Name: Demon
Universe: Post-Crisis
Alter Ego: Etrigan; Jason Blood
Occupation: Deposed king o'Hell
Group Affiliation: None
Base of Operations: Hell
Known Relatives: Belial (father), Raan Va Daath (mother), Merlin (half-brother)
Hair Color: None
Eye Color: Red
First Appearance: Demon #1

History:
Around, say, a couple-thousand years ago, the Arch-fiend Belial of Hell, Lord of Lies, determined that the time was right to have an heir. He chose Raan Va Daath, an ancient serpentine spirit of deceit, to be the mother of his offspring, and after a predictably severe courtship and the appropriate gestation period, the terror known as the demon Etrigan was released upon an unsuspecting netherworld.

Even as a junior cub-demon, Etrigan was a furious little bundle of evil and cruelty, disturbing every unholy ceremony and rite, terrorizing lesser demons and imps out of their wits, and breathing demon fire on anything that got in his way. Appeals from Hell's denizens to his parentage merely resulted in the well-worn response, "Well, you know what they say, demons will be demons..."

Beyond grisly generalizations, however, little is known about the first millennia of Etrigan's existence in Hell. It is theorized that over the centuries he became such an insufferable creep that even the greatest of the demons, the fallen angel Lucifer, felt intimidated by him. Belial, who had recently been installed as one of the three central lords of the underworld, was beseeched by his peers to apply some control to his son. As he was unwilling or uninterested in confronting the unpredictable Etrigan face to face, Belial opted to control his son through magic. For that, Belial needed someone else with blood ties to Etrigan. He seduced a mortal witch-woman, and the fruit of their unholy union was one of the greatest sorcerers the world has ever known – Merlin the Magician.

Merlin's powers were quite different than Etrigan's, and he had only marginal success distracting the volatile demon while they bott dwelt in Hell. To better focus his link to Etrigan, Merlin imbued much of his magic into a great artifact of wildly vague properties – the Philosopher's Stone. For several decades, Merlin was actually able to use Etrigan as a force for good, and as an adjunct to King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.

Yet all good things must come to an end. Despite the secret us of a mighty demon as a defender of Camelot, that magnificent kingdom was assailed by evil hordes powerful enough to breech its staunchest defenses. The aggressors were led by a malevolent enchantress known as Morgan LeFay, who had summoned her own army of demons to overwhelm King Arthur's shining city. Instead of surrendering control of Etrigan to Morgan LeFay or releasing the demon unbound into a defenseless world, the defeated Merlin was forced to improvise. He devised for the containment of Etrigan a cage of flesh, a living prison with which to bind the demon. Merlin selected a mortal man named Jason Blood as Etrigan's containment vessel.

Blood was given the demon's immortal life span and limited magical power. But in return, Etrigan took Jason Blood's freedom and worse – his memory. Time and again, Jason's memory would return, and he would begin to exert some control over his life, only to lose the inevitable battle of wills with Etrigan. During their thousand-year shared existence, Jason Blood, with Etrigan imprisoned inside him, traveled to China before Marco Polo, was a British officer in the American Revolutionary War, and, more recently, was a respected demonologist in Gotham City.

The Demon recently made a bid for power on the blasted plains of Hell. By allying himself to his disenfranchised mother and Abbadon the Dark Destroyer, Guardian of the Pit, Etrigan strove to conquer all the demons in Hell and force Merlin to rescind his spell. But Jason Blood, in an act of heroic self-sacrifice, foiled the Demon's lofty plans, and began to reassert himself in his dealings with the demon imprisoned within him. It is unclear which of the pair is dominant. Jason Blood is stronger than he's been in years, but the demon Etrigan is angrier...

Powers:
Etrigan is very strong, very fast, very mean, and has fiery demon breath. Sometimes he can shoot force bolts from his hands, and when the mood strikes him, he can leap great distances. He also has a comprehensive knowledge of magic, but doesn't use it because he'd rather slug you in the chops and eat your head than cast some lame spell on you.

Etrigan has also attained the rank of Rhyming Demon, that upper-class supernatural creep that abuses its victims and masters alike by speaking only in rhyming sentences.

Jason Blood is a physically average jamoke whose knowledge of magic comes and goes.