Pawl Cogsworth

**Pawl Cogsworth** is an antagonist in the *Divine Comedy*.

Feared as the White Devil, Cogsworth was not only a prolific serial killer and con artist but is revealed to be the one who designed Hotel Purgatory, once used by the Morningstar family and now run by Charlie Morningstar as a means to rehabilitate sinners. Cogsworth would be an antagonist towards Charlie and the crew for making a mockery of his work.

## History

### Background

Pawl Cogsworth was revealed to be the notorious H. H. Holmes who was an American con artist and serial killer, the subject of more than 50 lawsuits in Chicago alone, and whose crimes ran rampant throughout the mid to late 1800s. Before his execution, he chose a career of crime including insurance fraud, swindling, check forging, 3 to 4 bigamous illegal marriages, horse theft and murder.

Holmes is perhaps more infamous for designing a hotel called the Murder Castle which contained a number of secret rooms and hidden hallways to carry out his twisted hobby of murder. Holmes used the hotel's infrastructure to hide all evidence of his life as a serial killer, creating blocked hallways and bricked rooms to make killing more fun and keep his victims' bodies for further acts of depravity, as well as concealing their bodies from the police. His wife, Cameron, loved hearing his victims screaming for help and encouraged his dark desires, mainly to use their murdered state as a form of photographic art.

### Arrival to Hell

Holmes would be taken into custody by the police and convicted of 27 murders, resulting in his execution and death. Condemned to Hell, Holmes changed his name to Pawl Cogsworth and would eventually be sought out by Lucifer in Shadyside who liked his "little Satan death speech" as he was impressed by his work on the Murder Castle. Lucifer hired Cogsworth to build for him and his family a vacation home used to get away from all the political nonsense in Hell. Pawl obliged though Lilith was skeptical of this given Holmes' fascination for death traps but Lucifer assured her that Holmes knows he isn't stupid enough to try anything on them.

Cogsworth finished construction of the hotel for the Morningstar family which they used for an undefined period of time before abandoning it all together. Cogsworth would use this opportunity to lure sinners and demons into the hotel where they would fall victim to the many death traps and torture rooms they set off. Pawl himself left the hotel to focus on other things, among of which was finding his wife and trying to get back in her good graces but mainly for the sake of consolidating their power together so as to rise through the ranks as an Overlord like her. It was not until he discovered what the princess was using his hotel for that he became active again.

## Trivia

* His first name is a parody of the name "Paul". A pawl is a pivoted curved bar or lever whose free end engages with the teeth of a cogwheel or ratchet so that the wheel or ratchet can only turn or move one way.
* He is named after the real life individual of the same name who was an American con artist and prolific serial killer.
	+ Holmes's character traits also stem from the fictional character James March, a serial killer who designed Hotel Cortez in the horror-drama television show *American Horror Story*.
* His theme song would be "Don't Let the Bellhops Bite" by The Stupendium.
* Cogsworth has a bounty on his head in Wrath as he once attempted to steal several Maras from the ranches.