YMMV / Reign in Hell

• Awesome Moments:
  • Lucifer and Nephera are as charismatic as ever, managing to curry favor and, even as outcasts, turn the tide of Hell's council against Azazel Baal. They continue to undermine him and Out Gambit him as the story goes on, and each one provokes progressing satisfying moments of rage and humiliation from Azazel.
  Embrace new hope, ye who enter here.
  • Nephera finally breaking out Vinea from the clutches of Azazel is nothing short of amazing and relieving for the both of them.
  • The Stand of Kings. The last stand of the remaining Kings of Hell led by Ziminar, all who refuse to side with Azazel, are all mercilessly executed, but they die fighting and show Azazel true courage before they're wiped out.
  • The final battle between Lucifer and Azazel, which ends with Azazel's prolonged and richly deserved Public Execution.
• Complete Monster:
  • High King Azazel Baal is the absolute leader of Hell, lord of House Baal and a monster who treats atrocity as casual hobby. Azazel manipulates Hell ruthlessly for his own ends, purging Houses not loyal to him and employing the savage Morviak to butcher side worlds in Creation for the purpose of expanding his territory. Behind closed doors, Azazel is even worse, keeping a gallery of countless beings whom he's shattered the minds of as slaves for his pleasure he calls the Court of the Broken. A monstrously Abusive Parent on top of all of this, Azazel inducted his eldest son Dasrian into the ranks of the Court's ranks, uses his daughter Vinea as a figurehead to expand his influence and threatens to add her to the Court as he did her mother, and tears off Orias's head for defying him. Never satisfied with the power he already has, Azazel schemes to use the eldritch influence of Wormwood to devastate Heaven to rule Creation unopposed, experimenting with it in horrific ways on angels he leaves to the whim of House Loremaster Zhavaral. Azazel ruthlessly executes the dissenting former Kings of Hell when he declares absolute authority, wipes out swathes of Hell, and in the final battle with Lucifer, Azazel decides to obliterate all of Hell itself to leave it to his rival "with his compliments".
  • Morviak is Azazel's pet warmonger, a savage Blood Knight who rules the Malebolge as a tyrant with a propensity for massacring everything around him. Under Azazel's rule, Morviak's job description is genocide, a job he approaches with glee by wiping out billions across alien worlds to expand Azazel's rule. Always seeking a challenge, Morviak directs his assaults across Hell while engorging himself on the death of all those he slaughters, wiping out entire Houses defying Azazel and intending on spearheading his master's assault on Heaven to carve a path of butchery across the cosmos.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • Kasarian Baal may be the most ruthless of Azazel's children, but he's no less of a tragedy than the others. Once idolizing his elder brother Dasrian Baal, Kasarian made a minor failure during an operation that Dasrian took the fall for. This results in Dasrian having his mind destroyed to be placed in the Court of the Broken, simply as a reminder that not even Azazel considers Kasarian as anything more than a useful tool he can replace the moment Kasarian stops being of use.
  • Shax Focalor was grotesquely abused by his family and castrated, twisted into insanity and led to serve Azazel Baal. He's a ruthless mastermind in the current day, but he shows often he still retains some of the decency that should have been destroyed with the rest of House Focalor.
  • Naivan Vallikan is shown to be mostly a decent person in spite of his glaring character flaws, and his inability to overcome said flaws is presented ultimately as a tragedy. Naivan sticks to the path he's chosen, but he's given no end of grief about it, particularly the effect it has on his precious "Nephy."
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The relationship between Gremory and King Zagan—future parents of Karai Gehenna—is a consistent warm spot in the story whenever the two share screentime together, with clear affection between them.
  • Vinea and Nephera's relationship straddles between this and Tear Jerker. Long ago Childhood Friends, Vinea's circumstance is undeniably tragic and Neph clearly regrets being unable to save her, but Vinea still goes out of her way to see her even knowing the immense risk she invites on herself in doing so.
  • Vinea's liberation. The sheer ecstasy in Vinea when Nephera again offers to save her from the clutches of Azazel is immensely cathartic after seeing what Vinea was turned into.
  • Naivan Vallikan is nothing but sweet and proud to his daughter, and his love for Nephera is a clear redeeming quality to make up for his numerous character flaws. Sadly, this sours after his Face–Heel Turn, even if he is tormented about his betrayal.
  • Gremory and Zagan's eventual Relationship Upgrade is adorable, as Gremory has nothing but love, reassurance, and adoration for Zagan even as Zagan admits he's nothing without Gremory.
  • Even some of the villains aren't bereft of this; Shax Focalor is a wicked master player of the Grand Dance and a faithful servant of Azazel Baal, but he also has a genuine soft spot for children he rescues, even those whom he has accidentally scarred in previous conquests. When he dies, he ensures that they lived on to be cared for.
• Love to Hate: Azazel is terrifying, ruthless, and has a rapsheet as long as the Nile, but the sheer volume of his deeds and the sinister, powerful way he conducts himself lend him to become a very memorably vile villain.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Azazel's Court of the Broken sends him flying over this line well before he's introduced: a vile gallery of mind-shattered sex slaves that includes, among others, Azazel's own son Dasrian.
  • Karadas Baal, incompetent Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain he mostly is, crosses the line in an unusually nasty way when he leads the violent massacre of a minor House, carving out the leader's heart himself for a trophy, reminding us for all his ineptitude he's still a Baal.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Lord Azazel Baal is this on legs. Unlike many preceding villains, Azazel is a low-key Cold Ham who commits atrocities, from the genocide of entire planes of existence to the monstrous abuse of his children, with the air of signing taxes.
  • The Court of the Broken, Azazel's stock of mind-broken puppets that live to serve only his pleasures. We get a nightmarish peek in chapter 7 with a horizon full of vacant-eyed dolls Azazel offers for Lucifer to indulge in.
  • Zhavaral's experiments with angels are nightmarish, with a nightmarishly-depicted laboratory full of those he's taken apart piece by piece.
  • Zhavaral isn't the only one of Azazel's servants nearly as terrifying as the High King themselves; Morviak, lord of the Malebolge, is a savage, bloodthirsty warmonger who debuts massacring an entire army and proceeds thereafter to butcher entire worlds for Azazel, something he makes a regular practice out of.
  • The horrendous state Andras and Azazel left House Vepar in. Andras massacred the entire House before trapping the ten-year-old Lady Vepar in an eternal nightmare, sealing her off for ages in eternal terror Andras feeds upon, surrounded by the cadavers of her House with their faces twisted into fear.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Many of the children of House Baal live miserable lives. Dasrian's predicament in the beginning is a haunting depiction of something merely hinted at in Burden Of Tomorrow, in which he lives as the mind-shattered Sex Slave of his own father, Lord Azazel Baal. Vinea, ostensibly one of the Nine Kings of Hell, is a shattered puppet of Azazel as well that Azazel taunts with the mind-shattered form of her own mother.
  • Orias Baal's death, in part due to how shockingly abrupt and brutal it is on part of his own father. He's Defiant to the End, but his gruesome death is hardly made any better for it.
  • The death of the Kings who refuse to turn against Azazel, particularly the demise of King Ziminar; the final hurrah of an Old Soldier that ends with him and his allies killed, even if Ziminar refuses to yield even past his final breath.
  • Bittersweetly, the death of Naivan Vallikan becomes this. Even after he sides with the villains, Naivan still cares for his little girl and his last expression is to tell her how he's So Proud of You after Nephera outsmarts him, asking only she remembers him as a father who loved her in spite of all his mistakes.