Kill Six Billion Demons III: “Seeker of Thrones” (part five)

Short chapter this time. Maybe I'll manage to do two, depending on how long the one after it is. Regardless, Killy and Cio just left the Heretics' Court. The latter battered, dispirited, and haunted by...it would probably be racist to call them "inner demons," but if it wasn't then that's the term I'd use. The former almost, but not quite, too drugged out to notice. Their next adventure is off to a dubious start.


Speaking of inauspicious beginnings, the chapter opens on Oscar in an even seedier looking stripclub/opiumden mashup than the place they recruited him in. He hands out another magic piece of paper (Cio/Yabalchoath's signature communication method, or perhaps a more widely used devil technique. They do have a language theme after all, so writing-magic could be something many of them share an affinity for) and waits for the replies.

As he does, he begins singing what the captions describe as an "old devil drinking song."

I'll talk more about this song later, because it continues in the background for several pages of recruitment montage, and it definitely merits attention. For now though, I'd just like to point out that Oscar has forgone his "bad man" shirt today in favor of a pair of ridiculously baggy harem pants that just say "evil" all over them. This is important. Not for any particular reason. It's just important.

As for the recruitment montage itself, now. I'm not sure how much I should care about any of these people, since they're reader submitted and therefore unlikely to be important, but still, we need to at least know who everyone is. The first to approach Oscar is an acrobatic gold devil who really needs the money for a new mask, and her pale four-armed assistant who knows his way around machines (and not much else, due to being a pale devil and all).

The bottom text says that 1-11 is an amalgamation of several reader submissions who had similar concepts. Given his name and occupation, I suspect that his full name is 1-11-111-1111-11111-111111, and that he was masked by a boring engineers' guild not too long ago. There might be an interesting story behind how he got free of his boring engineer creators and enslaved by the less boring Susie, but I'm sceptical of the comic ever getting a chance to go into it.

Next, Oscar goes out into a filthy back alley full of unusually friendly feral cats to hand a red slip to someone in person. This is another pale devil, whose true name is as unknown to us as it undoubtedly is long. He's referred to only as "the cat-master," and he seems to be an assassin type.

Unlike 1-11, he doesn't even have a pseudo-mouth to smoke with. But he likes cats, and he's willing to work for Oscar, and I guess that's all we're going to learn about Kitty Kommander for now.

Next devil on the list appears to be a much better established sort, emerging from the door of a large residence that appears to be his own. Upon hearing Oscar's pitch, they remove their disguise to reveal the notorious devil-duo, Chibi the blue painter and Ricardio the red heart guy.

The public believes them to have vanished off the face of throne a decade ago. In truth, they merely assumed the new secret identity of Vincent Adultman the respectable gold devil.

I'm glad that these guys are all at least fun to look at, for as long as they'll last.

Jump ahead a bit to Oscar regrouping with the main cast. Either at Cio's behest, or just as token of no hard feelings after their little cocaine-induced spat a couple chapters ago, he's brought her a light armor suit in her size.

It could turn out to be cursed of course, but that seems like it might be sabotaging the mission, so most likely not.

Also, Killy is a business major? What? That surprises me. I'm not sure why it surprises me, but it does.

Oscar cackles a little at the absurdity of "a human coming along on a devil job," and brushes Killy off when she reminds him that this entire mission was hers to begin with. Clearly, from Oscar and the other devils' perspective, this is a Yabalchoath caper and Killy is just along for window dressing. Those of the heist crew members who didn't work for the Gilded Cage previously were drawn by the allure of working with the legendary crime lady, not because of any particular interest in either Killy or Mammon.

Which also means that, just as White Chained warned, these guys are likely to be among the lowest of the low even compared to the generally amoral standard of devilkind. Yabalchoath's reputation isn't going to be attracting the best of their species, that's for damned sure.

Killy tries to hide her anxiety when Oscar suggests that being around her might be influencing Cio to be more like her old self again.

Why do I imagine Oscar sounding like the Robot Devil from Futurama?

They cross a polluted, mirey wasteland, and Mammon's fortress of Yre comes into view over the hillocks. A few hundred yards short of Yre's defence perimeter, they find Cio engaged in conversation with a green devil with a shawl of gold coins and a gang of zombie guards.

Is this actually THE Charon? An ancient visitor to our own world, who inspired the Greek ferryman of the dead? If so, I wonder if he knows we named a moon after him. Granted, it's just as likely that the influence goes the other way, with his binder having named him after the mythical figure, but either is possible. I wonder if he can just teleport that pile of gold coins around with him, or if he just has the zombies carry it and him around on a palanquin or something.

Also, Cio just rocking that leather catsuit. Killy, I really think you should give her invitation to smash some serious consideration.

There's also a final recruit, who hurries over apologizing for her tardiness. It's a human furry who unconvincingly claims to be a master locksmith.

Is this Oscar's idea of a joke? It's either that, or Lucky Felicia turning out to be the most competent and dangerous member of the crew just for the subversion.

Now that they're all assembled, Cio reminds them all that the cut is ten percent (is that referring to whatever other random valuable shit they steal along the way, or are they planning to cut Zaid into pieces? ) and then officiates over a little ceremony that devils do before going on capers. Most of the crew know the drill. Only the pale devils who can't talk are unable to (and 1-11 is busy counting their team members over and over again to care anyway), Killy is a little slow to follow along, and Felicia just posts cringe.

The whole "blind god to our evil deeds" part seems like they might have picked this ritual up from a (probably extinct) human culture in the past. Yisun doesn't seem to particularly disapprove of stealing and killing, and neither Yis, Un, nor any of the multiplicity is worthy of the title "God." Although...hmm. The fact that this "God" is referred to as a "her" could just be a legacy of whatever culture they took this from, or it COULD hint that they're referring to Yis. They were made from the black fire of her substance, so maybe Yis is at least their God.

Yis and Un never seem to have gotten to do anything, so it's anyone's guess what Yis' feelings are toward crime. Maybe the devils don't know either, but they have rituals to blind her just in case she doesn't like it. Even though she's dead.

Or, again, this could just be a ritual from some otherwise-extinct monotheistic religion practiced by some thief-cult on one of the 777,777 worlds that the devils appropriated. Totally possible as well.

But anyway, speaking of diabolical culture, let's talk about Oscar's song!

...

I'll put the full lyrics in spoilers, in case anyone isn't able to listen to an actual song at the moment. For everyone else, there's an excellent rendition that someone did on YouTube. It's good enough that I'm actually imagining Oscar sounding like this guy now instead of the robot devil:

There's another version on YouTube that gives it more of an upbeat sea-shanty quality that's probably closer to the intended tone, but it takes some liberties with the lyrics and isn't as well executed musically IMO. Overall, I prefer the embedded version.

At first glance, it's a pretty by-the-numbers (if much better composed than most) dark fantasy mercenary song about killing for money and spending it all on ale and whores. There are some details that make me wonder if it actually started out as a DEVIL drinking song, specifically. For instance "wine and women aren't coming for free" suggests a gendered view of sexuality and hedonism that I'm not sure if devils share or not. This could mean that either the devils adapted this song from a human origin somewhere, or that it at least took inspiration from human drinking songs. Then again, hmm...well, devil sexuality is a subject we've barely scratched the surface of, so I could be totally off there. The fact that it casually references hats as a symbol of wealth and status suggests that it originated somewhere in Mottom's empire, but considering that she rules a seventh of the multiverse that could still mean almost anything.

What I find most notable is that the second verse does something you wouldn't expect a drunken murderhobo anthem to do. It distinguishes an "us" who sit out in the gutter, deprived and looked down upon, juxtaposed against a privileged, selfish "them" who hoard all the wealth. It's not painting a picture of a dog-eat-dog world where might makes right (though there's a bit of that as well in the third verse). Before describing the marks as easy targets with a lot worth stealing, the song establishes that they don't deserve what they have, and that killing them and taking it is a form of justice. Or vengeance. The third verse, with its "all men are just waiting to die" finale, does point to a more generically mercenary worldview, but if you read it through the lens of the second verse it might have more layers to it. "All men die." We die. The men with the hats die. We'll kill them, or they'll kill us for trying to kill them; in the end, we're all ultimately the same. A mutual kill is at least going to give us equality, even if it isn't the ideal outcome.

As I've pointed out before, devils aren't at the bottom of the Wheel's pecking order. Being a devil - even a lower, weaker devil, like the ones you'd expect to be sitting out in the gutters - looks a hell of a lot better than being a peasant starving to death on some miserable wasteland-world, or a sacrificial victim being fed to one of the human or devil elites to buy them a few more minutes of lifespan. In the grand scheme of things, these lower-rung devils are more often victimizers than victims. But, even if they're hypocritical and myopic about it, they DO seem to have an awareness and a resentment of how the multiversal order exploits them. For all that they openly embrace evil - both aesthetically (Oscar's wardrobe, full stop) and in terms of their actual actions - there's a genuine sense of grievance underlying it. Rightly or wrongly.

Granted, this attitude might also be an artifact of the human songs that influenced this devil one. On the other hand though, the song gives it a lot more emphasis and attention than the "wine and women" bit, or the clearly regional detail about hats.

What I'm taking way, way too many words to say is that these devil mercs might actually have class consciousness. There's something that can be worked with here.

...

After the traditional anti-prayer, the green devil who goes by Charon starts telling us more about Mammon's backstory. It confirms my inferences from before, and also answers some of my longstanding questions about the nonhumans of Throne.

Mammon did indeed come from that species of smaller squid-camel type things. They're known as "the kind people" (awkward name. I'll call them kindsies), and they are a type of servant. I'm not sure what their intended function in Throne was; we've mostly seen them hauling freight around, which could have been their original purpose, but it's also possible that that's just what they've had to do to make ends meet in the demiurgic era. Well, anyway! The kindsies are a humble, non-confrontational people, as the name implies. As a young kindsie, Mammon was seen as something of a deviant because of his rare ambition and aggression. To hear Charon tell it, Mammon's clan didn't just try to reign him in and prevent him from accumulating too much wealth, but were outright cruel to him because of his rejection of their traditional lifestyle. As a result, Mammon stopped valuing his family and community, and was left with only his wealth and business empire to care about. When he bought his way into the ranks of the demiurgi, his intolerant tribesmen made to regret everything.

He's gained weight since then.

Well, there's the dramatic question behind this volume's character arc, I guess. Will Killy be lured into alienating all her friends in pursuit of whatever Incubus convinces her that her "ambition" is? From the sound of things, Mammon was the hero of his own story once (though Charon might be romanticizing him just a tad). Something forced him to choose between his people and his big dreams, and - because of whatever combination of their cruelty, his own callousness - he embraced the tyrannical version of the faith shared by the Black Kings. He may not have had a literal tempter figure like Incubus pulling him toward that end, but it was the same type of temptation.

I wonder what Incubus' own story was. Similar sort of Citizen Kane arc as Mammon's? Could be. But it could also be that he was just born into a royal family and never questioned his right to rule. Or maybe he was just a born psychopath. I don't think we'll be finding out for a while yet.

Anyway! Charon waxes poetic about how great and strong and yet tragic Mammon is. Oh, I see. He's a Mammon-wannabe. That's why he's got his own little treasure pile to sit on top of, and why it's all heaped up right outside of Mammon's security perimeter. Of course, in his desire to emulate Mammon, he's going to try to do whatever Mammon would do. And in this situation, Mammon would try to rob Mammon, so he's on the team! To do anything else would be to fail to live up to Mammon!

He also seems to know about (or to have created?) a secret underground passageway into the outer walls of Yre. So, he's the one getting them past the first layer of security.


That's a good stopping point, I think. Next time, the infiltration of Yre!