Hell's Bells Issue XXVIII: You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

December 26th, 2017
Issue XXVIII. You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

Index
I. Play of the Game for the Win
II. Spotlight News
-Robot Santa Visits Hell!
III. Ask Fredd!
IV. Hell Christmas Carols Vol. 2
V. Artwork of the Damned
VI. IN THE AGE OF FUTURAMA

Play of the Game for the Win
Article by, The Stalker

(Image provided by Blood wine, a meme he’s really proud of)

With the return of the Gameplay Awards run by an unknown host, this year people began to ask who is this host? Last year’s voting allowed for both public and private voting, and the end results came across as sketchy with a number of categories winners differing from the public results.

Some were concerned with the host’s ability to tell puppets and route out multi voters, while others concerned they might be cherry picking the winners, asked they reveal themselves to create some accountability or to restrict voting to public voting only to ensure accurate results. Despite the number of gameplayers requesting the host reveal themselves or do public voting, the host largely ignored these concerns pushing ahead with keeping private votes and not revealing themselves either. Leading to a boycott of the Gameplay Awards 2017, and the start of a number of spinoff awards.

First came Cormac’s Miniluv Awards, a promising transparent alternative awards that would later be cancelled for personal reasons. Followed by a few other attempts, including a joke awards by The Southern Onion.

Enter the Play of the Game awards, hosted by the unlikely duo of The Roman Empire and The Order of the Grey Wardens. With public voting, transparency, and accountability, Hell’s Bells endorses Play of the Game as the official Gameplay Awards of NationStates, so saith the beloved Devil of NationStates and eater of souls. We encourage our readership to participate in the Play of the Game awards! Voting ends the 27th!

Spotlight News
Compiled by, The Stalker

Robot Santa Visits Hell!

It’s the violent-est season of the year, and Kringlebot has come dispensing mugs of Xmas fear!
Sugarplummy visions will be dancing in your head, when I cane you from the comfort of my sled!

Hell takes up Futurama theme for December!

Let's see who's been naughty, and who's been naughty.
Mobsters beating up a shopkeeper for protection money: very naughty.
Shopkeeper's not paying their protection money: exactly as naughty.

Ho, ho, ho! It's time to get jolly on your naughty asses!
You DARE bribe Santa?! I'm gonna shove coal so far up your stocking, you'll be coughing up diamonds!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Hell's Bells welcome submissions for future Spotlight News articles, contact The Stalker for details.)

Ask Fredd!
Advice Column by, Freddland

Dear Fredd,

Can you explain this whole Santa Claus thing to me?
(1) Santa rewards "good" little boys and girls? Whose definition of good? Frankly, I find the prospect of little boys sitting on an old fart's lap to beg for presents more than a little creepy.
(2) Santa brings coal to naughty little boys and girls? Is that not a little redundant for those of us in Hell?
(3) Are Santa and the Nazarene BFF or not? SC is usually portrayed as the patron saint of Greed, and JC is...not. Usually when the two appear together, they're depicted fighting (from South Park to fundamentalist Christian churches). Which is fake news and which is not? How can I tell?
(4) Why is Santa's workshop able to crank out the latest electronics for the rich kids, while the poor kids get nothing? Is it good to be rich and naughty to be poor?
(5) If Santa were going to visit all the Christian children on Earth in one night, he would have to travel so fast that he, the sled, and the reindeer would instantly burt into flames, hmmmmm?
(6) Since when do reindeer fly, anyway?
(7) Why is Robot Santa trying to kill me? Is that just Robot Satan in drag?
(8) Since Santa enslaves all the elves at the North Pole to work in his sweatshop, why don't the Little People boycott Christmas?
(9) Do Bumbles really bounce?
(10) What are your favourite Christmas songs that do not mention SC or JC?

Your BFF,
--Buer

Buer,
Too many effing questions. I'm way to far into the brandy/eggnog for this crap.
1) That borderline pedophile Santa just uses a dartboard.
2) Everybody gets a present. Good or bad. Like you said, coal is a present to us murderous bastards.
3) Southpark got it right. Mortal enemies.
4) Slave labor. In the offseason he rents out the elves to tinpot dictators. Then he buys knock offs from china.
5) See #4. Sends out the elves. The little sots screw up most of the requests. That's why you got a toy train instead of the transformers you wanted back when you were little.
6) JATO bottles can make ANYTHING fly.
7) I put out a contract on you (too many effing questions while I'm trying to get drunk). And yes.
8) They have regular insurrections and revolts. Google 1842 elf riots for a good example.
9) If you drop 'em from high enough.
10) Highway to Hell. And eff you if you don't think that's a christmas song.

Fredd
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Fredd,

How does Hell celebrate the new year? Got any new year's resolutions? I like to celebrate by drinking too much eggnog and resolving to do it again next year.

Sincerely,
Resolutions Joe

Joe,
Good question(s). Tormenting damned souls is a popular pastime year round but it takes on special significance around the holiday season. Fresh souls who, until recently enjoyed life, get special tortures during the joyful season. Boiling in eggnog. Roasting (along with chestnuts) over a yule log. Twigs of holly under the fingernails. Presents from Satan Claus (usually mouthfuls of boiling sh!t).

My last resolution was in 1542 when i resolved to give up making @#*$&#ing resolutions. But eggnog is good. My recipe is 10 parts brandy to 1 part eggnog.

Fredd
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have a question for Fredd you'd like to see answered in the next issue of Hell's Bells? Submit here via telegram to Freddland.

Hell Christmas Carols Vol. 2
Parodies by, The Stalker

Satanic Christmas
I'm dreaming of a Satanic Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where Cerberus’s teeth glisten and demons listen
To hear tortured souls scream while it snows

I'm dreaming of a Satanic Christmas
With every demon deal I make
May your days be numbered and doomed
And may all your Christmases be evil

I'm dreaming of a Satanic Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where Medusa’s eyes glisten and demons listen
To hear lost souls weeping while it snows

I'm dreaming of a Satanic Christmas
With every Hell’s Bells I write
May your days be scary and full of fright
And may all your Christmases be Satanic

Hell’s Bells
Dashing through the lake of fire
In a demon-horse open sleigh
O'er the lost souls we go
Laughing all the way
Bells on Krampus ring
Making the fires bright
What fun it is to murder and sing
A slaying song tonight

[Chorus]
Hell’s Bells, Hell’s Bells
Corrupts you all the way
Oh what fun it is to kill
With a four horsemen apocalypse on the way, hey
Hell’s Bells, Hell’s Bells
Consume souls all the way
Oh what fun it is to sell your soul
In a Devil worshiping cult today!

A day or forever ago
I sold my soul to him
And too soon, the fiery bright
Was all within my sight
The first horsemen was cruel and crazed
Misfortune seemed my lot
He got into a murderous rampage
And then we all got shot

[Chorus]

A day or forever ago
This story I’m forced to tell
I went out on the burning lake
And on my back I fell
A demon was riding by
In a demonic-horse open sleigh
He laughed as there I sprawling lie
Then quickly ran over me

[Chorus]

Now the ground is red
Go it while you're still alive
Murder the innocent tonight
And sing this slaying song
Just get a virgin tied up
With sixty-six as your speed
Hitch them to an open sleigh
And crack their skull, so you can eat their brains

[Chorus]
Hell’s Bells, Hell’s Bells
Corrupts you all the way
Oh what fun it is to kill
With a four horsemen apocalypse on the way, hey
Hell’s Bells, Hell’s Bells
Consume souls all the way
Oh what fun it is to sell your soul
In a Devil worshiping cult today!

Artwork of the Damned
"The Tree" (scene from the story of Apollo and Daphne.)
14x11 Acrylic & Oil by, The Stalker

IN THE AGE OF FUTURAMA
Article by, Buer the demon AKA Dr george

Since Hell has chosen Futurama as its Christmas theme of 2017, let me put on my prognostication glasses and hazard some guesses about what things may look like in 1,000 years. There will undoubtedly be things that no one has really anticipated, like the internet or Google or smart phones. Here are some more probable guesses, in my humble opinion.

SCENARIO 1: Things continue on a relatively linear course from here. Despite the growing popularity of greener technologies from the 21st century forward, global warming continues unabated, with droughts, super storms, rising sea levels, new plagues from tropical regions ravage humankind, and the rest, until the collapse of human civilization in the middle of the 23rd century and the extinction of humankind (and 99% of Earth’s genome) in the mid-25th century. Without excess carbon being pumped into the atmosphere, Earth is beginning to cool down to a point where extremophile bacteria and simple plants and animals from around vents at the bottom of the oceans are beginning to repopulate the sea. With algae and multicellular organisms having already evolved, evolution kicks into high gear much more quickly than in the beginning, so the seas will be repopulated in a relatively short time and land might start to be colonized in another 10,000,000 years or so.

SCENARIO 2: Exxon-Mobile-Chevron-Texaco and the other big hydrocarbon companies (perhaps with government prodding) shift their business models into green energy production and carbon capture. Even so, humanity loses several major coastal cities, including NY City, New Orleans, Tampa, Miami, Barcelona, Sydney, Nice, Cape Town, Rio, and more. Still, we dodge the bullet of catastrophic overheating and although civilization has slowed down for centuries and a large number of animal and plant species have gone extinct, life endures. Although there is considerably less land area on the planet, we have begun colonizing the shallow seas with both floating cities and submerged cities. After an extended hiatus, permanent, self-supporting colonies have been established on the Moon and Mars; while life there is still hard and challenging, the future looks bright.

SCENARIO 3: Between technological advances and an overwhelmingly green culture, the worst of global warming has been averted, natural habitat has been preserved and expanded, and some formerly extinct animals, including the woolly mammoth and the passenger pigeon, freely roam Earth once more. Technology advances furiously along, yielding practical, efficient fusion reactors before 2150, giving humankind virtually unlimited power at home and opening up practical space travel. With continuous acceleration from fusion drives, travel at relativistic speeds has become possible; hence, the nearest star systems are only decades away, putting them in reach of a single person’s lifespan, particularly since nanotech has revolutionized healthcare, making a human lifespan of 120 fairly standard, with the tantalizing possibility of finally understanding aging as a disease and being able to drastically slow, stop, or even reverse it. The entire solar system is colonized with mining in the asteroid belt yielding enormous resources for the ever-expanding human footprint. A sufficiently Earth-like planet has been found in the Goldilocks zone of Alpha Centauri-A and plans for terraforming it are nearly complete. Many millions of fusion-powered drones are exploring the galaxy; as they do not need to slow down to explore a given solar system, they continue going very, very quickly and our knowledge of the cosmic neighborhood is growing exponentially. One probe sent a single picture of what appeared to be artificial structures of a planet in a nearby star system before the probe mysteriously went off-line.

SCENARIO 4: Global terrorism provokes wars between nations across the globe: China vs. India, Iran vs. Saudi Arabia, The Russian Federation vs. the EU, Nigeria vs. Egypt, Argentina vs. Brazil, etc. Quite by accident in a military lab in the USA, which officially is neutral in the great wars, scientists make the breakthrough for warp drive, with undreamed of faster-than-light speeds enabling humans to travel the diameter of the solar system in a day, with even greater speeds theoretically possible. Because hydrogen bombs have destroyed many of the world’s great cities and dramatically increased background radiation, the remaining humans largely abandon Earth, which slowly reverts to a natural state. Scientists are speculating that some of the surviving great apes will eventually follow the course of human evolution in a general sense. The few remaining humans live in cities shielded from the radiation, while old growth forests cover most of the planet.

SCENARIO 5: Trump calls off the 2020 elections and declares himself leader for life; following a meek struggle, America largely assents. Jews, immigrants, LGBTQ persons, the very poor, journalists, prominent feminists and intellectuals, and many others are portrayed as “the enemies of the people,” rounded up, killed on the spot or sent to concentration camps or simply disappear. This time, humanity ends in 2025 instead of the mid-25th century. The planet is so irradiated by the wars that all multicellular life forms are killed and only a few extremophile bacteria remain. By the time the radiation has died down sufficiently for life to attempt to recolonize the planet, the Sun has begun its exit from the main sequence, is burning helium, and expanding into a red giant, first expanding beyond the orbit of Mercury, then even Venus. Massive solar flares regularly strike the surface of the earth, which has already been sterilized for millennia. The solar flares blast away the remnants of an atmosphere, the remnants of the oceans, and eventually, the crust and mantle of the earth, leaving a Mercury-like planetary core as the innermost planet.

We hope you've enjoyed our twenty-eighth issue of Hell's Bells. Nations interested in contributing to future issues should contact The Stalker for details.

Important Note: In payment for having enjoyed our Newspaper you are expected to up arrow this factbook. Failing to up arrow this factbook means you are willing choosing to forfeit ownership of your soul to The Stalker for all eternity instead. Thanks for reading.