Karo Vedrel

**Karo Vedrel** was an Underworld Baron active from the 8th century BCE until the early 19th century CE. She often took on the form of an anthropomorphic deer with ethereal, glowing antlers.

## Biography

It is unknown when Karo Vedrel was born or created, but it is suspected that it was prior to the construction of the Giza Pyramids.

In the 8th century BCE, Karo Vedrel began ruling over a small fiefdom in Scotland known as Nur Kolgarum, whose population was made up mostly of Koz’gorag. Her castle extended deep enough into the ground that it entered Hell. Those areas of the castle were used for torturing human souls.

For the majority of her rule over Nur Kolgarum, Karo considered herself to be male. During the American Revolution, she began using she/her pronouns and took on the name Karo Vedrel. She also stopped torturing souls, and gave much of her land away to its Koz’gorag inhabitants. She kept the castle until the 1830s. By the 20th century, Nur Kolgarum was uninhabited, but most of the structures remain standing to this day.

Karo Vedrel traveled the universe for a while before settling in New York City in the 1930s. She and Ilmgath Rhomduil joined the Green Dragon Gang. Karo began working with the crew of the *Ihnarmisran* during World War II after she suspected Ilmgath was in contact with CRKA. The group destroyed CRKA compounds in Europe and the Pacific, but were unable to prevent CRKA’s infiltration of the United States following Operation Paperclip.

Karo Vedrel did not join the *Ihnarmisran* crew during the Crossover. In the mid 1950s, she returned to her castle in Nur Kolgarum. She stayed there until the 2010s, when she was called back to Hell by Lucifer to prevent the resurrection of Dyusat, a long-dead god of destruction. She very much disliked working with them, especially after learning she was only contacted to prevent the Circle of Nil from recruiting her themselves. Although she originally planned to return to Nur Kolgarum following this, Karo stayed with Shademantle.

A year after Dyusat's defeat, Ilmgath Rhomduil returned, seeking revenge against Karo for defeating him in the 1940s. Shademantle refused to provide assistance with their feud, as it did not pose a big enough threat to the afterlife. This changed after Rhomduil entered into a pact with Gtuhanai, and showed he was willing to destroy the afterlife just to get revenge on Karo.

In her battle against Rhomduil, Karo and her fellow Shademantle agents had to travel back in time to the 1700s to prevent Rhomduil from disrupting the timeline. Karo was forced to confront her past self, an event that may have led to her past self realizing she was transgender.

In 2019, Karo was kidnapped by the Occult Occurrences Division as the governments of the world investigated the apocalypse event that occurred in 2017. The OOD was harvesting demon blood to use for a ritual that would allow one of their agents to infiltrate Hell. Karo escaped custody with Shademantle's help, but the unprotected handling of demon blood by the OOD drew the attention of the Bloodmonger, an extradimensional entity that feeds on thaumaturgically charged demon blood.

During Karo's final mission as part of Shademantle, she became the second officer and chief of security of the UHHN Ycxict'dretl. She took part in the mission against B'gnu-Thun's Maelstrom.

Following Tom Palmer's imprisonment, Karo Vedrel resigned from Shademantle in protest, joining a resistance against the group over what they believed their plans were with Project Îngheţ and the HFS-10 Vacuum Disruptor. After their true plans were revealed, Karo rejoined the group. In 2020, Karo took part in The Crossover.

Karo traveled to Plane ℵ206 after the Crossover, leaving Nur Kolgarum to Zulmoszadruth Yghiokl'krutl.

## Personality and Traits

Karo was a bisexual trans woman. Before her transition, she was envious of the empires other demons had made based on soul torturing, and attempted to replicate their success. She was somewhat stuck in her ways with the methods she used for this, leading to much derision from her peers who had "modernized" their own operations. Given her adherence to routine and struggles adjusting to new things, Karo has said she likely would be autistic if she were human.

Likely incited by an encounter with her future self, she had a period of introspection in the late 1700s that led to both her transition and shutting down of the soul torturing facilities in Nur Kolgarum. She largely avoided the location after that, not liking to be reminded of the evil she did, and how evil her peers expected her to be. Karo struggled to fit in, to find a "purpose" after this.

Karo thought she found a place she would be accepted when she joined Green Dragon Gang, but it still never felt right. It was around this time that she began annual visits to Nur Kolgarum. Despite her usual reluctance to remind herself of that part of her life, something was drawing her back. Her interactions with Yuanlong and the crew of the *Ihnarmisran* helped her realize that returning to Nur Kolgarum and learning to accept her dark past was the right thing to do.

She had a deep dislike of Hell's government and society, seeing the expectations it placed on her as what kept her from finding her true identity for so long. She especially disliked Shademantle, as Lucifer was one of many Hell higher-ups that pressured her to resume torturing souls. She grew past this dislike as she met and worked with Tom, Ray, Mozzie, and Sadani. She finally had a family of sorts.

Karo and Sadani's relationship deepened after a few years working for Shademantle. The two were sexually intimate, but refused to acknowledge their deeper feelings for one another for a while. It wasn't until Sadani's involvement with Project Îngheţ that they were able to admit these feelings.

An item Karo has had for longer than she can remember is her signature axe. The axe usually has a pickaxe-like profile with thin blades, but can expand to a larger version with wide blades and a maul-like pommel at the end of a larger handle. It is made out of a dark grey metal, but glows a faint red when in its larger form. The axe can fire projectiles made of crackling red energy from its head. Karo can summon it back to her hand on command.

Karo was prone to occasional outbursts, a problem not helped by one of her demonic features. She had the ability to transform into a monstrous demon form, one that would occasionally appear involuntarily in response to extreme pain, injury, or emotion. The demon form was a dragon-like quadruped made of roiling tendrils of muscle and flesh that would tear Karo's human or deer form apart from the inside. This form had an ever changing number of eyes and mouths on its head, and had retractable spikes all over it made of broken bone. The form had two pairs of spectral wings, hovering slightly beyond the torso. At the base of each wing was a ring of spectral antlers. She also had massive, gnarled antlers growing from her head.

The demon form was malleable; the meat tendrils could move to heal injuries, reorient Karo, or transfer items from one limb to another. Karo's axe would grow larger in this form, and Karo would switch it between her front legs, her mouth, or her tail when wielding it in battle. She also had the ability to summon red lightning, both to strike around her and to wield as a melee or thrown weapon.

Karo often saw her monstrous form as a remnant of her past self that she wanted to suppress, and thus was reluctant to transform while others were around. She grew to accept this part of herself as she became better friends with her Shademantle coworkers. Facing her past self directly also helped in this regard.

## Trivia

* The timelines of Karo Vedrel and Cxuggeg are almost exactly the reverse of each other. When Karo and Cxuggeg met in Untitled Muddy Miss Sequel, it was the first time she had met him, but the last time he would meet her. When they meet again in End of History, the opposite is true.

## Appearances

* Agents of Hell - "Dragged Back" (First appearance)
* Agents of Hell - "I Have... Connections"
* Agents of Hell - "The Library of Iotos: Part 1"
* Agents of Hell - "The Library of Iotos: Part 2"
* Agents of Hell - "What You've Done You Cannot Undo"
* Agents of Hell - "Lost Pilgrim"
* Agents of Hell - "The World is On Fire"
* Agents of Hell - "From the Pinnacle To the Pit"
* Agents of Hell - "Workplace Relationships"
* Agents of Hell - "Dead Man's Party: Part 1"
* Agents of Hell - "Dead Man's Party: Part 2"
* Agents of Hell - "Blood Oath"
* Agents of Hell - "Family Curse"
* Agents of Hell - "Fractured Alliance"
* Agents of Hell - "The Battle of Nur Kolgarum"
* Agents of Hell - "House Call"
* Agents of Hell - "Blood Maledict"
* Agents of Hell - "Malignant Associate: Part 1"
* Agents of Hell - "Malignant Associate: Part 2"
* Agents of Hell - "Alignments & Allies"
* Agents of Hell - "All That Can Be Known"
* Agents of Hell - "Planum Trismegistus"
* Agents of Hell - "Ultra-Deicide"
* Agents of Hell - "Star Trek I, But Worse"
* Agents of Hell - "The Beast of Durgough"
* Agents of Hell - "The Grandest Fleet"
* Agents of Hell - "Project Îngheţ: Part 1"
* Agents of Hell - "Project Îngheţ: Part 2"
* Agents of Hell - "Divine Intervention"
* Agents of Hell - "The Eye of the Hurricane"
* Agents of Hell - "Hail Mary Cannon"
* Agents of Hell: Downfall
* Agent of Heaven
* Untitled Muddy Miss Sequel
* Shards of the Apeirogon - "Mechanical Angel" (Mentioned only)
* The Crossover
* End of History