Chapter thirteen:The Fourth Age: The Compact

When the time came for the assembly of the gods, each had prepared a treaty to solve the dispute in a manner satisfactory to his or her goals. Zheenkeef suggested turning all mortals into furniture, automata and mechanisms for the gods’ convenience. “If we treat them as mere servants, why bother with will? Let an elf be my footstool,” she said.
The gods knew she said it to inflame their arguments, so they might choose the opposite and abandon mortals completely—such chaos would serve Zheenkeef, who cared little for worship. And indeed, Rontra suggested as much: that the gods should do nothing but watch mortals, and would no longer provide the slightest whisper or blessing.
Debate lasted for years, for no god would compromise. Meanwhile, mortal kingdoms grew, collapsed, and were replaced by greater kingdoms, often led by progeny of the gods. These kingdoms warred among themselves but the gods didn’t notice. No humans were judged, for Maal did not attend to his duties; but his father, Mormekar, continued to reap their souls and give them new life, so they were reborn as infants. The mortals were abandoned by the gods, left to their own devices. They built great cities and leveled them. They were neither punished for misdeeds, nor rewarded for goodness. Eventually, the gods saw the strife-torn product of their neglect, and realized they needed to choose their course. They agreed upon an arcane document, called the Compact, which would allow the gods pursue their goals, but give mortals freedom to walk their own paths.
The Compact set gods apart from mortals. The gods crafted their own plane, outside of the mortal sphere: a great mountain, with seven great cities as the mountain ascended. This was Heaven, and at its pinnacle was placed the home of the gods. In that city, the gods built a great palace from which to watch the Material Plane. Maal’s underground kingdom was moved to its own plane as well, and the gods made a long dark river that flowed from the mortal sphere into the land of the dead.
By the terms of the Compact, the gods would no longer directly manipulate mortals, but would accept the power of their worship, or from actions aligned with the gods’ morals and divine domains. They would only speak to mortals who sought them out, and only give power in return for worship. But this was not the most dramatic change. To the dismay of the other gods, Tinel logically demonstrated that any system in which the gods spoke to mortals, rewarding good deeds and punishing evil, denied them free will. For if mortals truly knew the gods watched them, and that anyone who their will would be punished, it made the choice of wickedness so foolish as to be absurd. It became a simple decision to avoid pain: the sort of reflex any animal would possess. Unless wickedness also had its rewards, free will would not prosper. Thus, the gods decided they would allow Hell’s creatures to tempt mortals. The gods opened a portal to Hell, and demanded that its demon princes come forth and be appraised of what would be permitted.
It is here, dear reader, that we come to the shocking discovery I have made about this epoch. In the Treatise I have used as the basis of my own, there is an exacting description of this moment. As I said earlier, Kador’s fall is not all that we have been led to believe. For when they demanded that the leaders of the demons come to them, only Kador that came to the portal.
He demanded they call him Asmodeus, Lord of Hell. There were no longer any demons in Hell, for that he and his disciples had banished them. In Hell, Kador took a new name and appearance. He took the mantle of rule for himself and his divils, a word the Treatise uses that has obviously become “devils” in our tongue. Thus, when the churches say Kador suffers in Hell, they tell a half-truth, for while he may be tormented, he dwells there as overlord, not prisoner. The gods withdrew at once from the portal.
Having learned that Kador ruled Hell, they were prepared to abandon the Compact, but Darmon convinced them to continue as planned. Having traveled widely among the mortals, he had come to understand a fundamental principle of the wicked heart. “If we give something to the demons and something to the devils, they each shall want what the other has!” he told his family. “Nonsense!” his father called it, but it was easy enough for clever Darmon to demonstrate. “Father, when Kador offered fire to the eldest, you suddenly wanted to be the eldest, didn’t you? You wanted it because your brother did, but until you knew he desired it, until Kador mentioned it, you did not care whether you were the eldest or not,” Darmon said. “So shall we trick Kador and the demons, as Kador once tricked you.”
To Kador, who was now Asmodeus, they offered the right to tempt mortals and to win their souls, should they walk the evil path. But the gods made the same offer to the demon princes, and let it be known that Hell and the Abyss would both enjoy the right to capture wicked souls.
Thus the enmity between demons and devils, already powerful, was redoubled, and extended to their influence in the world, for each would prevent the other from claiming souls. Asmodeus recognized Darmon’s plan, for even a god cannot trick one whose wicked mind was made by the Nameless One. However, Asmodeus understood that the only way back to power was to accept the offer. Souls turned to evil denied Heaven power, and might be used to fuel his conquest of the universe.
Therefore, demons and devils are permitted two modes of influence. First, they may engage in the Lesser Temptation, offering whispers and petty favors to lead mortals away from fair dealing, love and virtue. Second, they may provide true magical power and other great gifts, in the Greater Temptation. While Maal may judge any who fall to the Lesser Temptation with occasional mercy, sending them to rebirth or some period as a joyless shade in his realm, those who do not repent of the Lesser Temptation or who give themselves to the Greater, are cast to Hell or the Abyss. Indeed, Maal’s halls or torment are closed, for demons and devils now perform such tasks.
Maal did not close the pits of punishment with a light heart, for he saw that this new order had a great flaw. “We give Hell and the Abyss much power,” he warned his family, “and make it difficult for me to judge the acts of mortals. For indeed, they will be tempted to darkness, and they may do evil, but who shall record all their deeds? Before now, I have asked mortals to tell me of their lives, and I have known their words to be true, but now the truth may be obscured by the power of great evil. It is to Hell’s advantage to make lies on the lips of the damned, for they will thus win souls, and with the souls, power. All deeds must be recorded. This I see.”
The gods agreed, and sought out those demons and devils who has fought on the bridges and in the hulking ruins between Hell and The Abyss for so long that they were an order of beings unto themselves, with dark nations who no longer swore allegiance to either side, and were thus punished by both as traitors. The gods offered to strengthen their citadels and give them an alliance with Heaven, if these creatures would watch the souls of mortals, and record evil deed on black ledgers. The rebel nations agreed, and became the daemons, and their homes were bound to a new plane, Gehenna.
Thus, every person has at least one daemon watching her as she goes through life. It knows her darkest fantasies and most private thoughts. The daemon is the whisper we hear to do ill, made possible by the gods. These wicked spirits record all sins, so Maal might receive a true reckoning when we stand before him.
But the gods are merciful, this we know, for they did not rest with the making of Gehenna. They also formed a sphere outside of Heaven, filling it with a plane of light and joy that they called Elysium. And there they placed a new order of the Celestial Host, the guardian angels, and these beings were charged with watching us for moments of virtue, and encouraging us to act on our better instincts. As daemons write in black ledgers of our sins, guardian angels write of our good deeds, in white ledgers. So it is that each of us is watched not only by the whispering daemons of Gehenna, but also by the singing angels of Elysium. And when we die, Maal receives the ledgers of white and black and knows the truth of our lives, so he may judge without fear of deception

Gehenna and Elysium

While the gods have an arrangement with the powers of Hell and the Abyss through the Compact, the lords of Heaven know that those powers would be just as happy to destroy the Heavens as to cooperate with them. Gehenna, however, is a place of strange and dangerous alliances.
The war of Hell and the Abyss rages across it, and the daemons that call the place home fight in the war, but also serve a greater purpose in the Compact. They watch all mortals and tempt them to small sins – not the sort of sins of titanic evil that become legendary, like wiping out nations or defiling temples. Daemons are the small voices that tell a person to ignore a hungry man begging for alms, or the tiny lust that wells up in a good man’s heart for his brother’s wife.
The daemons record a mortal’s sins in a great black ledger that’s preserved until the sinner’s death, and sent up the dark river to Maal’s Kingdom him to consult, when the mortal must be judged. But just as a person is watched and tempted by the daemons, she is also watched and guided toward goodness by the guardian angels of Elysium. Again, their influence does not lead to the great heroism of legend. They are little voices that move us to charity when it is inconvenient, and the small sighs in our heart that lead us to forgive those who harm us.
If you were to look at a mortal in the Material Plane with the eyes of a god, you would see a person in the middle of a pillar of light. As the pillar extends upwards, to Elysium, it becomes a white light; once it reaches that land of beauty, the pillar becomes a reflection of the mortal formed from pure light – it is this reflection the guardian angels watch and speak to. As the pillar extends downward, to Gehenna, it becomes pure darkness; once it reaches that scarred and putrid plane, it becomes a dark reflection of the mortal that the daemons watch and whisper to. The pillar works much like the silver cord that connects a person’s astral form to his body, but it is invisible to all but the mightiest magic and cannot be severed, except by the will of a god.