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Description
Satan, Lucifer, Iblis: all names for a vaguely similar character across the Abrahamic faiths who has gone through more changes and rewrites than perhaps most characters in the entire Bible. In the oldest sense of the word "satan" is not actually a name, but a title. The Satan (literally "the Opposer") was a sort of judge on the Heavenly Host whose job it was to put forth the opposite viewpoint of whatever the Host was deliberating on as a sort of checks and balances. He was quite literally the Devil's Advocate. In the oldest versions, this was a neutral term which could apply to a whole host of different individuals, most often the angel Samael. This angel is said to be the one who tortured Job to test his faith in God, and the one who wrestled with Jacob. In a few Jewish apocrypha, Samael is also identified with the Snake in the Garden, as well as the secret father of Cain and the consort of the demoness Lilith. In early Gnostic Christian theology, Samael would be one of the names applied to the evil Demiurge who created the physical world, Yaldabaoth, who interestingly enough is also identified as the Yahweh of the Old Testament by this now extinct branch of the faith.

The concept of the modern Devil as we tend to think of him today really emerges in the post-Exilic period of ancient Jewish history. With the development of the Apocalyptic genre, believers had to find a way to cope with the fact that the entire world was crashing down on them, yet God was still not delivering them to Paradise as promised. The solution was the idea that actually, this was all a part of God's 4D chess plan. All these different foreign empires from Babylon to Persia to Greece and Rome were actually agents of a quasi-divine super evil that God was locked in conflict with until the prophesied day at the end of time when all these bad people would finally get their comeuppance. And wouldn't you know, there was already an "Opposer" baked into the cosmology: the Satan. In Apocalyptic writings, the Satan became an evil creature tossed out of Heaven at the beginning of time. for his refusal to bow to Adam like God commanded. And ever since, the Devil has plotted his revenge by corrupting the humans that his God loved more than him. Much of this is pretty obviously inspired by the Book of Enoch, though our most modern version of this story really only comes about through John Milton's 1667 book, Paradise Lost.

In my old Assassin's Creed fanfics, I pretty shamelessly based the Devil off of the one in Supernatural. I really wanted to go whole hog into the true chaotic evil vibe. However, I've since done much more research on Jewish apocrypha and the development of this character through history, and when it came time to design the Devil for Drake Hero, I decided that this old portrayal would simply not suffice. I recalled my lessons in Islamic cosmology back in college, and how angels are more viewed as robotic automatons literally programmed to follow the word of God even if it meant hurting a human. I think this is an excellent outlet to explore when it comes to the Devil. The Devil is not just evil for evil's sake. He does not hate God, in fact he loves Him as the perfect father. He corrupts humans to try and force God's hand, to force God to punish them on the same level that angels are punished when they fail their programming. He has something to prove, and not just the generic daddy issues you often see in modern media. In Drake Hero, and specifically in the D&D game I ran, the different factions that arose in the Jewish people's belief in the post-Exilic period split Yahweh into two entities. One was the benevolent grandfatherly figure we all know today, and the other is Yaldabaoth, the demiurge, the mad god drunk on power who created the physical world. In my D&D campaign, the party suppressed Yaldabaoth and sealed him away, but God placed Yaldabaoth in the care of Samael. Samael, programming still registering Yaldabaoth as a part of his God, saw Yaldabaoth as the reasonable one who took his side, and so the two would eventually go on to merge and cause untold havoc until the archangel Michael reimprisoned them in a block of ice in Hell.

Design notes, following all that, I really wanted to explore the Devil-as-angel aspect of the character. I didn't want to go the two mainstream routes you often see in media: red horned demon monster or suave dilf in a suit. I wanted my Devil to very much resemble his angelic kin: cold and clockwork. I didn't want him to look monstrous, I wanted him to look so pristine to the point of creepiness, like some sort of Soulsborne boss. This Devil is still very much an angel who still believes himself to serve God and heaven. He hates the demons he lives amongst, and is disgusted by sin. He is an unpersuadable robot still locked into what he believes is his programming. I based his robes less on depictions of the Devil in western art, and more on depictions of Samael, Azazel, and the Angel of Death. These tend to be much more eldritch, grim-reaperesque depictions, which I think lend themselves much better to the way I want to portray the Devil in the Drake Hero universe. Unsympathetic, but a different kind of unsympathetic than a plain old demonic monster.

Description
Satan, Lucifer, Iblis: all names for a vaguely similar character across the Abrahamic faiths who has gone through more changes and rewrites than perhaps most characters in the entire Bible. In the oldest sense of the word "satan" is not actually a name, but a title. The Satan (literally "the Opposer") was a sort of judge on the Heavenly Host whose job it was to put forth the opposite viewpoint of whatever the Host was deliberating on as a sort of checks and balances. He was quite literally the Devil's Advocate. In the oldest versions, this was a neutral term which could apply to a whole host of different individuals, most often the angel Samael. This angel is said to be the one who tortured Job to test his faith in God, and the one who wrestled with Jacob. In a few Jewish apocrypha, Samael is also identified with the Snake in the Garden, as well as the secret father of Cain and the consort of the demoness Lilith. In early Gnostic Christian theology, Samael would be one of the names applied to the evil Demiurge who created the physical world, Yaldabaoth, who interestingly enough is also identified as the Yahweh of the Old Testament by this now extinct branch of the faith.

The concept of the modern Devil as we tend to think of him today really emerges in the post-Exilic period of ancient Jewish history. With the development of the Apocalyptic genre, believers had to find a way to cope with the fact that the entire world was crashing down on them, yet God was still not delivering them to Paradise as promised. The solution was the idea that actually, this was all a part of God's 4D chess plan. All these different foreign empires from Babylon to Persia to Greece and Rome were actually agents of a quasi-divine super evil that God was locked in conflict with until the prophesied day at the end of time when all these bad people would finally get their comeuppance. And wouldn't you know, there was already an "Opposer" baked into the cosmology: the Satan. In Apocalyptic writings, the Satan became an evil creature tossed out of Heaven at the beginning of time. for his refusal to bow to Adam like God commanded. And ever since, the Devil has plotted his revenge by corrupting the humans that his God loved more than him. Much of this is pretty obviously inspired by the Book of Enoch, though our most modern version of this story really only comes about through John Milton's 1667 book, Paradise Lost.

In my old Assassin's Creed fanfics, I pretty shamelessly based the Devil off of the one in Supernatural. I really wanted to go whole hog into the true chaotic evil vibe. However, I've since done much more research on Jewish apocrypha and the development of this character through history, and when it came time to design the Devil for Drake Hero, I decided that this old portrayal would simply not suffice. I recalled my lessons in Islamic cosmology back in college, and how angels are more viewed as robotic automatons literally programmed to follow the word of God even if it meant hurting a human. I think this is an excellent outlet to explore when it comes to the Devil. The Devil is not just evil for evil's sake. He does not hate God, in fact he loves Him as the perfect father. He corrupts humans to try and force God's hand, to force God to punish them on the same level that angels are punished when they fail their programming. He has something to prove, and not just the generic daddy issues you often see in modern media. In Drake Hero, and specifically in the D&D game I ran, the different factions that arose in the Jewish people's belief in the post-Exilic period split Yahweh into two entities. One was the benevolent grandfatherly figure we all know today, and the other is Yaldabaoth, the demiurge, the mad god drunk on power who created the physical world. In my D&D campaign, the party suppressed Yaldabaoth and sealed him away, but God placed Yaldabaoth in the care of Samael. Samael, programming still registering Yaldabaoth as a part of his God, saw Yaldabaoth as the reasonable one who took his side, and so the two would eventually go on to merge and cause untold havoc until the archangel Michael reimprisoned them in a block of ice in Hell.

Design notes, following all that, I really wanted to explore the Devil-as-angel aspect of the character. I didn't want to go the two mainstream routes you often see in media: red horned demon monster or suave dilf in a suit. I wanted my Devil to very much resemble his angelic kin: cold and clockwork. I didn't want him to look monstrous, I wanted him to look so pristine to the point of creepiness, like some sort of Soulsborne boss. This Devil is still very much an angel who still believes himself to serve God and heaven. He hates the demons he lives amongst, and is disgusted by sin. He is an unpersuadable robot still locked into what he believes is his programming. I based his robes less on depictions of the Devil in western art, and more on depictions of Samael, Azazel, and the Angel of Death. These tend to be much more eldritch, grim-reaperesque depictions, which I think lend themselves much better to the way I want to portray the Devil in the Drake Hero universe. Unsympathetic, but a different kind of unsympathetic than a plain old demonic monster.