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Recently I made a page for Barlowe's Hell, a verse centering on the novels and artworks by Wayne Barlowe. I finished the second book yesterday (the third book, Lucifer's Soul, is forthcoming) and in addition to adding many outright new things, it added context to what existed. So, let's get into it.
Lilith
Arguably the main character of the book (or perhaps one of three), Lilith has the following added. What lacks a specific citation hails from a prior citation, I've just separated them for ease of determination.
Eligor receives several ability updates and an outright upgrade.
Not much for the big guy. Probably more in the next book.
Faraii is back. Faraii is gone. Goodbye Faraii.
Lilith
Arguably the main character of the book (or perhaps one of three), Lilith has the following added. What lacks a specific citation hails from a prior citation, I've just separated them for ease of determination.
- Weapon Mastery: Both Lilith and Ardat Lili (who lacks a page currently) received sword training following the end of the War of Ascendance (The Heart of Hell, page 77). Lilith is already noted to have this, but it is worthy of note that she studied properly, whereas before she only had her natural abilities (which, granted, were still notable). She instantly killed Koh-Gul-Yut the First, a massive Soul-creature and warlord of the renegade souls- and then proceeded to slaughter his entire marauding army on her own (The Heart of Hell, page 109, pg 110)
- Social Influencing: Lilith spent thousands of years corrupting mankind to sin as revenge for being cast from the Garden of Eden (The Heart of Hell, page 79). Another change to an existing ability: before, her Social Influencing was largely convincing others to fight for her, this is another angle of that.
- Enhanced Senses: Citing her time spent in the darkness for thousands of years, Lilith is repeatedly stated to be able to see in the dark (compared to her companion Ardat, who cannot). (The Heart of Hell, page 107). Even in poor weather that obscures most sightlines, Lilith can see incredibly far away (The Heart of Hell, page 145).
- Resistance to Empathic Manipulation: Demons, it turns out, have an extremely mitigated reaction to the incredible grief and sadness given by touching the waters of the Acheron river. While the Abaddim drowned themselves on contact with the river, allowing themselves to sink to the bottom from only a touch, Lilith and her Succubi deliberately sank into the river and walked back out in spite of the grief. So... less that the effects don't happen, just that they can manage their effects better (The Heart of Hell, page 176). The water of the Acheron inflicts the overwhelming sadness that every living thing has ever felt, all at once.
- Demon Abilities: Lilith is confirmed as a Demon as of this book, numerous times. Therefore she should receive the default abilities of a Demon Minor (she is explicitly not a Demon Major in spite of her strength).
- Mind Manipulation: Limited. Lilith can control her created familiar regardless of distance (The Heart of Hell, pg 252).
- Sense Manipulation: Limited. Lilith can choose to see instead through the senses of her familiar regardless of distance.
- Purification: Possibly. It is theoretically possible for an Art Curative (a school of magic Lilith is profoundly skilled at, one of the best in the verse) to counter the effects of the Acheron (detailed above) to negate all downsides completely: she never does this in the book, it is merely discussed as a possibility (The Heart of Hell, pg 267)
- Resistance to Fear Manipulation: Lilith is one of the only ones who does not plug her ears to block out the chittering of the Abaddim, which was stated to be so overwhelming mentally as to cause unnatural dread in those they fought (The Heart of Hell, pg 280).
- Immortality (Type 2): More evidence for her in particular. Adramalik jams an axe into her skull, caving it in: this was considered an attack that should have killed her, and others were surprised that she was not only alive, but returned to action not long after (The Heart of Hell, pg 302).
Eligor receives several ability updates and an outright upgrade.
- Purification (Type 3): Eligor carries around potions that can remove spiritual malaise and fatigue upon being drunk (The Heart of Hell, pg 19)
- Accelerated Development: Eligor's method of training allows those who use it (himself and those he teaches) to learn martial combat at a far, far faster rate than others. This was used to make Lilith and Ardat extremely capable warriors in an unspecified short span of time (The Heart of Hell, pg 77) and later their succubi, which had the specification of being about 12 days (the timelessness of Hell makes it difficult to estimate precisely, since all passage of events is measured by the movement of their moon, which is considered to be mostly chaotic). I'd be fine with putting this as a possibly, since they don't ever really show like... what he does to achieve this, it's always offscreen "we trained with Eligor and became insanely proficient warriors with preternatural speed, what the hell".
- Demon Major Abilities: Eligor was graduated to the position of Demon Major following the War of Ascension by his new master, Put Satanachia (The Heart of Hell, pg 211).
- Tier: Eligor is not only a Demon Major, but he wields iaplor-napta, the old sword of Valefar that made him one of two Demons Major who could physically contend with Moloch (The Heart of Hell, pg 272). As such, Eligor should scale to Moloch directly in his Demon Major key.
- Life Manipulation and Organic Manipulation: Beelzebub was responsible for granting life to all of Hell via a single spreading, corrupting incantation. This resulted in the ground gaining biological properties- it is covered in skin and deeper bears organs outright, with many outright organs existing on the surface (some bizarre, some plain such as eyeballs or mouths). This evidently was fast enough to cover and restrain other creatures, with many being caught beneath the spreading demonflesh (The Heart of Hell, pg 60).
- Extrasensory Perception: Beelzebub can track all of his flies at any given time, sensing them across the Abyss (Here).
- Telepathy: Beelzebub can communicate telepathically with anything corrupted with one of his flies.
- Physics Manipulation: It is not specified how they do it, but both Beelzebub and Abaddon have defied the laws of physics with the structures they built: even by the weird physical laws of Hell, their respective dominions should not be able to sustain the weight they do. By all accounts, their palaces should have collapsed- they are physically impossible (The Heart of Hell, pg 163). This is referenced a little bit later, where Moloch's Tower is stated to stand when it appears it shouldn't be capable of doing so without the support of the palace.
Not much for the big guy. Probably more in the next book.
- Extrasensory Perception: Via equipment. Sargatanas is responsible for the invention of the Finders, demonic inventions that magically track magnetism to allow demons to navigate Hell more easily (The Heart of Hell, pg 55).
Faraii is back. Faraii is gone. Goodbye Faraii.
- Additional Limbs: Faraii will have a new key as a resurrected Ascended Abaddim, in which he has two more legs than previously and a tail that appears to function as an arm (The Heart of Hell, pg 137).
- Weapon Creation: In addition to growing new limbs when needed, Faraii can form his old sword from thin air (The Heart of Hell, pg 189).
- Duplication: As an Abaddim, Faraii can split when sliced in two, forming two smaller versions to continue the fight (The Heart of Hell, pg 210).
- Bodily Weaponry: All Abaddim possess numerous assortments of natural weaponry: mandibles, claws, spikes, and so on.
- Corruption (Type 1): The Abaddim passively spread the slick, corrupted black ground anywhere they go, causing the ground itself to become dead and incapable of supporting any life (even the extremely adaptable lifeforms of Hell find it to be poisonous) (The Heart of Hell, pg 235).
- Fear Manipulation: The chittering of the Abaddim is inherently unnerving, such that war-hardened demons required something to deafen themselves to fight them without becoming horrified (The Heart of Hell, pg 280).
- Tier: This version of Faraii was capable of contending with Eligor (who was a Demon Major at the time), managing to rip out his eye before Eligor got a lucky strike in to kill him (The Heart of Hell, pg 306). Therefore, this key of Faraii should scale straight up to At least 8-B, via Eligor being equal to Valefar, who in turn fought Moloch to a stalemate (and was even ostensibly winning).
- Incorporeality: Limited. Although made of fire, glyphs are shown to have no (or little, at least) physical substance to them, and can "melt" through solid objects to appear on the other side (The Heart of Hell, pg 271)
- Acid Manipulation: Demon spit is shown to be acidic in nature and has a reaction to flesh on contact, melting through it (The Heart of Hell, pg 61).
- Summoning: Any Demon with the rank of Decurion can use Summoning Pits (that is, surface lava) to conjure legions (that is, 5000 per legion) of Legionaries, the lowest form of demonic soldier (The Heart of Hell, pg 154). This was already an ability, but it wasn't clear that it was afforded to even fairly low-ranking Demons. Also the number of demons in a legion was newly specified in this book (The Heart of Hell, pg 268), before it was a vague term. That said, we still aren't told exactly how many legions a single being can summon. Just know its multiple.
- Weapon Creation: With the War of Ascension being over, it seems that most Demons Minor and up are capable of creating the Malpirg javelins from Book One, with this being the standard glyph-based defense against the Abaddim for ranged fighting (The Heart of Hell, pg 281). These were previously calculated to be 8-C from the last book.
