Azrael, Throne of Release, Alabaster Lord and Angel of Shadows, is the Halaku Archduke who led the Alabaster Legion.
Azrael's Reliquary was a scarecrow effigy built from thousands of bones, the skeletal form draped with gray cloth, the eyes pressed with crooked emeralds.
Biography[]
Azrael's original status and position in the Host is unrecorded. He became a ranking member in the Rebellion when the leader of the Seventh House, Usiel, refused to participate and warned the other members of the Halaku about Lucifer's plans. When Lucifer reorganized the Unholy Host, Azrael was selected as Archduke for the Alabaster Legion, those who had refused to align themselves with the goals of the other four. Lucifer gave them the task to remake mankind in the face of their newfound mortality and to stand ready for a final battle. Azrael accepted this and lead his followers into the desolation, far away from humanity.
Under Azrael, the Alabaster Legion constructed Kâsdejâ beneath Creation, hidden behind layers of Resonance. With his lieutenants, Charon and Cerberus, he led the defense of the Bastion against an invading force of Elohim. From Charon, Azrael learned that the Fallen were able to love individual humans, not only the collective of Humanity. Amazed by that concept, Azrael permitted the construction of Haven as an afterlife for those humans they were able to save from the Host. Hidden even beneath Kâsdejâ, the new project to build a second world without the supervision of God was meant to be an absolute secret, with not even Lucifer learning of it. To build Haven, Azrael sought the aid of Abaddon and Asmodeus, who granted him their help in exchange for supporting their rebellion against Lucifer. Azrael agreed reluctantly and cut the ties of the Alabaster Legion to the Morningstar, focusing solely on the Haven project. Caine's murder of Abel had sent the project into disarray, and the Angel of Shadows got doubts if supporting and believing in mankind had been a good idea.
At the beginning of the Time of Babel, Lucifer's loyalist brought the Alabaster Legion back into the fold after laying siege to Kâsdejâ. Azrael bent the knee before the Morningstar, but the attack brought out a sinister streak in him. From the souls of the dead, he learned of the experiments conducted by Abaddon and Asmodeus at Ziusudra and approached them. He offered the aid of his legion in exchange for the souls of the demon-human hybrids the two were trying to create. It is unknown if Azrael managed to collect the souls during the purge of the Nephilim at the end of the Time of Babel, but he was eventually captured by a strike force lead by Usiel and thrown into the Abyss.
When Lucifer's plan to free his five Archdukes took fruit, Azrael was summoned by the necromancer kings of Kush, who had constructed a temple of bone and bodies to glorify the archduke. His cult grew in Sub-Saharan Africa, centering around the city of Aksum. The Heitsi-Eibib claimed to communicate with the spirits of the departed and practiced ritual murder and self-mutilation in preparation to becoming revered teachers after death, only to end up as enslaved wraiths. The rites of the Heitsi-Eibib spread through Africa, until it reached kingdoms as the Nok and seduced them to pledge themselves to Azrael in exchange for the mysteries of the afterlife. Azrael's rule was absolute until Christian missionaries came to Africa and broke the hold of the demon over the population. The Archduke abandoned his cults and fled across the Atlantic, where he let himself be worshipped by the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs in bloody rites. When the Christian religion also reached these shores, the Earthbound again fled back to Africa, forcing his thralls to bury his reliquary under the central African plains, where he slumbered until the Final Nights.
References[]
- DTF: Demon: The Fallen Rulebook, p. 46, 52
- DTF: Houses of the Fallen, p. 173, 175-177, 179
- DTF: Demon: Earthbound, p. 17-18, 20, 33, 38