deviling service

It's not always parasitic. Hell, phenotype redefinition is primarily caused by errant devils, who are simply willing to give themselves in service of your image. Loose spiritual energy, more than anything.

Devils are inherently signals of entropy. The place they come from is at such a lateral configuration to ours that their mere existence starts to bend the rules. Now, in theory, their twisting is harmless, to a point. Reality will accept these edits, and after enough time, you're something alien and strange and wonderful. Fine.

But say you want power quickly. You don't just want a Devilknack- no stiffened nails or bent joints. You want to be a symbiotic system- you want a Bound Devil. Or maybe you're especially insane, and you want to be a Messiah.

For them to exert their entropy into our universe, they need something that resolves the loop. You can't just inject entropy apropos of nothing. Luckily, devils love eating order- and their knack for farming it is admirable. Say you have a blade devil. You raise a hand, make a cutting motion, and it cuts through anything in your sight that you have designated a target. In exchange, it cuts three long gashes into the fat of your back with its claws. It cut for you, so you give it your health. It harms you in diminished measure. The books are more or less balanced. You kill one man anywhere- and in exchange, someone else must die. Of course, the most powerful devils are also the most wily. IF they're not well heeled... well. That's an unbound devil waiting to happen.

Messiahs are almost as bad. Messiahs don't require anything in equal measure save for faith- they're allowed to spread their gospel, and demonstrate the might of their god, and in return their god helps smite problem devils. The Great Grinding Worm lends its teeth to its chosen human. The Baron elects a paragon of elegance and beauty, names them Grail. The Voices Between The Stars designate their Midden.

Still, faith is a form of order, and it is consumed in the same way.

Unbound devils are a danger. Unbound devils are why we have the Deviling Services, the Bureau, the  Judicators. They spew entropy into our world without taking anything in exchange. They don't care where their chaos goes, but are strong enough to continue generating it. They're the screaming dark mirror of the same forces that allowed for the Phenotype Renaissance. They're a chaos that doesn't stop, that doesn't shut off.

Dirty job. But there's great money in it, I hear.