Hell's Bailiff - Chapter 1
Hell's Bailiff - Chapter 1
Edited September 5th, 2011 to relocate action to pre-Millennium Mystara.
Deals with devils. The devils always come out ahead in the end.
I guess I knew there would be Hell to pay at the end, but life is short -- so have dessert! And honestly, look at the advantages: You get to short-cut the drudgery of schooling, finding a job, scraping together money, trying to marry up. Even the priests who worship the gods better their situations through the politics of church and state than from any favour of their patrons dropping bags of money over their heads.
What I wanted was a quick solution. I wanted it now, and there was a way to get it, so why not?
Power, money, and sex. That's what I wanted.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Simon. I live in Sundsvall, the capital of the glorious Empire of Alphatia. We are a generally godless people who worship knowledge and magic more than the gods. Had I been born elsewhere, who could say how I would have turned out?
I was born into a very mediocre family. A father who was an accountant who was very good at counting the money of a trading house, yet couldn't make any of his own for all his investments. A mother who never went anywhere, never did anything, except keep house. Still, that she was my mother and cared for me -- for that I will always love her, no matter how infuriatingly pessimistic she was. The ability to weave magic is all-important in Alphatia, and they had some small ability, but I had not the patience for years of study to pull off a few magic tricks. I wanted a head start on it, as well as the good life.
I apprenticed early with a mage of ill-repute. I was the younger child, and there's a certain tendency to be babied because of this. They could deny me nothing, so they supported me while I was in his employ. We did shady things now and again, things that made my conscience give up on me a long time ago -- but thankfully, nothing that reached my parents. They'd freak.
The mentor I had chosen (whom I shall not name, to protect the guilty) was rumoured to bargain with dark powers, and quite early on I made it plain to him that the quick and easy road to power was what I wanted. Almost immediately he tried to use me as a disposable bargaining chip, a soul he could sell for his own gain, but my cleverness and (at the time) my desperate bravado thwarted him and from then he actually accorded me a measure of respect. He taught me well, even sent money back to my parents -- all with the understanding that when the time came, my bargain with the Hells would benefit him as well.
He made it clear that the Hells always come out ahead, and that I was willing to accept this... Perhaps in my ambition he saw something of his younger self. Who can say? What mattered was that he became my ally instead of trying to use me. As he offered me more, I repaid him with more loyalty.
Then the day came when we were both satisfied with the type of bargain I would offer. A much better one than he made. One that, in hindsight, he wished he had made. That, too, was perhaps yet another facet to our relationship -- through me, he saw a way to unburden himself of some of his weightiest regrets.
First, he wanted his soul back. Just one soul. Time -- age -- was not on his side, so he offered nine in exchange, through whatever means would corrupt another into a bargain with the Hells.
For myself, the usual: Power, money, and sex. Since money and sex could come from power, we settled on just that. First, the basic pacts to give me arcane power, just like what my mentor wielded. Then (and especially as, to put it mildly, I was no ladykiller) to get the rest that came with luxurious living, I asked for what we tried our best to describe as charisma: Personal magnetism. Plain old likeability. This, my mentor and I, had finally settled on instead of itemizing the good life, because where charm and diplomacy failed, power would back me up. With being able to move in the highest social circles came power all of its own, and money and everything else I wanted.
Then, the kicker: He wanted his soul back. Up front, straight and simple, with no loss of whatever benefits he had already been given. That meant I would have to find souls in exchange for him. In exchange, he had paid me with his lore and would set me up with whatever gold I wanted. In the twilight of his life, with his soul in the balance, none of it was of much consequence. He had lived. Now he wanted to die in peace.
We hammered out the rest of the details, then called her forth. A succubus. The name she gave was "Kana" (just a convenient alias, I'm sure). Her chosen form ravishing to the point of dangerous distraction. We kept each other in check -- something my mentor hadn't done when he forged his own bargain so many decades ago -- and we fought her with words till even she lost her patience. Or made it appear so -- you could never really know.
Anyway, my mentor got what he wanted -- Free to enjoy his life, clear of all obligations. But with the option to aid me in whatever way and lighten my own contractual obligations, if he so wished.
I, however, had to find enough souls to be worth our own. She was in the habit of collecting souls and not giving away anything without surety. Although the worth of souls makes this sound like an open-ended bargain that was subjective and wholly open to interpretation, the Hells have a way of measuring the worth of souls, and among devils it was a well-established metric.
We conferred on this -- a risky move, for it gave her time to regroup and strategize as well. She wanted it simply: That my own soul was forfeit if I could not find enough souls to balance our pact. And my mentor's as well, if I could not find enough souls to at least free him of his bond.
The value of our souls, then, and how quickly our debts could be discharged, was the key.
Dear reader, by this time would will also have realized that the corruption of others and the deliverance of their souls to the cruel mercies of the Hells was of no consequence to us, and in truth, at the time, we cared not. Judge me how you will. I could think of many unworthy souls that deserved any measure of torments in the Hells, but was under no illusion that my morals would take a back seat if I got desperate.
Finally, we were ready for the second round of negotiations. As the value of the souls we would give her could not be predicted, we mutually agreed to use the accepted devil's metric -- something she could not twist, for the scales are the same for all devils everywhere. Then -- and here is what we thought our crowning achievement -- we stipulated that our souls would be forfeit only at such time as I chose to cancel the bargain -- to forever stop looking for souls. And if I were coerced into resignation or if I were to fail through no fault of my own, the contract would be void and both souls would be free.
It were standard enough to say that coercion generally nullified contracts. What we managed to slip past her -- or thought we did -- was a clear exit strategy rather than a contingency that would see our souls forfeit. If I were to be run over by a horse and buggy by accident, for example, we'd both be free.
Amazingly, she agreed. Of course, not without demands of her own.
In exchange for this concession, she demanded I be willing to be bound to her -- so that she could more freely cross the dimensional divide from the Hells. She naturally expected that we would demand that any interference that might cause me to fail at the agreement or lose a soul that would otherwise be delivered to her, would void the bargain.
Being her portal to this world was not without severe risk -- not the least being that bigoted anti-devilry fanatics would want to burn me alive as a witch. From her perspective, that was a risk too, as it would safely void the contract for me. But having a mortal conduit out of the uncomfortable Hells was a great boon to her, and when my mentor carefully stipulated that at no time should she possess me or intrude on my thoughts if I did not wish it, she gave only token objections.
Then the moment came to sign. For perhaps the first time since his fall from human morality, my mentor looked upon me with genuine fatherly love and pledged to help me as much as he could.
I was under no illusion that he might just skip town.
He signed the pact.
The succubus signed the pact.
With lingering doubts... I signed the pact.
The succubus sighed with almost orgasmic relief.
"Old man," she addressed my mentor, "do you have any idea how much your soul is worth?"
The ground beneath the summoning circled cracked open and she let herself drop into that fiery portal into the Hells, to register her prize.
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, to try to calm myself. "What have I done?"
My mentor held me firmly by my upper arms, as if to help me pull myself together. "You have done what is now done. There's no point looking back."
*
I left the city the very next day. My mentor had intended to extend his merchant business as far as Thyatis and then beyond to the West and away from the sometimes irritating politics between the rival Empires of Alphatia and Thyatis. Sure, it was work to a certain extent, but mostly schmoozing to gain connections and to get a foot in the door. Then the actual staff would do the actual work. Combined with my new diabolically-enhanced charisma, it was easy to do.
My mentor was settled into a comfortable semi-retirement in Alphatia and had no wish to go traipsing about the world anymore, so I would be his lieutenant. Now that the well-being of his very soul was in my care, he was happy to share his considerable assets. My parents were set up into a comfortable though not luxurious existence and he promised to keep an eye on them now and again, lest someone strike at me through them.
I was given gold and references and I set off to begin establishing myself politically and financially, though connections and trade, thereby increasing both our fortunes.
Thyatis City seemed like a great place to start. Everyone had a greedy streak a mile wide, which made things treacherous at times, but for the most part, money talks and in short order I was moving in the right social circles.
The succubus was too excited not to immediately advantage herself of me as her conduit, and once she had registered the contract in whatever vaults of Dis such contracts were archived, she immediately came into our world and basically disappeared on whatever business interested her. I did not hear from her for many months and would otherwise have forgotten all about it, were it not for the matter of souls.
With the wealth freely given to me, I indulged myself to excess. I was free with gifts to buy my way into places to be seen and to chat with persons of influence. From there, my infernally bestowed charm and looks sailed me the rest of the way. My nights were sensual indulgences of lust, ranging from dalliances with delicious debutantes to orgies with the classier courtesans.
I deliberately distanced myself from real relationships and made no attempt to disguise that: To love -- to truly love -- is a dangerous thing when one could be desperate to save one's own soul. And, if I were true to myself, I knew that it I would choose my soul over any one else's if it came down to that.
Dear reader, by now you should be thoroughly convinced that I am no saint, or even possessed of average standards of humanity, to be willing to send souls to Hell.
The bottom feeders in Thyatis, eager to get ahead, were fairly easy pickings for contracts with Hell and I delivered a few souls to Hell every week, usually in exchange for a mere pittance -- money for brief indulgences, health for a longer life, or revenge against someone who was otherwise untouchable by their low status. I justified it with the knowledge that their brief and unwise lives were made slightly longer and more enjoyable at least, before whatever servitude awaited them. Souls of minor consequence as theirs were frequently used as a type of "spare change" among devils, so they were probably in limbo more than anything -- sealed in a soul container and passed around now and again. Or they might be reincarnated as some lowly devil grunt. In any case, I tried not to think too much about it.
A month later, my dear succubus patron came calling to give me a much overdue report. All those souls sent had amounted to... just a pittance.
I was shocked.
Well, not really. I suppose my mortal perception had placed a higher value on something like a soul, but by the scales of Hell, their meaningless lives meant meaningless souls as well. My mentor, who had accomplished much and owed much of his power to Hell, was a shining prize.
In short, I had a long way to go.
She made me an offer to speed up the process.
Ah hah. Finally, here it was. The real reason she had agreed to our apparently clever and superior terms.
For as long as there were contracts with the Hells, there were those who would try to find a way out. Weren't my mentor and I just two such?
Instead of renegotiating contracts, some chose a more brute force approach, which invariably meant magical wards, living on holy ground, maybe even undeath, but in general a lot of penance to those very gods they spurned in the hope of some intercession after death. Mostly that latter was futile, unless they were of epic consequence, but the former generally meant a lot of trouble for devils wanting to collect their due.
Enter the Bailiffs.
Hell's Bailiffs are basically skip tracers, sent to collect debts. That is, souls owed to Hell. Not being devils or any kind of true infernal being themselves, they could freely pass wards or step onto holy ground to deliver a killing blow, thus putting the soul on the highway to Hell. There frequently isn't much of a hurry to claim a soul, but even Devils have debts to others. Debts that are paid in the currency of souls.
It's soulless work. However justified the bargain, however much genuine good it did, the pact is binding and the soul is owed. Plus, there is often the matter of making an example of the victim, lest too many others try the same. Bailiffs weren't judges. They just do as they are told and they can't modify or void contracts. And if some might be worried about crises of conscience, well, you have to remember that in my case, I was already damning souls on a weekly basis. Besides, there were always other bailiffs that could be sent, so if not one, then another would be along shortly.
It's also dangerous work. To be able to defy Hell's regular bill collectors is no small feat to arrange. However they have done it, there's bound to be a catch somewhere to make getting around it tricky.
That she offered it meant this was clearly going to be to her extreme advantage in more ways that she already openly stated: She would be paid a commission for my efforts which she would wholly attribute toward settling my account. And these souls she would direct me to... Even a fraction of their worth was more than a score of the unimaginative gutter-trash I was sending to damnation.
It wouldn't be such a tempting offer if I weren't so deep in debt. She had, I was under no delusion, planned this from the start, from the very time we had offered to balance our account with souls. She freely added that she'd get her payment plus priceless influence with her peers and superiors, and my free services -- all of which would be exceedingly gratifying to her, so much so that she even offered to at any time give me useful advice on the current mark.
Useful advice for getting out of whatever jam she would get me into.
I wanted to think about it.
Edited September 5th, 2011 to relocate action to pre-Millennium Mystara.
Deals with devils. The devils always come out ahead in the end.
I guess I knew there would be Hell to pay at the end, but life is short -- so have dessert! And honestly, look at the advantages: You get to short-cut the drudgery of schooling, finding a job, scraping together money, trying to marry up. Even the priests who worship the gods better their situations through the politics of church and state than from any favour of their patrons dropping bags of money over their heads.
What I wanted was a quick solution. I wanted it now, and there was a way to get it, so why not?
Power, money, and sex. That's what I wanted.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Simon. I live in Sundsvall, the capital of the glorious Empire of Alphatia. We are a generally godless people who worship knowledge and magic more than the gods. Had I been born elsewhere, who could say how I would have turned out?
I was born into a very mediocre family. A father who was an accountant who was very good at counting the money of a trading house, yet couldn't make any of his own for all his investments. A mother who never went anywhere, never did anything, except keep house. Still, that she was my mother and cared for me -- for that I will always love her, no matter how infuriatingly pessimistic she was. The ability to weave magic is all-important in Alphatia, and they had some small ability, but I had not the patience for years of study to pull off a few magic tricks. I wanted a head start on it, as well as the good life.
I apprenticed early with a mage of ill-repute. I was the younger child, and there's a certain tendency to be babied because of this. They could deny me nothing, so they supported me while I was in his employ. We did shady things now and again, things that made my conscience give up on me a long time ago -- but thankfully, nothing that reached my parents. They'd freak.
The mentor I had chosen (whom I shall not name, to protect the guilty) was rumoured to bargain with dark powers, and quite early on I made it plain to him that the quick and easy road to power was what I wanted. Almost immediately he tried to use me as a disposable bargaining chip, a soul he could sell for his own gain, but my cleverness and (at the time) my desperate bravado thwarted him and from then he actually accorded me a measure of respect. He taught me well, even sent money back to my parents -- all with the understanding that when the time came, my bargain with the Hells would benefit him as well.
He made it clear that the Hells always come out ahead, and that I was willing to accept this... Perhaps in my ambition he saw something of his younger self. Who can say? What mattered was that he became my ally instead of trying to use me. As he offered me more, I repaid him with more loyalty.
Then the day came when we were both satisfied with the type of bargain I would offer. A much better one than he made. One that, in hindsight, he wished he had made. That, too, was perhaps yet another facet to our relationship -- through me, he saw a way to unburden himself of some of his weightiest regrets.
First, he wanted his soul back. Just one soul. Time -- age -- was not on his side, so he offered nine in exchange, through whatever means would corrupt another into a bargain with the Hells.
For myself, the usual: Power, money, and sex. Since money and sex could come from power, we settled on just that. First, the basic pacts to give me arcane power, just like what my mentor wielded. Then (and especially as, to put it mildly, I was no ladykiller) to get the rest that came with luxurious living, I asked for what we tried our best to describe as charisma: Personal magnetism. Plain old likeability. This, my mentor and I, had finally settled on instead of itemizing the good life, because where charm and diplomacy failed, power would back me up. With being able to move in the highest social circles came power all of its own, and money and everything else I wanted.
Then, the kicker: He wanted his soul back. Up front, straight and simple, with no loss of whatever benefits he had already been given. That meant I would have to find souls in exchange for him. In exchange, he had paid me with his lore and would set me up with whatever gold I wanted. In the twilight of his life, with his soul in the balance, none of it was of much consequence. He had lived. Now he wanted to die in peace.
We hammered out the rest of the details, then called her forth. A succubus. The name she gave was "Kana" (just a convenient alias, I'm sure). Her chosen form ravishing to the point of dangerous distraction. We kept each other in check -- something my mentor hadn't done when he forged his own bargain so many decades ago -- and we fought her with words till even she lost her patience. Or made it appear so -- you could never really know.
Anyway, my mentor got what he wanted -- Free to enjoy his life, clear of all obligations. But with the option to aid me in whatever way and lighten my own contractual obligations, if he so wished.
I, however, had to find enough souls to be worth our own. She was in the habit of collecting souls and not giving away anything without surety. Although the worth of souls makes this sound like an open-ended bargain that was subjective and wholly open to interpretation, the Hells have a way of measuring the worth of souls, and among devils it was a well-established metric.
We conferred on this -- a risky move, for it gave her time to regroup and strategize as well. She wanted it simply: That my own soul was forfeit if I could not find enough souls to balance our pact. And my mentor's as well, if I could not find enough souls to at least free him of his bond.
The value of our souls, then, and how quickly our debts could be discharged, was the key.
Dear reader, by this time would will also have realized that the corruption of others and the deliverance of their souls to the cruel mercies of the Hells was of no consequence to us, and in truth, at the time, we cared not. Judge me how you will. I could think of many unworthy souls that deserved any measure of torments in the Hells, but was under no illusion that my morals would take a back seat if I got desperate.
Finally, we were ready for the second round of negotiations. As the value of the souls we would give her could not be predicted, we mutually agreed to use the accepted devil's metric -- something she could not twist, for the scales are the same for all devils everywhere. Then -- and here is what we thought our crowning achievement -- we stipulated that our souls would be forfeit only at such time as I chose to cancel the bargain -- to forever stop looking for souls. And if I were coerced into resignation or if I were to fail through no fault of my own, the contract would be void and both souls would be free.
It were standard enough to say that coercion generally nullified contracts. What we managed to slip past her -- or thought we did -- was a clear exit strategy rather than a contingency that would see our souls forfeit. If I were to be run over by a horse and buggy by accident, for example, we'd both be free.
Amazingly, she agreed. Of course, not without demands of her own.
In exchange for this concession, she demanded I be willing to be bound to her -- so that she could more freely cross the dimensional divide from the Hells. She naturally expected that we would demand that any interference that might cause me to fail at the agreement or lose a soul that would otherwise be delivered to her, would void the bargain.
Being her portal to this world was not without severe risk -- not the least being that bigoted anti-devilry fanatics would want to burn me alive as a witch. From her perspective, that was a risk too, as it would safely void the contract for me. But having a mortal conduit out of the uncomfortable Hells was a great boon to her, and when my mentor carefully stipulated that at no time should she possess me or intrude on my thoughts if I did not wish it, she gave only token objections.
Then the moment came to sign. For perhaps the first time since his fall from human morality, my mentor looked upon me with genuine fatherly love and pledged to help me as much as he could.
I was under no illusion that he might just skip town.
He signed the pact.
The succubus signed the pact.
With lingering doubts... I signed the pact.
The succubus sighed with almost orgasmic relief.
"Old man," she addressed my mentor, "do you have any idea how much your soul is worth?"
The ground beneath the summoning circled cracked open and she let herself drop into that fiery portal into the Hells, to register her prize.
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, to try to calm myself. "What have I done?"
My mentor held me firmly by my upper arms, as if to help me pull myself together. "You have done what is now done. There's no point looking back."
*
I left the city the very next day. My mentor had intended to extend his merchant business as far as Thyatis and then beyond to the West and away from the sometimes irritating politics between the rival Empires of Alphatia and Thyatis. Sure, it was work to a certain extent, but mostly schmoozing to gain connections and to get a foot in the door. Then the actual staff would do the actual work. Combined with my new diabolically-enhanced charisma, it was easy to do.
My mentor was settled into a comfortable semi-retirement in Alphatia and had no wish to go traipsing about the world anymore, so I would be his lieutenant. Now that the well-being of his very soul was in my care, he was happy to share his considerable assets. My parents were set up into a comfortable though not luxurious existence and he promised to keep an eye on them now and again, lest someone strike at me through them.
I was given gold and references and I set off to begin establishing myself politically and financially, though connections and trade, thereby increasing both our fortunes.
Thyatis City seemed like a great place to start. Everyone had a greedy streak a mile wide, which made things treacherous at times, but for the most part, money talks and in short order I was moving in the right social circles.
The succubus was too excited not to immediately advantage herself of me as her conduit, and once she had registered the contract in whatever vaults of Dis such contracts were archived, she immediately came into our world and basically disappeared on whatever business interested her. I did not hear from her for many months and would otherwise have forgotten all about it, were it not for the matter of souls.
With the wealth freely given to me, I indulged myself to excess. I was free with gifts to buy my way into places to be seen and to chat with persons of influence. From there, my infernally bestowed charm and looks sailed me the rest of the way. My nights were sensual indulgences of lust, ranging from dalliances with delicious debutantes to orgies with the classier courtesans.
I deliberately distanced myself from real relationships and made no attempt to disguise that: To love -- to truly love -- is a dangerous thing when one could be desperate to save one's own soul. And, if I were true to myself, I knew that it I would choose my soul over any one else's if it came down to that.
Dear reader, by now you should be thoroughly convinced that I am no saint, or even possessed of average standards of humanity, to be willing to send souls to Hell.
The bottom feeders in Thyatis, eager to get ahead, were fairly easy pickings for contracts with Hell and I delivered a few souls to Hell every week, usually in exchange for a mere pittance -- money for brief indulgences, health for a longer life, or revenge against someone who was otherwise untouchable by their low status. I justified it with the knowledge that their brief and unwise lives were made slightly longer and more enjoyable at least, before whatever servitude awaited them. Souls of minor consequence as theirs were frequently used as a type of "spare change" among devils, so they were probably in limbo more than anything -- sealed in a soul container and passed around now and again. Or they might be reincarnated as some lowly devil grunt. In any case, I tried not to think too much about it.
A month later, my dear succubus patron came calling to give me a much overdue report. All those souls sent had amounted to... just a pittance.
I was shocked.
Well, not really. I suppose my mortal perception had placed a higher value on something like a soul, but by the scales of Hell, their meaningless lives meant meaningless souls as well. My mentor, who had accomplished much and owed much of his power to Hell, was a shining prize.
In short, I had a long way to go.
She made me an offer to speed up the process.
Ah hah. Finally, here it was. The real reason she had agreed to our apparently clever and superior terms.
For as long as there were contracts with the Hells, there were those who would try to find a way out. Weren't my mentor and I just two such?
Instead of renegotiating contracts, some chose a more brute force approach, which invariably meant magical wards, living on holy ground, maybe even undeath, but in general a lot of penance to those very gods they spurned in the hope of some intercession after death. Mostly that latter was futile, unless they were of epic consequence, but the former generally meant a lot of trouble for devils wanting to collect their due.
Enter the Bailiffs.
Hell's Bailiffs are basically skip tracers, sent to collect debts. That is, souls owed to Hell. Not being devils or any kind of true infernal being themselves, they could freely pass wards or step onto holy ground to deliver a killing blow, thus putting the soul on the highway to Hell. There frequently isn't much of a hurry to claim a soul, but even Devils have debts to others. Debts that are paid in the currency of souls.
It's soulless work. However justified the bargain, however much genuine good it did, the pact is binding and the soul is owed. Plus, there is often the matter of making an example of the victim, lest too many others try the same. Bailiffs weren't judges. They just do as they are told and they can't modify or void contracts. And if some might be worried about crises of conscience, well, you have to remember that in my case, I was already damning souls on a weekly basis. Besides, there were always other bailiffs that could be sent, so if not one, then another would be along shortly.
It's also dangerous work. To be able to defy Hell's regular bill collectors is no small feat to arrange. However they have done it, there's bound to be a catch somewhere to make getting around it tricky.
That she offered it meant this was clearly going to be to her extreme advantage in more ways that she already openly stated: She would be paid a commission for my efforts which she would wholly attribute toward settling my account. And these souls she would direct me to... Even a fraction of their worth was more than a score of the unimaginative gutter-trash I was sending to damnation.
It wouldn't be such a tempting offer if I weren't so deep in debt. She had, I was under no delusion, planned this from the start, from the very time we had offered to balance our account with souls. She freely added that she'd get her payment plus priceless influence with her peers and superiors, and my free services -- all of which would be exceedingly gratifying to her, so much so that she even offered to at any time give me useful advice on the current mark.
Useful advice for getting out of whatever jam she would get me into.
I wanted to think about it.
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