IN> [Asmodeus Month] Vice Division

[Moe Lane]

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 Superior's overall vision; and Band-dissonance,
which comes from a betrayal of the celestial's own inherent nature.
The Game's theoretical purpose is to stamp out examples of either as
being a hindrance to the War.  A dissonant demon is close to being a
Discordant demon is close to being a Renegade, and so forth, so the
Game acts proactively.

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.


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