Kuryalka

Kuryalka
Basic Information
Titles	Saint of Ambition, the first Saint of Hell, Marquis of Naraka
Aliases	False Principle, Soulstealer and Audacity
From	Naraka
Parents	Orliath the IXth
Relationships
Allies	Sutekh

Kuryalka, credited with inventing the trading scheme known as the Kuyalka Ploy.

Saint of Ambition, the first Saint of Hell

Kuryalka teaches the virtue of ambition, that if you are willing to risk everything you can gain everything. That the greatest ambitions are those that are so audacious, no one else has even imagined them yet. In this manner one avoids competition.

The world is yours, if only you tell a lie big enough.

—Kyruyalka, 

Kuryalka features in many folktales in Hell including “Of The Childe Whomst Kepte The Sheep” in which she appears to a young shepherd boy warning him against getting caught telling his first lies. Kuyralka instructs him in the proper use of manipulation.

Never tell the same lie twice!

—Kyruyalka, Of The Childe Whomst Kepte The Sheep,

History

Being the daughter and eldest child of Orliath the IXth, Marquis of Naraka, the City of Blood, tradition held Kuryalka would ascend to the house throne upon her mother’s death and rule, but from childhood Kuyalka was obsessed with what was informally known as The Trade.

It occurred to Kuryalka that as long as people saw their soul-power increasing on paper they wouldn’t inquire too closely about her stewardship of their investment, and so her plot began. Many signed their accumulated souls over to young Kuryalka, who promised them great returns. Every quarter she published a report every quarter showing marvelous gains and while no one could understand the math behind it, they were well-pleased with their growing wealth. Whenever someone complained about the lack of disbursements, she would quickly pay them out of her growing hoard of souls. Of course, there was no investment, she simply used new investments to pay out the old. She was not the first to use this technique, but she became the most famous and successful and the scheme was named after her, because of one innovation. Kuryalka had developed an equation that showed exactly when the ploy would collapse.

Days before that moment, supreme in the fullness of her soulpower, Kuyralka did not withdraw her souls and escape into the timescape; she went to the Archdevil Sutekh, Lord of Naraka, and offered him her vast soulweath in exchange for immortality and a place in the Court of Blood. No mortal had ever dared or even conceived of such a thing! No mortal, he said, had ever embodied such naked ambition. He accepted her offer, making her the first Saint of Hell. Sutekh took Kuyralka’s souls and founded the Exchange, making the trade in souls an official government department in hell, and building an entire bureaucracy around it.