Exterminators

"*Unholy nightmares who descend from the Heavens to shed the blood of billions of sinners a year. The Exterminators are harbingers of death, destruction, and insanity. These monsters masquerading as angels are said to reside in Heaven, where they wait in anticipation to unleash their annual carnage upon Pride. They cannot be reasoned with or engaged. The only chance of survival: Hide, and pray to Satan they do not find you.*"
— Calcifer's description of the Exterminators.

The **Exterminators**, also known as the **Exorcists** and referred to as the **Powers** in Heaven, are an overarching antagonistic faction in *Hazbin Hotel: Journey to the Light*.

They are a flashback antagonistic faction in Season 1, unseen overarching antagonistic factions of Season 2-4, and one of the two main antagonistic factions (alongside The Insurgency) of Season 5.

They were an elite, all-female army of Angels who made up the cleansing forces of the Heavenly Host. Their duty was to annually descend to Hell from Heaven on Extermination Day (or December 31st in Earth time) to cull a portion of the Pride Ring's population. They were hand-chosen and led by the Archangel of Death, Azrael, and resided within Haven, the lowest section of Heaven and acted as enforcers to the former archangel's will. They were also the primary reason behind Charlie's cause, due to them annually slaughtering her people.

## History

### Background

Shortly after Lucifer's fall from Heaven, the Seven Deadly Sins founded Hell, effectively creating a haven for sinners and demons to indulge in any crime and sin they desired. According to legends, this left Heaven's leading archangel, Azrael, paranoid and fearing that Lucifer was amassing an army of untold numbers so he could use them to overwhelm Heaven's forces, allowing him to ascend to the sacred realm and reign as sovereign over creation. To prevent this possible outcome from occurring, Azrael hand-picked numerous female angels to aide him in his cause, and relentlessly trained his chosen angels in almost every form of angelic combat to give them mastery over all of their holy weaponry. At the end of every year, the Exterminators would descend from Heaven with their master and enter the Pride Ring to cull and massacre as many demons and sinners as they could, before returning to Heaven on New Year's Day. Afterward, they simply wait in anticipation for the next year so they can massacre Pride's population again, a cycle they have repeated for thousands of years.

Despite what legends suggest, Azrael's true motive for establishing the Extermination was not for any virtuous reason, but to enforce Heaven's power over Hell and destroy the morale of all demonkind without completely wiping their entire race out, leaving those who survived an Extermination in complete fear and sadness, not knowing which Extermination they would be erased in.

Many within the Exorcist legions are saints who use their new positions to exact brutal retribution on the sinners that hurt/killed them back when they were alive, (said retribution is be very grotesque and disturbing, often reaching sadism, this being fueled both out of their hatred and rage, and the indoctrination of their leaders to be ruthless against their enemy), making them toe the line between revenge and "divine justice". At the same time, many within the Exterminators's ranks were unfortunate enough to catch the lust of Azrael, who strongarms them into joining his "entourage" at the threat of expelling them from Heaven or brainwashing them into subservience.

Though he used the Exterminators to massacre Hell's population, Azrael indulged in using his female underlings for his own hedonistic reasons, such as having the Exterminators lay with him or give him lap dances. Any Exterminator who refused Azrael were either banished from Heaven, or executed on the spot to serve as an example. Once recruited into their ranks, Exterminators are forced to live in Haven until they are either killed or discharged to Hell, where they train brutally and relentlessly under Azrael and his lieutenant, Lute, with little rest or reprieve.

### Events of *Hazbin Hotel: Journey to the Light*

#### Season 1

In "That's Entertainment", the Exterminators are seen in the opening sequence, standing triumphantly over the mutilated corpses of slain sinners, visibly satisfied with the success of the recent Extermination. Once they have left, the brutal aftermath of the Extermination is later seen as the countdown to the next Extermination resets for another year, and the sinners of Pride continue to go about their business.

The Exterminators appear in the opening flashback of "Gift from God", which details Charlie's first time witnessing an Extermination. In her youth, Charlie's father, Lucifer, invited her to watch an Extermination from the windows of the castle's royal hall. Ecstatic to finally find out what Extermination Day was, Charlie enthusiastically joined her father at the castle's window. That was when Charlie saw the Exterminators brutally slaughtering the Pride Ring's populace, leaving her catatonic with shock and terror, while her father reveled in the death and violence. This experience greatly traumatized Charlie, and it was after Charlie saw a grief-stricken mother cradling her baby's remains that the young princess swore from that day forward that she would find a way to prevent the deaths of her people.

In "The Harvest", Fergus tells Angel Dust about an encounter he once had with the Exterminators. On one Extermination Day, Fergus sought refuge in a brothel alongside other sinners, only to find that one of his closest friends, Brutus, was locked outside. Fergus demanded that his friend be let inside to safety, but at that moment, the siren signaling the beginning of the Extermination went off, so the patrons refused to allow him in. Refusing to let his friend die, Fergus desperately ran outside to defend his friend from Lute, the head Exterminator. Fergus drew his sword and goaded the Exterminator to attack. Lute rushed at Fergus, and their weapons clashed with each other. Fergus' sword shattered when it struck Lute's holy sword, which the Exterminator then used to successfully cut off Fergus' right arm. Lute then brutally kicked Fergus through a wall, knocking him unconscious.

Hour later, Fergus woke up in the desolate streets of Pride, surrounded by the mutilated bodies of hundreds of sinners, just as Charlie performed her fireworks display, signaling the end of the Extermination. After groggily searching through the bodies, Fergus discovered the corpse of Brutus, whose body was embedded with knives. Fergus desperately tried to revive his friend, but it was far too late. Fergus could do nothing but cradle the corpse of his fallen friend as the denizens of Pride went about their day as usual.

#### Season 3

In "Everything Changes", Satan shows Charlie visions of the Exterminators brutally torturing and massacring demons and sinners as a way to remind the princess of the pain the Exterminators have inflicted on her people, and makes a dubious claim that the Exterminators are machines of destruction made to further God's plan of wiping out all of demonkind.

In "The Deadly Ground", Charlie tells the hotel crew a story of an encounter she had with the Exterminators. On one Extermination Day, when Charlie was of pre-teenage, she was watching the Extermination from her window in her family's castle. She watched with sadness as the Exterminators massacred the populace, as well as anger from being unable to do anything about it. Her anger boiled until she was unable to control herself, and ran outside her parents' castle, attempting to defend a family that was under siege by a group of ten Exterminators. Charlie got in the way between an Exterminator and a male demon, but the Exterminator merely grabbed her by the neck and tossed her aside. When Charlie attempted to intervene once more, the Exterminator cut her across the cheek with its knife, sending her falling back in pain and shock. As Charlie laid in terror, witnessing her own blood for the first time, the Exterminators finished massacring the family, and set their sights on her.

Taking flight, the Exterminators surrounded Charlie like a flock of vultures, reveling in her fear, but just before one could attack the princess with its spear, the Exterminator was pierced through the chest by an angelic spear, causing it to drop to the ground, erased. The assailant was then revealed to be Lucifer, who promptly descended from the sky, landing next to Charlie, with his six angelic wings spread. The King of Hell, turning his back to the Exterminators, walked over to the fallen Exterminators corpse, pulling his spear out of its body before turning at the Exterminators with a look of tranquil fury. He reminded the Exterminators that the royal family is off-limits, before shouting at them to "get back to work", at the threat of facing the same fate as the fallen Exterminator. The nine Exterminators stared at Lucifer, before soon flying away to continue their carnage across the Pride Ring. Lucifer then took Charlie and flew her back to the castle.

## Description

"*No one here is your 'sister'. We're all cold-blooded killers; born to maintain angel supremacy and the order of Archangel Azrael. It's all we're good for. May God help those of us who forget that.*"
— Destiny to Ebony.

During their annual reign, they were known for their ruthless efficiency and absolute loyalty, the Powers were the most deadly and bloodthirsty warriors in all of Heaven, trained in the art of combat, armed with the most powerful weapons in Heaven and granted divine authority to act as the fists of Azrael. The Exterminators were the embodiment of Azrael's will, feared and respected by all.

All Exterminators appear as monochrome-colored angels who possess two large, goat-like horns on their heads, above which sits a halo with a central gem and 3 smaller crystals on both sides. Exterminators possess two large wings on their backs that allow them to fly, and some have angelic armor on their arms and legs. Their faces were covered with an LED mask capable of conveying various expressions - presumably displaying what emotion they were feeling at that very moment - and being controlled and brainwashed whenever they disobeyed Azrael or Lute.

Despite being angels, the Exterminators are rather monstrous in appearance, in some ways being visually more horrifying than many of Hell's denizens. Calcifer, an ancient demon who has studied much of Hell's creatures and lore, describes them as "unholy nightmares", and Fergus, a fallen angel who has fought against them before, has stated that "words cannot describe their carnage."

They were armed with a vast array of angelic weaponry, including spears, swords, arrows, shields, and knives, all of which they used with precise and deadly efficiency. Their weapons are strong enough to easily slice sinners in half and reduce them to organs, and are capable of cutting down structures such as walls, household doors, and small buildings. They are also supernaturally fast, able to quickly fly through the air and dash around, appearing outright invisible to the eyes of sinners. During Exterminations, they erased indiscriminately and methodically, but did appear to enjoy the thrill they got from erasing, hunting, and chasing their targets.

In terms of their behavior, most Exterminators were murderous, psychotic, and immensely sadistic, displaying clear excitement while hunting sinners, and love nothing more than violently butchering their targets. While they did not speak during the Extermination, their masks often displayed large grins while they were erasing and hunting sinners, and one Exterminator even displayed a disappointed expression when another Exterminator erased one sinner before they could. They had a habit of toying with their sinful prey, often deliberately let them run in order to give them false hope that they could escape from being erased. They also tended to stalk vulnerable sinners while letting them aware of their presence, leaving the unfortunate sinners in complete and utter fear, unaware of when they would be erased.

The Exterminators did not seem to have any moral or ethical code while exterminating, and were apparently willing to erase Hellborn children and Overlords who govern over Pride. Exterminators were forbidden from sparing any demon that they came across. Failure to execute a demon when the opportunity to erase them presented itself would result in the soldier being punished/brutalized for their misstep or "corrected" via brainwashing. While exterminating, they tended to mostly target vulnerable sinners who are outside, but were also willing to erase sinners who were hiding inside of buildings, but only if they believed there isn't much risk, demonstrating that they weren't *completely* bloodthirsty and are rather intelligent and methodical.

The Exterminators were also mutilators, and their methods of erasing were extremely gruesome, often leaving the streets of Pride covered in blood and littered with corpses, nailing sinners' bodies to walls, as well as mutilating sinners to the point where their organs were spilling out of their corpses, or sometimes left their victims as nothing but a pile of guts.

Following the end of an Extermination, the Exterminators would not retrieve the bodies of injured or fallen Exterminations, since their deaths and injuries are viewed as signs of weaknesses by Lute and Azrael. In addition, the Exterminators displayed little care for their weapons, and often just left them embedded in their victims. Usually, once an Extermination came to an end, these weapons were often collected by Pride's denizens and manufactured into various weapons such as bullets, knives, swords, etc., and sold onto Hell's black market. This was a strategic decision so that demons would erase themselves with the angelic weapons they have made, in hopes of lowering the number of demons soldiers were required to erase every year.

Once the annual slaughter was over, Exterminators returned to their military base in Haven, where they performed military drills, minor expeditions and train vigorously with nearly no rest or sleep. Their commanders intentionally gave them little food to make them more ferocious and they were only given two rations per day.

## Powers and Abilities

### Powers

* **Angelic Power**: The Exterminators were nearly unstoppable angelic killers, possessing angelic powers that render them far more powerful than most sinners and demons. Over the centuries of their annual visits to the Pride Ring, the Exterminators had successfully erased billions of Hell's sinners, with some of their victims including Pride's powerful Overlords. However, while the Exterminator were virtually invincible to lower demons, they are less powerful than the standard warrior angels and other ordinary angels, with even the higher-tier cherubs possessing more power than them. In addition, the most powerful of demons, like Overlords or Hell's nobles, are capable of destroying an Exterminator individually.
	+ **Cloudwalking**: As angels, the Exterminators presumably have the ability to walk and travel on clouds.
	+ **Enhanced Senses**: All Exterminators have an enhanced sense of smell, sight, and hearing, and can instantly react to dangers, and can spot their prey from hundreds of meters away.
	+ **Flight**: The Exterminators possess large wings that grant them the ability to hover and fly through the air at astonishing speeds.
	+ **Immortality**: As angels, the Exterminators possess indefinite lifespans and cannot be erased by any ailments such as aging, as they have existed for at least several thousands of years, having been massacring Pride's population long before Charlie was born. They also cannot be harmed by standard weaponry, and only the strongest of demonic magic is capable of potentially injuring them.
		- **Nigh-Invulnerability**: Due to their angelic physiology, the Exterminators possess near complete invulnerability to the offensive attacks of other entities. Normal weapons are incapable of harming the Exterminators; by the end of most Exterminations, the Exterminators' wings usually have many knives, broken glass bottles, and various other weapons embedded into them - likely as the result of sinners who attempted to defend themselves - yet they are still able to fly without any hindrance. One Exterminator was shot in the head multiple times by a cowering sinner's handgun, and the bullets merely bounced off of the Exterminator's skin. When Fergus attempted to save his friend Brutus from being erased by an Exterminator, his sword shattered when he struck the angel with it. The only substances capable of erasing the Exterminators are holy weaponry and divine power, as displayed when Lucifer used an angelic spear to slay an Exterminator that attempted to erase Charlie.
	+ **Interdimensional Travel**: The Exterminators can travel to different dimensions as they are able to travel to Hell from Heaven and vice-versa every Extermination Day.
	+ **Photokinesis**: As angels, the Exterminators have a strong connection with holy light. If shined on sinners or demons, this light is capable of severely injuring demonic beings by melting their skin.
		- **Regeneration**: If the Exterminators are somehow damaged, their angelic physiology will repair their vessels nearly instantly unless the wound was caused by angelic weaponry.
	+ **Supernatural Speed**: The Exterminators can both sprint and fly at supernaturally fast speeds, appearing completely invisible or as blurs when they ambush or attack their prey. Their speed is notably so great that one Exterminator was seen flying across all of Pentagram City in roughly three seconds, while at the same time dodging hundreds of buildings, showcasing great agility as well. The Exterminators could also dash very quickly, with one Exterminator lunging at and erasing ten sinners in seconds with a single swing of its sword.
	+ **Supernatural Stamina**: The Exterminators never tire, and they are capable of massacring sinners for an entire day without needing to rest, and can keep fighting even if they sustain wounds in the process.
	+ **Supernatural Strength**: All Exterminators have deceptive raw strength for their lean frame. This is shown by them being effortlessly able to use their weapons to cut through sinners and collapse small buildings as if they were made of paper.

### Abilities

* **Exterminator Call**: While chasing or fighting prey, the Exterminators occasionally let out an extremely loud, high-pitched, robotic roar, possibly serving to disorient or frighten demons. At the end of each Extermination, the head Exterminators let out a particularly powerful roar that was heard across the entire Pride Ring, which served as a call to the other Exterminators to group up so that they may return to Heaven.
* **Intimidation**: The Exterminators were one of, if not *the*, most feared creatures to Hell's society due to their psychotic, sadistic nature and lust for the death and blood of sinners and demons. Even Hell's Overlords, such as the Vees, are terrified of them, and often barricaded themselves in their strongholds like most other sinners during Extermination Day, not daring to face the Exterminators themselves.
* **Master Combatants**: The Exterminators have honed their angelic powers, turning them into the ultimate erasing machines. They had successfully massacred billions of demons and sinners over thousands of years while barely suffering any losses to their numbers. The Exterminators' immense skill made them untouchable to demons and sinners, as they are incredibly fast and have amazing combat and parkour skills which they use effectively to slaughter sinners quickly en mass. They can run extremely fast, quick enough to clear Pentagram City in seconds, and can casually dodge the bullets of defensive sinners. Even without their weapons, the Exterminators are skilled and effective in hand-to-hand combat.
* **Weapon Mastery**: The Exterminators possessed immense skill and knowledge with their own angelic weaponry, efficiently using swords, arrows, knives, and spears to erase their prey.

### Equipment

* **Exterminator Masks**: All Exterminators wore magical LED masks that were able to convey their emotions and move along with their actual faces. The masks also provided the Exorcists with a strategic advantage, allowing them to see demon more easily via a thermal image. The Exterminators' masks could also instantly analyze a demon target and give the wearer of the mask information on the targeted demon through a HUD. Additionally, some Exorcist masks could magically cloak the wearer, allowing them to put on a "demon/sinner disguise". The masks served a psychological purpose towards the Exterminators to make them feel like robotic killing machines and the masks allowed Azrael to control and brainwash the Exorcists whenever they acted defiant. Additionally, the masks' served to add an essence of intimidation and psychological warfare against their demon prey.

### Weapons

* **Angelic Weaponry**: The Exterminators' most dangerous offensive tools are their array of angelic weaponry, including swords, arrows, knives, crossbows, pikes, spears, axes, and butterfly swords. Their weaponry is extremely powerful, able to cut clean through solid objects and living organisms, being able to dismember sinners and demons easily, and even reduce them to nothing but a pile of organs and bones from a single swipe. The Exterminators' weapons were even shown to cut through walls, and make small buildings collapse from a single strike. All of the Exterminators' angelic weaponry is capable of permanently erasing the souls of sinners and demons, forever.

## Trivia

* The Exterminators are based on the Powers/Authorities, a class of angels in Christianity who have dominion over malevolent souls and prevent them from doing harm.
* The Exterminators can permanently and truly erase sinners and demons using their angelic weaponry, as these weapons are created to erase the souls of demonic creatures.
* All of the Exterminators seen so far appear to be female or have a feminine appearance.
	+ It is eventually revealed that the Exterminators are in fact an all-female army. This is primarily due to Azrael's lust to have power over all female angels in Heaven.
* According to Lute, it was a regulation that all Exterminators bow to Azrael and flash their breasts at him whenever they are in his presence. It was the Exterminators' version of saluting.
* As shown in their masks' interface, Exorcist masks have three settings; "Training", "Patrol", and "EXTERMINATE DEMON ASS".
* The Exterminators were initially mistaken as robots due to their LED masks, as well as Satan referring to them as "machines" in "Everything Changes". However, when Lucifer erased an Exterminator during the flashback of "The Deadly Ground", the fallen Exterminator bled red blood, confirming that the Exterminators are in fact organic. Further episodes exploring the Exterminators, such as "A Simple Scouting Mission", further confirm that they are organic beings.
* It was against the Exterminators' code to spare a demon - since doing so is seen as a sign of weakness -, and should an Exterminator do so, they will be brutalized or killed for their misstep.
* Many of the Exterminators have names that are based on shades of black or grey (e.g Ebony, Sable, Raven, Grey, and Silver).
* The masks worn by the Exterminators allowed Azrael to control them whenever they acted defiant.
* Because of his hardcore atheism, Baxter believes the Exorcists to be aliens.