Lillian Bell

'' So...this is what we do all day? We just...kill stuff? ''

' These lower fiends are weak, and live only for our pleasure. We will tear their flesh and crunch their bones. '

'' Gross! ''

' Do you not feel the death lust in your blood, daughter? Are their screams not sweet? '

'' No! I like fighting but I usually have a reason, you know? Like if someone is being an asshole, or they're bothering a girl I like, or I wanna see if I’m tougher than them. This one time I really got into it with this Dwarf, we walloped the living shit out of each other for, like, an hour. Then we got completely hammered and he taught me to sing Dwarf songs. ''

' You were struck with a hammer? '

'' No, no, we just got completely shitfaced on Dwarf beer. ''

' What is beer? '

'' Mom, this place sucks. '' This is Lillian Bell, monster hunter, honorary Gnome, failed entrepreneur, and spawn of the Abyss. You can call her Lillian Badgermole if you're a Gnome. You can call her Dread Princess Lillian Balaam if you want a bloody nose.

Alignment:
Chaotic Good

Ideals:
A lot of, you know, beings, are like “oh, mortals are just cattle,” or they’re like RAAAR because they can’t talk. Either way it’s bullshit. I like people! They’re awesome, and they do amazing things like cook and build stuff and make art and music and care about things. If you don’t like people—or you do like them but only as a foodstuff—then I’m going to kick the absolute living shit out of you until you either like people or you die. Whichever comes first.

Bonds:
Rufus is the only real parent I’ve ever known, and his family is my real family. My mom is a monster and who the hell knows who my bio-dad is. Probably some weirdo who banged my Mom on a pile of corpses or something.

Flaws:
If you have a problem, look around to see who’s ass needs to be kicked. This always works and never makes the problem worse!

When a Demon and a Random Death Cultist Love Each Other Very Much
When devils form cults on a material plane, they’re enacting a plan to gain power in mortal realms and grind all that is innocent and good under their cloven hooves forever.

Demons, on the other hand, are often just screwing around.

Her Crimson Majesty Lillitos Balaam, Dread Queen of the Pit of De’al, tolerated her cult because it amused her. For a while she lived with her servitors and engaged in every kind of horror imaginable, devouring children, bathing in the blood of virgins, throwing hapless travelers into the pits to watch them torn to pieces by unholy beasts summoned from the Abyss, and other terrors of a similar nature.

But eventually, bored of her usual entertainments, Lillitos took an interest in the strange and alien lives of mortals. To a creature born of the Abyss itself, with no progenitor, the concept of motherhood was strange and tantalizing. Surely her get would be strong and powerful, a conqueror who would make the mortal world run red with blood in the name of its mother.

She was terribly disappointed. Whether through a freak accident or the meddling of some trickster god, Lillian was born with a partly demonic physiology but a wholly human psychology. Lillitos may have imagined a baby Cambion as some kind of vicious, diabolical imp; what she got was a human baby, or at least something that acted like one. Terribly disappointed in infant Lillian’s weakness, Lillitos decided this whole cult thing was not worth her time and returned to the Abyss.

The Balaamites venerated Lillian as their Dread Princess, and named her in honor of their departed Queen of Blood and Darkness, but they were not exactly well prepared to raise a small child. Luckily, Lillian was rescued from the cult at the age of one and taken in by an old Gnome, Rufus Badgermole.

Badgermole Creature Control
Rufus was a pest control expert, with an office in Sigil incorporated under the name Badgermole Creature Control. Most of his work involved traveling to various prime material planes and helping people with their pest problems--problems like lycanthropes, ghouls, owlbears, vampires, and even the occasional demonic incursion. Rufus was getting on in years, but his skills had never really been physical. An expert tracker and sniper (not to mention a tinkerer in advanced weaponry and traps of his own design), he almost never let the creatures get near him.

Lillian grew up surrounded by Rufus’s biological children (who were all hundreds of years old at this point). As she matured, it became clear that she wasn’t any kind of normal Tiefling. She was unnaturally resilient to harm, could beat an orc senseless with her bare hands, and was drinking grown Dwarves under the table by fourteen. After much cajoling, Rufus eventually agreed to let Lillian train with the sword and allow her to accompany him on his hunts. Having someone along who could go toe-to-toe with the monsters opened new opportunities for them.

Mom From Hell
At sixteen, while she was in a particularly rebellious phase, the Balaamites convinced Lillian to let them use her blood in a forbidden ritual that summoned Lillitos back from the Abyss. Lillitos was not pleased, and slaughtered every cultist present*. She was, however, astonished to discover that the helpless, mewling thing she’d left behind had not only survived, but grown into something strong and dangerous, at least by mortal standards.

Lillitos was a demon, and fundamentally incapable of experiencing empathy or genuine concern for the well-being of another living creature. But while a demon cannot love another, they all love themselves unconditionally, and this new Lillian felt like an extension of herself. In some profoundly alien, wholly selfish way, Lillitos actually loves her daughter.

Lillian and Lillitos formed a brief, dysfunctional, largely acrimonious parent-child relationship. At one point Lillian even visited her in the Abyss.** Lillitos’s attempts to behave like a mortal parent were comically inept, and Lillian eventually figured out that her mother was pure evil and incapable of changing.

The Balaamites still want her to help them summon Lillitos back again. She started out by telling them to fuck off, then graduated to violence and stealing their stuff*** when they wouldn’t stop showing up and prostrating themselves before her. This stopped being fun once she realized that no matter what she did to hurt a Balaamite cultist, they’d respond with “Thank you, Dread Princess! I am unworthy!” Now when they show up she just tries to hide from them till the Harmonium runs them off.

Entrepreneurship For Teenage Monster Hunters.
When Lillian was 19, Rufus finally decided to retire to spend his remaining days on a peaceful material plane. He left the business to her, with all his monster-hunting equipment, including several of his remarkable inventions. Unfortunately, Lillian did not have any kind of head for business or managing money, and instantly ran the company into the ground. Her creditors repossessed most of her equipment, and she could lose the office itself if she can’t pay them off.

Rufus doesn’t particularly mind what she chooses to do in the future with the business, which is now hers--if she, for instance, wants to use it as a fence and base of operations for the criminal activities of some lowlife primes from a world nobody’s ever heard of, he’s fine with that. But he wouldn’t be at ALL fine with his inventions sitting in a vault somewhere instead of being used to hunt monsters like he’d intended--or worse, being auctioned off to the highest bidder. So Lillian needs a lot of money, and she needs it very quickly, and she’s going to be OK with maybe breaking some rules in the process.

* Balaamite cultists are weird as hell, and this is apparently something they welcomed.

''** While Lillian is psychologically human in most senses of the word, she is surprisingly blase about body horror and other things she would have seen in the Abyss, something I intend to play for comedy. She also views demons more favorably than most good-aligned characters do, seeing them as vicious animals who need to be put down when they threaten mortal lives (potentially including her mother, if it comes to that and if she’s powerful enough to do it), but fundamentally not responsible for their actions. As long as demons are fighting each other or killing Devils in the Blood War and not threatening mortals she really doesn’t care that much. She’d be much more horrified by the Nine Hells--scheming creatures creating a system to deliberately maximize cruelty seems far worse to her.''

'' *** Stuff she nicked from them included the greatsword Koronocht, called the Blade of Lamentation in ancient texts that the cult may or may not have just made up. ''