Furcas’ Goals:
1. To kill and replace Pearza, Minister of Research
2. To eliminate mortals as threats and utilize their talents in the service of Baator.
3. To decisively outwit Bune, Duke of Eloquence, in Nessus.
4. To further the cause of knowledge across the multiverse.
Furcas
Part the First: The purpose of the Ministry.
Like all the Ministries of Baator, the Ministry of Mortal Relations was set up, ostensibly, to further the cause of Law in the Blood War. And as in all the Ministries, the tempters and slavers of Mortal Relations go far beyond this mandate, using the license and resources available to them to advance law and evil in general, and their own careers in particular.
The Ministry is concerned with all mortals, with the ultimate goal of bending every one of them to Baator's will, converting them all to easily usable lemures and larvae. They're also, perhaps especially, concerned with the "special cases" - mortals with power. The Ministry spends a great deal of resources seeking out mortals with enough power to be threatening, and figuring out ways to exploit, dominate, or eliminate them.
Part the Second: On Baator's Relations with Mortals.
Triel the Fallen claims that he was the first to identify the mortal races for the valuable resource they were, though this is stretching the truth well beyond its breaking point. What can be said is that some of the methods still used today to ensnare mortals like flies in a web were pioneered by Triel and his subordinates; it can also be said that the Lord of the Flies hoarded these techniques with a miser's zeal, and it took the formation of the Dark Eight before the benefits of central planning allowed the trickster's lore to be used for the benefit of the baatezu race as a whole.
For a great while, then, the efficiency and focus of diabolic temptation varied widely from layer to layer. Nessus, for a long while, seemed to stand aloof from the Material Plane and its diaspora, considering such petty mayfly creatures beneath it - although there's some evidence that its schemes, while many, were actually too deep and subtle to easily detect. The fiends of Maladomini were the best at ruining mortals with convoluted webs of schemes, intrigues, alliances, counterschemes, pacts, and bargains; the fiends of Minauros usually sucked their victims in with mounting obligations and debts; the cunning devils of Cania tempted with forbidden delights. Those of Avernus were inclined to discipline, imprison, or slay all mortals who disagreed with them. Stygia believed that amnesia was the answer, while Malbolge preferred to crush its opposition. The fiends of Phlegethos concentrated on individual mortals, granting them infernal powers and letting them do most of the work, while Dis concentrated its efforts on corrupting whole civilizations.
Part the Third: On the Early Career of Furcas
It is perhaps telling, then, that Furcas began his career as a servant of Dispater. After spending some millennia in a frustrating (if not entirely unsuccessful) job attempting to create greater discipline among the barbazu, the fiend's naturally inquisitive and analytical mind found itself drawn more and more to the rich and complex cultures of the Material Plane. Furcas made a name for himself in the Iron Archduke's court with the depth of research and clever analysis in the treaties he wrote on mortal beliefs and desires, enough that Dispater soon took notice and elevated the pit fiend to his inner circle, granting him the title Duke of Rhetoric.
With his time suddenly freed up, Furcas allowed his hobby to become an obsession, burrowing more and more deeply into mortal psychologies and sociologies at both the micro- and macrolevels. At root, his thesis was that for the philosophical virus that was Baator (especially the philosophical virus that is the layer of Dis and most especially the philosophical virii designed by Furcas) to fully dominate the other planes, all competing philosophies must not only be outcompeted but irradicated. This can be done through reasoned debate and careful refutation. With Dispater's approval, Furcas began implementing this plan, sending fiends disguised as prophets, clerics, teachers, and scholars throughout the mortal realms to systematically destroy all faiths and aspirations that weren't rooted in the basic principles of order, scholastic excellence, and enlightened self-interest. Sometimes Furcas would slyly plant philosophies that were designed to be self-refuting after a certain amount of time, subtly pointing toward other intellectual turns. Diabolic spies would carefully study the effects of these on mortal societies, take copious notes, and report back. Furcas would study the reports, make alterations to his designs, and start the whole thing again. Sometimes there would be as many as sixteen pre-planned stages or generations inherit in the beliefs he sowed.
Part the Fourth: The Dark Eight
The truth of how the infamous Cantrum recruited the members of what would become known as the Dark Eight, how they managed to make the Dark Eight a reality, and what sinister goals Cantrum hoped to accomplish by doing so, has become lost in the labyrinths of rumors, legends, and lies surrounding the event. Furcas planted many of the stories about Cantrum on a whim, and in his library are many volumes recording their steady progress through the debating halls and historical records.
Whatever reasons Cantrum or Furcas may have had, eventually the two came to an accord and a plan was hatched. In the fullness of time this plan resulted in a radical reshuffling of Baator's hierarchy, with much of what was once under the control of the Lords of the Nine now diverted to the hands of a small cabal of pit fiends in the fortress Malsheem. To make the Blood War more efficient, it was explained. Most of the Nine were furious at what they saw as a betrayal by those they trusted most. It was some time before anything resembling normal relations was resumed. By then, the Dark Eight and their Ministries had become an essential cog in Baator's engine, and the Lords had found ample employment in other matters.
Of the nine pit fiends, including Cantrum, that began the project, only Furcas and Baalzephon remain, although six others continue under the names of original founders.
As head of the new Ministry of Mortal Relations, Furcas had a lot of adjustments to make. The bureaucracy he was given was made up of baatezu from all nine layers, with nine different accompanying philosophies of mortal interaction. The cultural clash was disastrous, with the ministry at the brink of an internal war. Those who had formally served the arrogant Lord of the Flies believed themselves to be the most cunning, but devils from other layers were equally certain that their way was best. Furcas' habit, of course, was to eliminate all philosophies that competed with his own through diabolically compelling persuasion, and the idea of creating an entire ministry in the image of his own schools of temptation in Dis was very appealing to him.
Furcas sent out mimirs explaining his positions to his new subordinates, carefully lacing them with his most potent and voracious arguments. To his shock, some of the leaders of the rival philosophies gave as well as they got, infecting his rhetorical virii with mutations of their own, and sending them back.
The war that was subsequently fought was the strangest Baator had ever seen, existing entirely on paper, hide, enchanted skulls and other media of information. The documents verbally crushed, burnt, enveloped, erased, welded, froze, ruined, and slashed at one another, their intricate shades of meaning recombinating and reflecting off one another to create strange new tangents that fought with equal tenacity. The words, in arcane Baatific dialects like Mabrahoring and Malbaogni, formed armies, kingdoms, entire demiplanes of information (some still exist, and are quite strange places to visit).
Furcas became far more interested in the debate, in the play of words and the dance of contexts, than he had been in winning it, so he allows it to continue. The imps, erinyes, and other fiends he sends to communicate with mortals are each champions of another mutant doctrine, and each position competes against one another even as the fiends do. Their ability to effectively corrupt mortals in practice is, of course, more important than the theory, but the theory is seen as worthy in its own right, for even the least effective premise can spawn new ones.
Like his contemporary Baalzephon, Furcas prefers the cosmopolitan atmosphere of smoky, bustling Dis to his luxurious, but isolated, estates in Nessus. This caused him a great deal of distress after Dispater declared that, since the betrayal against the Nine that was the founding of the Dark Eight, Furcas was no longer welcome in the Iron City. If Furcas has a weakness, it is his love for his vast library of lore, and his fabled pride and arrogance broke at the prospect of its loss. After a great deal of gifts, groveling, and supplication, Furcas was allowed back into his treasured library there after agreeing to be pierced with iron rings and hang from Dispater's tower for a mortal year. As a sign of penance, Furcas continues to wear the rings in whatever form he takes. This satisfies Dispater; although Furcas is in no other way subordinate to the Iron Lord, still the two get along, and have been known to pause in their business simply to enjoy one another's intellects.