The Game: Vice
Division
The official name is actually the Unnatural Vice Division, which sounds
surreal until you actually understand what the Game means by it. As all sufficiently-aware entities know,
celestials can suffer from two sorts of dissonance: Word-dissonance, which
comes from a betrayal of their
All very straightforward, except that certain
Princes provide Band attunements that will mitigate or eliminate a demon's
Band-dissonance restrictions. This is
their privilege, of course. The entire
point of being a Demon Prince is to enjoy the right of imposing one's Will upon
lesser beings, which emphatically includes one's Servitors. The organization of the Game is neither able
nor willing to contest this.
However, the demons that have been so... favored... by their Princes are
potential, unique risks. They can quite
easily set a bad example for Band-mates of other Words. For example: an inexperienced Impudite of
Gluttony working with an Impudite of Dark Humor might learn bad habits -
particularly if the latter thought that the former doing so would be
funny! This leads to problems for the
Game down the line: problems, headaches, complications and paperwork.
The Game therefore makes it a point to check on
certain types of Servitors to make sure that they are not - inadvertently, to
be sure! - degrading the performance of other types of Servitors. Nothing especially onerous,
of course. Merely an examination
of the relationships that the demon in question has with its Band-mates,
cross-checked with recent contact reports in order to determine whether it has
an unusually high percentage of troublemakers for friends. If not, then there is no problem at all. If there is... well, clearly the Game will
need to investigate further. As this is
an admittedly subjective sort of situation, it's actually fairly easy for a
sufficiently accommodating demon to make it clear that it is a victim of an unfortunate
statistical glitch, nothing more. Said
accommodation generally takes the form of a minor service for the Game; many
demons will even volunteer at the first hint, which of course goes a long way
to assuage the worries of the hardworking agents of Asmodeus.
Princes tolerate this particular form of extortion
mostly because the Game doesn't overuse it, and it often just involves the
killing of an inconvenient human. For
that matter, Demon Princes are not predisposed towards trusting inter-Word
relationships among their Servitors anyway.
All of this affects the following, in varying
degrees of intensity: Habbalah of Lust, Impudites of the War, Shedim of
Infernal Fire, Impudite of Dark Humor, Balseraphs of Fate, Calabim of Fate (the
first because of the bad angelic example they set, the second because - well,
it's as good an excuse as any), Shedim of Factions, Shedim of the Media, Djinn
of Death, Shedim of Death, Impudites of Death, Shedim of Theft, Shedim of
Technology, Habbalah of Secrets, Habbalah of Drugs, Lilim of Greed, Shedim of
Greed... and both Shedim of the Game and demons with the Humanity
attunement. The last two groups are, if
anything, watched more closely than any other.
They are, after all, the only ones with any sort of pretense to knowing
what they're doing when it comes to covering up.