Greetings all.
While making deities/demigods for my homebrew, I’m having a bit of trouble thinking up some good names/titles for archdevils within my setting.
The idea behind hell in my setting is that it's run similar to a corporation with endless red tape and horrendous amounts of administrative bloat. Each of the archdevils who manage a layer of hell are also part of hell's board of directors and take some pride in having overly long and fancy sounding titles as a result.
So does anyone have any suggestions for some good administrative titles for my devils to have? The longer, more convoluted, and potentially silly they are, the better.
I'm sure there are several random name generators available. Here's one
Vice President of Inhumane Resources
Vice President of Puppy Dogs, Unicorns, and Lies
Vice President of Soul Acquisitions and Holdings
Vice President of Cosmic Corruption
Director of Marketing and Mortal Relations
Director of Idiosyncratic Tortures ("IT" for short)
Director of Redundant Operations and Departments of Operational Redundancy
Assistant Director of Redundant Operations and Departments of Operational Redundancy
Director of the Department of Morbid Vehicles
Director of Misdirection, Misinformation, and Misnomers
General Manager of Creatively Depraved Agonies
General Manager of Subcontracted Atrocities
Middle management is sort of evil/a punishment.
Vice President of Inhuman Resources
Managing Director, Contracts and Deception
Creative Director, Lies and Temptations
Creative Director, Agonies and Despair
Also you can add more titles at each end; from a real life example, 'His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular'.
I'm sure there are several random name generators available. Here's one
Paizo's swearing filter is mangling your link, Hugo.
I'm sure there are several random name generators available. Here's onePaizo's swearing filter is mangling your link, Hugo.
Ah thanks for pointing that out
The address should be www.b u l l s h i t j o b.com/title (remove the spaces)
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To create the sense of abominable, redundant bureaucracy, think about creating labrynthine, multi-tiered positions (lots of extra adjectives like "Senior", "Junior", "Executive", "Associate"), as well as bizarre and unnecessary reporting structures.
So something like a Senior Associate Director of Soul Review, who reports to the Junior Executive Director of Soul Review.
He, of course, reports to the Senior Executive Director of Soul Review -- except when dealing with non-humanoid souls, in which case he reports to the Assistant Executive Administrator of Non-Standard Souls (Review Division). Who in turn reports onto the Senior Executive Director of Soul Review (obviously), but also copying the Principal Administrator (Executive) of Non-Standard Souls (Review Division) for information purposes only.
Well, except in cases where the soul is from a worshiper of Sarenrae, Shelyn or Desna. In that case, the Assistant Executive Administrator of Non-Standard Souls (Review Division) re-directs the referral back down to the Senior Associate Director of Soul Review with an annotation for special processing.
The Senior Associate Director of Soul Review then prepares a Special Report (Form XXXIV - Non-Standard Soul, Special Processing), which is reviewed by the Junior Executive Director of Soul Review, and the Executive Oversight Officer (Non-Standard Souls) -- who is a real jerk, by the way, even by Hellish standards. If they sign off, the Special Report is forwarded onto the Senior Executive Director of Soul Review. If not, the form is referred back to the Assistant Executive Administrator of Non-Standard Souls (Review Division) for inclusion in the Quarterly Oversight Roundtable.
Got it? Good. Because once that initial intake process is completed, things start to get a *lot* more complicated...
Use "stewards", "chamberlains", "chancellors" and other "acting" positions that are essentially managers of stuff on behave of some big cheese for a more medieval-ey feel
Screwtape was His Abysmal Sublimity, Under-Secretary of Temptation.
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Come now people, we're dealing with archdevils here. We can be more creative than this! Who needs variations on mundane, real-world titles when you've got fiends?
Dolor Papyrus, Minister of a Thousand Cuts (in charge of the Records Division)
Flaellum Domna, Mistress of the People (Labor Relations)
Ruina Mortis, Chief Architect of the Arcane (Facilities Manager)
Turbae Premunt, Builder of Consensus (Hiring Manager)
Aeturn, the People's Champion (Human Resources)
Prasidi Mag, Protector of the Way (Asset Protection)
Copi Procurator, Seneschal of the Many (General Manager, in charge of this building/unit)
Conslim, Fortress Architect (Chief Architect)
And so on. A little Latin, properly mangled (because archdevils should have a properly archaic language from which to base their impressive titles, no?), and now you've got someone in charge of Records, someone to oppress the people, someone to do maintenance, HR people, someone to keep an eye open for theft or other crimes, a fiend for designing new facilities, and the devil in charge.
yep, I forgot bailiffs and seneschals in my little list.
First assistant, Second Assistant, Undersecretary, Deputy Second Assistant Undersecretary pro-tem, etc, etc.
Or...
Customer Service
Customer Relations
Customer Satisfaction
Humanoid Resources
Nonhumanoid Resources
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My chief suggestions was covered by the Steel Refrain above, but it bears repeating: meaningless adjectives on the front of your actual title. Stack them. Have them recur on themselves. Bring it to the point where it no longer makes sense, and then keep it going a little longer. Make your players dread asking anyone their position, because they know it'll take forever and they still probably won't know who does what.
And then?
Then you add the epithets. Make it like depictions of ancient Greece, or Rome, or China. Think about it: your devils are so tied up in their own self-importance, they want to show off how badass and powerful they are with titles. Why not include ones based on their deeds? Have them scrabble for anything and everything they can include, put it all in there. Some if it'll be legitimately interesting or revealing or frightening, and some will be a case of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking. Draw it out--there's probably some complicated system to determine just how long a given title is supposed to be, cross-referenced to your real rank in the hierarchy, but there are also doubtless loopholes around that so everyone exploits it. If they laugh at the end, note that the devil's face sours and now their interaction's going to be harder. "A chuckle? That's going to move back your application at least two days."
If you can get that all out in one breath, so much the better.
Exchequer of (unpublished) Errata / Howdah of Consistency
Hell's Messagebored Moderator ;^)
And do not have a simple hierarchy of titles. Make it a complex non-directed graph, so every middle manager has 3-4 superiors to worry about, plus 2-3 people from other departments who they have to coordinate with. And titles should be ... misleading ... to anyone who hasn't spent the decades since the last reorganization memorizing all of them.
"Handmaid of the Creche" sounds like a nanny, but she's actually the one in charge of tempting mortals (because the whole world is a "nursery" for captive souls.
"Assistant Paperwork Reviewer" is the one in charge of final assignment of souls to various regions (he's the "assistant to the boss", not "assistant to the junior clerk").
Et cetera.
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Though this is all fun to discuss and think about, I would offer the consideration to definitely have a degree of consistency. Come up with a draft of perhaps a hundred titles, maybe the consideration of tables, at work out the detail of the importance of each of these terms so that if they need to comes up... provide a title for a devil without spending 20 or 30 minutes just getting the details together.
I mean sure the consideration of the titles being complex and misleading can be fun, but keeping a degree of consistency I feel would actually help with the lawful aspect even if you might allow loopholes to the whole process that the devils can exploit.
Essentially don't let yourself become as confused as your players as you play around with this idea.
There are a lot of good title suggestions already. Including at least a few redundant ones seems like a good idea, perhaps a "Operating Administrator of Administrative Operations" and a "Consulting Services Consultant" who work in the "Office of Redundancy Office".
I wonder if maybe there would be a HDIC, HMIC, etc "in charge" (perhaps the only Archdevil with a simple title or perhaps one with a title so ridiculously long that folks simply use a nickname whenever not directly addressing this ultimate Archduke)
I'd suggest having at least one devil who looks and sounds like Vincent Price whether that's a low level administrator who gives potentially misleading "jobs" to PCs to further Hell's goals and damn their souls or perhaps somebody much higher up the org chart who is mostly off screen like "Charlie" from Charlie's Angels (perhaps he's even an arch devil posing as a mortal or low level devil - who knows)
The Assistant Manager Director of the Department of Synergistic Activation of Human Resources, Transformative Reactualization through Paradigm Shifts, and Dynamic Incentivization.
This should be reserved for a devil specialized in lies, emptiness, and futility. Because what did that title I wrote even MEAN? What would this person DO? His greatest deception is convincing hell that he actually DOES anything.
Note: there isn't an actual manager director for him to be assistant to. He set up a position with no supervision. I'm not even sure if he has anyone that he manages or directs either. He mostly just shows up, says some incomprehensible things, and then the other archdevils think that he motivated their troops (when they mostly just glazed over halfway through).