Mari blew up, and the one in Stygia, and the one in Abaddon, and Kobal stopped wondering. He had a marvelous idea of his own, now.

Kobal soon became a mediator in every dispute that he could insinuate himself into, claiming that at least everyone could mistrust him equally. Oddly, that argument had some merit to it. Soon, the Prince was actually keeping numerous cold wars from getting hotter. His surviving peers were sure that this was a power play of some kind, but they were too busy plotting furiously to do anything about it.

It wasn’t: Kobal was simply waiting for the precise moment when the deals, plots, arrangements and back-stabbing was so convoluted that no one could exactly tell who was allied to whom without a scorecard. When Belial was obliterated, the resulting confusion was perfect. Kobal broke his own Heart, using the relic originally slated for Saminga, and then voluntarily sent himself to Limbo … leaving behind a Hell tangled in its own conspiracies. He was going to miss some priceless, bloody slapstick, but Limbo was the only place where no one could get at him.

Kobal was quite looking forward to Limbo, actually: the Prince needed some time to think.

After all, he has no idea yet what he’s going to do to Heaven as an encore…