MALAEL
Punisher of All Things
The Puzzle God
The Master of Malice and Cruelty
The Old Man
Father of Suffering
He Who Rends the Flesh
Malael is the gatekeeper and the progenitor.
Unlike all other demons of the Goetia, Malael has no official title such as President, Duke or Prince. He commands no army or legions, but rather he commands and creates all things that transcend to the next world. Like a pandemic custodian for the underworld, he gathers the souls of those that are worthy and with them he fuels the fires of the empyrean.
Long before kings and princes ruled the underworld, there was Malael. Building the bedrock of Hell's kingdom on a dais made from blood, flesh, bile and ashes.
He has taken many forms and been known by many names over eons, but primarily takes the form of a weapon used in some form of heinous betrayal or malevolent violence and when summoned, he most commonly appears in the form of a frail old man with no hair wearing soiled and tattered robes. It is thought that he does this in order to lower the defenses of those who call upon him, making them that much more susceptible to his commands.
Apostates of Malael follow five tenets:
1. The flesh is to be disdained, yet also worshiped. Ultimately, the flesh is meaningless as we are all one in the hereafter, but while confined within it for our time in the dirt, it is to be appreciated and celebrated as well as twisted, contorted and crafted.
2. Pain and suffering are the instruments and nourishment of freedom. It is only through giving and receiving intense pain and suffering immeasurable that one can truly understand what lies beyond and underneath our corporeal forms.
3. Those who shut their eyes tightly and refuse to see the truth must be made to understand through pain and violence. Only when they have far surpassed what they thought to be their threshold for anguish, can they truly see the light.
4. In the beginning, there was no mankind. We were all one single entity, an amorphous mass of writhing maws and bloodshot eyes, mountains of bone and oceans of blood screaming to the universe in a symphony of discord.
It is as an affront to the hypocrisy of the younger gods who still cling to the belief of individuality in the hereafter that we consume the flesh of others. And with the flesh, we consume the soul so as to confound and disrupt the order of individual souls in the afterlife, merging each being with our own with each one eaten. With each consumed soul, we bring all others back into the primordial void of disarray.
5. As we confound the gods with the combining of souls, so do we confound men on earth by disassembling and reassembling the flesh, combining pieces from multiple souls into one towering sculpture of madness in honor of the Puzzle God Malael. Horrifying and appalling those with weaker constitutions and luring those with an unknown yearning for the temptations of the flayed flesh.