The sponsorship of this group is one of Hell's more
impenetrable secrets: it must have one, but no Prince has put them under his or
her formal protection. On the other
hand, no Prince seems to ever make a serious attempt to destroy or take control
of the group, either - and the Procurers' relations with the Game are
sufficiently solid that any interference by lesser entities is invariably,
quickly and quite fatally countered.
The general consensus is that the exact nature of their patron is far
less important than the demonstrated fact that they have one.
The Cabal of Procurers is essentially a slaver's
guild; they specialize in interesting and unusual damned souls, for a wide
range of budgets and tastes. If your
tastes are sufficiently baroque that what you fancy isn't readily available -
and if your budget is sufficiently large - they'll be happy to construct what
you require.
This is the primary reason why most demons assume
that they have Prince-level patronage.
To acquire a reasonable level of power and an
unreasonable level of wealth, while avoiding making too many enemies in the
process.
Procurers span the entire range of Word and Band:
while no Prince is especially represented in their ranks, there is a definite
tendency towards Balseraphim, Habbalah and Lilim. They tend to range from 10 - 12 Forces in raw power. Very few have Distinctions, and none are
Word-Bound. There is at least one
office of the Cabal in just about every Principality except Abaddon: the
largest are in Hades and Shal-Mari. The
former acts as the main 'industrial' area; the latter has the best showrooms.
The Cabal seems to operate as a 'secret' society
would if it was organized along the lines of a franchise. Demons with sufficient free time (not all
that common, but not unheard of, either) and a Prince who as at least neutral
towards the Cabal (none are formally opposed to it, but Saminga and Mammon have
made their disapproval known to their Servitors) may either attempt to join an
existing organization, or start one of their own. The former is much, much more common than the latter. If accepted, the demon is free to advance in
rank through the usual methods of bribery, bootlicking and betrayal. Particularly successful demons end up
running their particular Principality's franchises: there is no official head
of the organization, and as far as anyone knows, there isn't really an
unofficial one, either. The offices
operating out of Hades have extra influence, due to both their easy access to
the Soul Yards and their special manufactories, but too much presumption will
result in other offices making alternative arrangements.
Note, though, that all of this is taking place in
Hell. The constant maneuvering and
plotting is not for the timid. Most
Procurers also assume that they've been thoroughly infiltrated by the Game
(except for the Gamesters, who mostly assume that they've been thoroughly
infiltrated by Fate), which would cause more concern if it weren't for the fact
that such a thing is distressingly common anyway.
The Procurers have two major resources available to
them. The first is the simplest: they
keep extensive stocks of damned souls, of all sorts and varieties. This fact has an appeal to any demon with
have jaded tastes, demanding bosses or tight deadlines. They can guarantee the most common types in
whatever number that you might need or afford, offer both purchase and rental
plans and provide free delivery. Somewhat more baroque items may take some
doing, and probably a call to another Principality (no individual office owns
its own stock; all damned souls are collectively owned by the Cabal), which is
off course going to raise the fee.
There's also a return for credit plan; the Cabal will also always be
happy to purchase whatever odd damned souls that a demon might happen to
possess, provided of course that a fair market value can be determined. This makes up the bulk of their business;
Cabalists in Perdition and Beleth's side of the Marches have developed a
profitable sideline in acquiring ethereal slaves, and there's always the odd
unlucky demon or two in their clutches, but trafficking in souls remains their
mainstay.
However - and this is what makes the Procurers
special, and explains the name - their other major resource is their ability to
create what their customers require.
This can be something as simple as a thorough training/brainwashing
regimen, or as complex as the judicious addition and removal of Forces; the
Cabal's manufactories in Hades are renowned for their abilities in the latter,
and the exact method of how they do it is both a closely guarded secret and the
subject of a nigh-infinite variety of rumors.
What is known is that they can provide facsimiles of just about anyone,
for the right price.
This includes duplicates of actual people. The Cabal does a lot of work for the
Game and Fate in this regard. Oddly,
the bulk of these sorts of jobs involve people who are not famous:
demons on Earth duty have discovered that a videotape of someone's Aunt Edna
screaming in agony while being tormented by fiery whips is very useful in the
fields of blackmail, espionage and general sadism. Unfortunately, the Host realizes this, too, so the favored targets
of this sort of thing are living humans who for whatever reason cannot simply
call an angel and ask him or her to double-check on what really happened
to Aunt Edna after she died. But it's
useful when dealing with Hellsworn and/or normal people, and often cheaper than
tracking down any specific damned soul.
Duplication of famous people... well, that's where
the Cabal starts keeping its mouth firmly shut. It's fairly clear that they do it, but admitting to it would be
counterproductive. There's no point in
ordering a 'Mahatma Ghandi' or 'Abraham Lincoln' to demoralize the damned souls
if everybody knows that they're really only copies. Sensible demons note this (and the oddity that every Principality
seems to have its own Adolf Hitler) and quietly draw their own
conclusions. Nobody with an ounce of
sense is really sure how many famous people actually are in Hell, and the
Procurers derive much of their mystique from that. They're really that good.
Generally, the two Princes most open in their
dislike for the Cabal are Saminga and Mammon, for ideological and practical
reasons, respectively. Saminga thinks
that trading in souls like this is wasteful; the Forces are much better off being
harvested for his Undead legions, and he certainly does not allow his Servitors
to make their own deals. Mammon is
simply incensed that he is not milking such a lucrative cash cow, as any and
all business deals are so self-evidentially supposed to be under his
purview. Alas, neither has sufficient
influence to negate the influence of the Cabal's unseen patron.
The rest of Hell finds the Procurers to be fairly
useful in a variety of ways, and of course few sensible demons want to bother
unduly anyone on permanent retainer from the Game.
Generally speaking, this is one of those groups that
annoys the corporeal members of the Host more than the celestial ones; after
all, from an angelic perspective this is just one more bunch of demons
dedicated to interfering with Earth, and it's not like their particular
perversion gives them any added resistance to being shot, stabbed, ripped limb
from limb, dropped into a quantum black hole or blown up. Blessed souls and Saints - especially the
ones who have been 'honored' by the Cabal's unique form of copyright violation
- have a somewhat less detached view of things.
Nobody likes slave-takers. Especially ones that have sufficient connections to get away with
'minor' violations of what few guarantees exist between Hell and certain pantheons. It doesn't happen all that often, but it does
happen.
The Procurers have been around for about six hundred years or so, and generally have been extremely stable during most of that time period. This is noteworthy, for Hell; certainly, individual Procurers have been subject to the usual purges and assassinations, but the group as a whole has never been subject to a major suppression. This simply underscores the likelihood of Prince-level patronage, especially as the Prince of Greed was constantly attempting to control their organization.
The modern period has been quite exciting for the
Cabal, however. The chaos engendered by
the run on Mammon's Bank in 1929 allowed them to expand their franchise
network; by the time that the Prince of Greed was in a position to worry about
comparatively minor irritants, the Procurers had developed a presence
throughout Hell. Mammon's efforts to
control this have been even less successful than before.