Chapter 38: On Karma-driven temptation

here I invent a new temptation method.

I'm so happy - today I had  my first real temptation success. Not a soul brought down to hell - but at least I've pushed a human to do something evil. Banzaii!

In the last days, my coworkers had teased me for my Karma investigations, claiming they were worth for nothing. Guess what ? They were wrong.

This evening I saw a man in the tram who thought about what had happened earlier in the afternoon - a young man with a coloured shirt and too much glue in the hair. The advertizing company he works for had just signed a very profitable contract due to a "genius idea" involving a mammoth, a lightbulp and a... well I don't remember what else, and it doesn't matter. Point is, his boss had wrongly attributed the idea to him, although it was actually his coworker's idea. The man in the tram was in a dilemma: Should he tell the boss it was his coworker's idea, or do nothing? Telling the truth was "the right thing to do", but letting the boss believe it was his idea could earn him a raise...

This is just the kind of situation every tempter is waiting for. I decided to play the Karma card and wispered into his ear: "When you tell your boss the truth it might earn you some karma - but if you get this raise, you could spend a part of it to Haïti and get even more karma !"  Once I felt that my victim wasn't insensible to this argument, the rest was easy. I showed him in his mind an image of an imaginary Haïtian beauty on the ruins of her home, looking for food and crying over the loss of her family, and then an image of his coworker in front of his plasma TV, eating potato chips and watching a football game (my patient didn't like football). The choice was easy. He decided what I wanted him to decide - not for himself, but for the Haïtian beauty, and particularly for the Karma she produces. Victory!

(By the way, I doubt he will ever spend money to Haïti. But even if he does, this will not be my problem but the problem of the poor demon who happens to be next to him in this moment.)

 Anyway, this Karma approach seems to be a great method to gain points - and who knows, maybe even souls?

Chapter 11: On Canterbury

In which we learn about a demonic hero and a human martyr.

I was in temptation office to find out whether it has been decided where on Earth I am to be sent to. Turns out it hasn't yet. When I filled out the forms, I put into the case "desired destination" the name "Canterbury, Kent". The reason is that this is the only city name on Earh I have ever heared about. Every demon in Hell knows the name "Canterbury", because of the popular demon Zardax. Who in hell doesn't know the story of Zardax, the hero of Canterbury?

It happened around a thousand years ago, or let it be 800. Zardax wasn't an ordinary tempter, charged of tempting a specific person - he was a "special agent", a tempter sent to Earth to deal with a problematic situation. The situation, in this case, was a completely shipwrecked operation of the "human politics" department, called "Operation Puppetplayer". Zardax was sent to earth for limitation of defect, and what he did was... Well, I better starts from the beginning.

The goal of Operation Puppetplayer had been to corrupt and to undermine the church of England. A weak church is in general a good thing. At this time there was some tension between the church of England and King Henry II, and Corporate had decided to support the king. The start of the operation went smoothly: Our agents had achieved that the king's Lord Chancellor, a certain Thomas Becket, was named Archbishop of Canterbury. He seemed to be the ideal candidate: Intelligence had reported that Becked was decadent, not religious at all, a glutton, drunkart and sinner, and most important: Completely allegiant to the king. He wasn't even priest at this time, he had to be ordained in a hurry. Furthermore, Becket's personal tempter was an experienced and talented demon. What could possibly go wrong?

We shouldn't have been so damn sure about this man. The thing that went wrong was this: After having become Archbishop of Canterbury, Becket discovered god. I don't know why and how this happened, I don't know how many agents of the Enemy were involved, but the results couldn't have been worse. It was a desaster. Becket dropped his Chancellorship, he transformed into an ascetic, and worst of all, he exchanged the loyality to the king for a loyality to the church and did whatever he could to defend the church against the king's attempts to limit it's powers and liberties. The unwilling human agent of hell transformed into a willing agent of the Enemy. The conflict between state and church grew to a war, which could have been a good thing - problem was, the church was willing the war. The pope was already about to excommunicate the king. This had to be stopped.

This is when Zardax was sent to earth. Seeing that all attempts to change Becket's mind were useless, he decided to have Becket eliminated. And he did this in the most spectacular and glorious way, a way that earned him a prestigious title and founded his reputation as hero of Hell. You won't believe it: He had Thomas Becket slain, by four honorable king's knights, in the Cathedral of Canterbury, during the service! Having Becket killed was a good move - but doing so in the Enemy's local headquarters, in the full symbolic presence of the Enemy, was a slap in the face for the Enemy. I don't know whether or not the Enemy did care - but Hell was overjoyed. What a coup de main! What a humiliation for the Enemy! What a victory! What a hero!


Well, between you and me, some infernal historians doubt that this was this much a victory for Hell. Of course, we obtained the knight's souls, but Becket became a martyr, inspired many followers of the Enemy and may be still known in modern days - according to those historians. Maybe a more discreet death would have been more useful, some say. But please note that I didn't say I share their opinion - I don't want to get into trouble with Inquisition. Official doctrine says Zardax was a hero, so he was a hero, period.

Anyway, the name "Canterbury" sounds great as a place to be sent to. I've no idea whether it would please me - but wouldn't it be cool to brag about operating in the same location as the famous Zardax did ?

I hope I'll be sent to Canterbury!

Chapter 9 : On Possession

In which we learn about the dangers of exorcism.

One of the obligatory formalities before being sent to earth is a day-long crash course called "Instruction 71p". That was today. A boring instructor told us everything we need to know on possession, exorcism and such.

I won't go into the details. In a nustshell, he told us not to do it. Possessing people, I mean. Corporate doesn't allow it, Inquisition doesn't approve it, and we don't want it - for reasons I will explain below.

Centuries ago, possession was a quite common behaviour. For a tempter, the possibility to seize a human soul, to torture it while still inside its body and to drink its pain and despair is very... well... tempting. In the old days, it was kind of a sport - not encouraged by the authorities, but tolerated.

But there are two problems with this sport. First of all, possessions make the existence of demons very obvious, which is against current politics. Corporate wants us to hide as much as possible the existence of demons, for obvious reasons. The less humanity knows about our existence, the better we can operate in secret. Thus, every possession would risk to compromise our agents in the field.

The second problem is exorcism. A thousand years ago, human followers of the Enemy have developed techniques to expulse a demon from the possessed body. There are still some humans capable of expulsing a demon: Exorcists.


The instructer insisted on the fact that an exorcism is a very unpleasant and painful experience and can destroy a demon. He cited an example of a recent rogue possession and exorcism in New Zealand: The demon, a class-15 tempter from fifth cercle, was destroyed in the process.

As a sidenote, a human can be under full demonic control whithout being possessed by a demon (I am speaking of the spasms-and-funny-voices type of possession). A textbook case was a certain Adolf Hitler who was controlled by a committee of 23 demons. Despite the committee, the operation was surprisingly successful - probably because 13 of the 23 committee members were blackmailed and controled by an ambitious Earl of Hell who wasn't even member of the committe himself. So the committee was a mere facade for the Earl's own decisions. The Earl's goals remain unclear, possibly he intended to get ahead of his cousin and arch-rival who controlled, indirectly, a certain Joseph Stalin. What the two cousins did was completely unauthorized, but as they wreaked havoc with Europe and earned the hell truckloads of souls, Management decided to authorize it a posteriori. Which didn't hinder Inquisition to try both rivals for high treason and heresy, but that's another story...

That was "Instruction 71p".