The Extermination, also referred to as Extermination Day or The Cleanse, was an annual event in which the Exterminators descended from Heaven upon Hell to cull a portion of the Pride Ring's population by massacring any sinner and demon that was in plain sight. Extermination Day only occurred in the Pride Ring, as sinners are regarded as the source of Hell's apparent overpopulation problem. The event took place on what mortal souls regarded as New Year's Eve, or December 31st.
History
After Lucifer was banished from Heaven, he created and founded Hell, effectively creating a haven for sinners and demons to indulge in any crime and sin they desired. According to legends, the Archangel of Death, Azrael, became paranoid by Lucifer's rise to power, and feared that the fallen prince was plotting to amass an army of untold numbers so he could use them to overwhelm Heaven's forces and ascend to the sacred realm. To prevent this possible outcome from occurring, Azrael chose numerous warrior angels to assist him in preventing Lucifer's forces from growing. He relentlessly trained his chosen angels to become nigh-unstoppable killers, training them 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.
However, in secret, Azrael's motive for establishing the annual Extermination day isn't out of any altruistic purposes, but out of bigoted and petty hatred towards the Demonkind with sinister goals to wipe out the entire species. In spite of the severity of the Extermination, Heaven's higher-ups approved the notion, terrified that the burgeoning population in Hell could empower the Root of Evil to escape her confinement.
In recent years, the Princess of Hell, Charlie Magne, has attempted to fight overpopulation in Hell as a way to abolish the Exterminations, notably by starting the Hazbin Hotel so that redeemed sinners could ascend to Heaven.
Description
The commencing of Extermination Day was denoted by an extremely loud siren that was heard across all of Pride. At that point, the entire Exterminator army would descend upon Hell and spread all throughout the ring to begin exterminating. During the Exterminations, virtually all souls in Pride were viable to be slaughtered; even the Overlords were not safe and have been seen taking shelter in their various bases during the Extermination. The only inhabitants of Hell that the Exterminators were barred from killing were the Magne family.
Most of Pride's inhabitants avoided being Exterminated by hunkering down in a secure and fortified home or establishment and simply waited for the day to end, though this proved ineffective against the more bloodthirsty Exterminators.
Whenever a demon or sinner was exterminated, their souls were effectively erased from existence by the Exterminators' holy weaponry.
The conclusion of the Extermination was denoted by the head Exterminators making an extremely loud, robotic roaring noise to alert their teammates, at which point the angels would regroup and return to Heaven at the end of the day. Following this, Charlie Magne would signal that all of the Exterminators have left by shooting a large firework display into the sky that was seen throughout all of Pride, after which the countdown on the tower will reset to 365 days remaining until the next Extermination.
Trivia
- To demons who live outside of Pride, Extermination Day was regarded as something of an annual sports event and was even broadcasted across the seven rings. During the Extermination, demons would take shots whenever a sinner gets erased, and would often bet money on notable figures who they think would get erased.