How many demons in Hell total and what do they do?

[JCD]

Originally Posted by ladyarcana55

So here is my guess for Andrealphus' breakdown...

Impudites 25%
They get people to relax around them and like them. Enough said

Lilim 15%
Because of their rarity. Andre would have them all of he could, I am guessing.

Calabim 8%
You always need muscles but destroying things and beating them up does not make for a good time, in most people's eyes

Djinn 18%
This may be a little high but I am thinking of those 'obsessed, stalkers'. They have to come from somewhere

Balseraph 18%
Sometimes, all you need are the right words to get someone to give in to their desires

Habbalah 10%
Annoying with the whole 'angel' thing, but they can enhance a person's feeling of desire and other things.

Shedim 6%
They may be disgusting but they can really break down a person's moral scruples like nothing else!

Does this sound about right to anyone?

Anyone surprised at the number of Shedim in Lust's employ has obvoiusly never watched any Hentai...

I agree with most of those numbers, though I think the Calabim a bit high. Likewise the Lilim, not from an lack of desire on his part, but simply from a rarity standpoint.

Trim the Lilim to 10, the Calabim to 5. Up Shedim to 9 and Habbalah to 13. Otherwise I think it pretty spot on.

[ladyarcana55]

Originally Posted by JCD

Trim the Lilim to 10, the Calabim to 5. Up Shedim to 9 and Habbalah to 13.

Habbalah 13%? Why?

[JCD]

Originally Posted by ladyarcana55

Habbalah 13%? Why?

Just because they are so good at manipulating emotions.

[JCD]

Next question: What percentage of Hell is less then 9 forces? Anyone consider force breakdowns?

[Archangel Beth]

I generally assume that the vast majority of Hell is below-9-Forces -- but the majority of <I>that</I> is 1-3-Force demonlings that go squish if you step on them hard. (Some of my sekrit fic has a bunch of vaguely pigeon-like demonlings on a rooftop. The protagonist vainly asks if any of them've seen someone running across the roof recently? They just burbled; being 1 CelForce is not so good for the memory...)

[JCD]

Paging through the APG and IPG, here are the breakdown of favored and non-favored bands for each particular Superior. Most of them are not surprising. Anything marked with a (?) is a supposition.



Seraphs: Many with Michael, Janus Few

Cherubs: Many David Laurence

Ofanim: Few: Novalis, Laurence (?)

Elohim: Many: David, Dominic, Janus, Yves; Few: Laurence, Novalis

Malakim: Many: David, Laurence, Michael ; Few: Novalis Yves (?)

Kyriotates

Mercurians: Many: David, Gabriel, Janus, Jean, Marc, Novalis; Few: Dominic (?)



Calabim: Many: Belial Saminga, Valefor; None: Vapula

Habbalah: Many: Asmodeous

Lilim: Many: Andrealphus, Valefor, Few: Saminga

[Icelander]

Hell is empty;
and all the devils are here.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Hell is empty;
and all the devils are here.

How exactly does a Shedim in Hell keep from going nuts?

"Hell is like Canada. Everybody brags about how big the place is, and yet they all dwell in a thin strip along the border."

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by hcobb

How exactly does a Shedim in Hell keep from going nuts?

Going? Seems to me they've already arrived. :)

[Matthias Wasser]

Originally Posted by Acolyte

Explanation--the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of demons are employed torturing Essence from the damned. While Calabim are obviously good at this (and important for being antiMalakim, and other things, so I agree there are a LOT of them), so are the Punishers, who although annoying with their "we are angels" shtick actually enjoy playing the role of "Heaven's enforcement arm for evil" and beating up on the damned. So I think there should be many more Habbalah than you suggest.

That said, going back to overall numbers...well. There are a lot of damned, and there need to be enough demons to keep them in line. It's not as easy as taking the area under the curve of the human population and dividing it by 2, because Saminga destroys souls (and the other Princes do so occasionally) and lots of souls slip off to the Lower Hells. But you still need many, many, many 7-Force demons and lesser demonlings to keep pumping the damned for all they're worth (aka, 1 Essence/day).

I think it's extremely unlikely that most demons - or even any beyond a few enthusiasts - are busy torturing humans. Like any ruling class with cutthroat intra-class competition, the demon nobility wants to extract a maximum surplus with minimum overhead. Humans have done that successfully to each other for thousands of years, and conveniently all the best surplus-extractors are here. (They'll hardly be distributed evenly over the various Princes, but that's what "in service to" is for.) Most people over history have been peasants and didn't need a great deal of violence to offer up a surplus - the damned should be less docile than typical humans, but also less likely to form solidaristic mass associations, so it's probably a wash. Allow positional mobility and the vast majority have strong incentives to cooperate, especially since you won't be going anywhere for a while.

I'd imagine there's a metropole of a billion or two humans, centered around Shal-Mari and Dis, partially enjoying the fruits of the rural essence surplus and contributing to the infernal economy through wage labor. The other howevermany billion damned are mostly peasants out in the Styx, plus a georgic elite that probably lives a harder afterlife than the metropolitans, but enjoys a higher relative status. Anything with 6+ Forces lies on top of this, and it's this elite world in which the PCs swim. There should also be a bunch of damned living outside the system or interacting with it in only in minor ways.