Devils
Devils personify tyranny, with a totalitarian society dedicated to the domination of mortal life. The shadow of the Nine Hells of Baator extends far across the multiverse, and Asmodeus, the dark lord of Nessus, strives to subjugate the cosmos to satisfy his thirst for power. To do so, he must continually expand his infernal armies, sending his servants to the mortal realm to corrupt the souls from which new devils are spawned.
Baatezu (sing & pl12; pronounced: /beɪˈɑːtɛzuː/ bay-AT-eh-zoo34 or: /ˈbɑːtɛzuː/ BAH-teh-zoo5) were the dominant race of devils in the Nine Hells, once evil mortals whose souls, due to diabolical deed or infernal contract, were condemned to Baator. Stripped of individuality through vile torture and remade from the divine energy harvested from the collective corrupted, the baatezu institutionalized suffering, ascending to tyranny on the backs of the damned.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Dissecting a baatezu revealed that baatezu bodies had internal organs. These occupied positions that were quite similar to the positioning of corresponding human organs. However, there were a few differences between human and baatezu organs. For example, a baatezu gained heightened attunement towards planar matters through their highly developed pineal glands, increased combat abilities but also an aggressive personality from a big—up to triple the human's size—adrenal gland, greater endurance through longer muscles, extremely high short-term strength through an increased transmitting capability of fluids such as blood in the shorter muscles, and an increased ability to withstand and recover from physical blows through scaled internal organs. Baatezu blood's coloration changed depending on the atmosphere they were at the moment, its default color was black. One mystery about baatezu anatomy was their bones. These slightly metallic bones gave other people the impression that they were not grown but carved and gave people the idea that a baatezu's body was constructed.
Promotion
Genetics and Reproduction
Creation
A typical baatezu life started as a soul of a dead lawful evil mortal on Baator. The dozen or so souls that were deemed the best out of about a hundred thousand were turned into lemures. Baatezu also bought additional souls from night hags. The selection standards were how well the larva could fend for itself. This process was as artificial as it sounded. Leaving a soul alone caused it to become a nupperibo, the natural result.19
Nupperibos were gathered and turned into lemures. This was sold as a demotion but in truth, the process was a change into something completely different. The reason for this inclusion into baatezu ranks was that the baatezu were cautious to not leave the nupperibo alone so that they had a chance to evolve into something that may be strong but not one of their own.19
The third way in which a baatezu could start its life was to spontaneously arise from the plane of Baator. This was very rare.
Sex
A baatezu did not necessarily have sex organs. Exactly a third of a given species of baatezu had male organs, another exact third female, and the last exact third no sexual organs. Out of the two-third that had such organs, only the male ones were functional in the sense of being capable of producing offspring. There were only three exceptions, the lemures and nupperibos who were universally sexless and the Erinyes who were universally female. The sex of a given baatezu was chosen for it by its superior. The superior's choice depended on the promoted baatezu's performance record. When the superior got the impression that a given baatezu had to learn something about one or the other sex then it was turned into it on promotion. Therefore, it happened that a baatezu changed its sex or became sexless multiple times in its life. The one exception to this rule were the pit fiends who were allowed to make their own choice on being promoted to one and could change it on a whim. However, higher ranking devils lost this ability to change sex.24
As mentioned above, only male baatezu were fertile. Because their women were infertile, baatezu offspring were always made with female members of other races. This was done out of two reasons. First, there was simple lust. Second and the more prevalent one, baatezu society encouraged spreading baatezu influence through increasing the number of people who had a baatezu in their ancestry, baatezu had real zeal to leave many children.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Baatezu had no need for sustenance. However, that did not mean that they did not eat or drink, it was something of a hobby of theirs and not a necessity.39
Regarding food, in order of preference, a baatezu liked meat from a sentient creature, meat from a good sentient creature, and meat from creature for whom goodness was part of its being like it was case with devas or solars. Eating allowed a baatezu to add the life force of the eaten creature to itself. What a baatezu rarely did was eating a soul while the owner was still alive. They did this only, when the soul changed into a physical form after its owner's death, for example, when it turned into a larva. The reason for this was that baatezu viewed souls as a potential resource that would become available to them, if they managed its corruption. Therefore, eating it before the owner's death was viewed as a wasteful thing to do.39
When baatezu drank, they did this from rivers and lakes of Baator that held fluids that were basically worthless for mortals. Baatezu could gain the effect of drinking not only through oral means, but also through taking in moisture from the air.29
The only group of devil that never ate or drank were the nupperibos.
Biological Cycle
Sleep
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Death
Baatezu claimed two things about their mortality. First, barring violent death, they could not die. Second, if they died, they were reincarnated back on Baator.14
The former claims were considered for all purposes the truth. The latter was not entirely the truth. When a baatezu died on Baator, it was dead. When a baatezu died somewhere else, it depended on whether it had a say in being there or not. For example, a baatezu who was outside of Baator because of a superior's order, was considered to be there out of its free will and if it was killed there, it was dead. When they were somewhere else because of somebody, like another baatezu, summoned them, they reincarnated as a nupperibo on Baator.102
Baatezu feared real death, because they had no clue what it meant. A dead mortal received some form of afterlife, but what a dead baatezu received, if anything, was not clear and that frightened them to no end.14
Reincarnation
As mentioned above, a baatezu that died on a plane other than Baator while being there not out of its will, was reincarnated on Baator as a nupperibo. "Not being outside of Baator out of its own will" also included being somewhere because it was summoned there and said summoning was instructed to be conducted by the summoned baatezu.102
Baatezu, at least in high positions, gave others details-rich descriptions of themselves as nupperibos, so they could be found by their subordinates when they die and turned into nupperibos. On being found, they were turned into lemures and promoted back to their old position from there. However, this method had some problems. First, it was seriously thought that distinguishing one specific nupperibo from others was very hard for the baatezu themselves. Second, the process of re-promotion was not always done and a baatezu did not regain its memories as a high-ranking fiend until it was promoted to its former form and regaining the position without special treatment could take a lot of time. Third, it happened that the subordinates simply did not care about following the order to find their former superiors as nupperibos, leaving them to fend for themselves back to their positions. Despite these problems, baatezu found it more desirable than death.
Additional Information
Social Structure
Baatezu fell in three categories: least, lesser, and greater baatezu. Baatezu had the option to be promoted when they learned the one lesson that their current form tried to teach them about the nature of lawful evil. Lemures and nupperibos were an exception.20
The ways by which a baatezu could be promoted were twofold: First was promotion by chance, only open to lemures, and second intentional promotion, a bureaucratic process. The baatezu had ministries that observed every single baatezu and kept records about them to be absolutely certain whom to promote and whom not.21
On an individual level baatezu wanted to rise to a position where they would not be pushed around (the motivation of low-ranking baatezu), on macro level to improve the lot of their entire race (the motivation of high-ranking baatezu). The baatezu did this because their survival hinged on it. For example, fighting the Blood War was only possible for the numerically disadvantaged devils because they had competent commanders.21
The criteria that the Ministry of Promotion evaluated were time served and performance. Baatezu had a minimum time they had to serve in a particular role that could only grow depending on their performance. A "good performance" by baatezu standards was not necessarily defined by the show of excellence as much as the absence of mistakes, which may mean actual results for a "good performance" were mediocre.22 Lower-ranking baatezu who learned to master their violent impulses were often first in line for promotion.13
Bribing officials and otherwise manipulating the records to influence the promotion of a particular fiend was punishable for both a manipulating official and for a fiend that wanted a promotion. However, this did not mean that it did not happen and the possibility for punishment was viewed as an encouragement to be subtle and good at behind-the-scene-activities.22
The exact method by which a baatezu was promoted was undergoing torture. Every form of a baatezu had a different form of torture to attain it. However, there were a few commonalities. First, these torture method were immediate and several baatezu worked in concert to modify or torture the body of the promoted baatezu into its new form, which was always that of a full adult version of the species they were promoted to.23
Baatezu society was fully meritocratic with no proverbial "glass ceiling" and where an individual's capabilities and willingness to take command were determining factors in one's success.
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