Inbeda

"My wearer and master is Inbeda of the House-in-Exile and he wishes you welcome to the Bathhouse. He er ... also suggests that should you feel the need to remove your clothing and frolic naked in the warm waters that is also okay."

- Mask of Kan'ami: Speaking for Inbeda

Inbeda of the House of Exile is a character in the MMO RPG, The Secret World. Inbeda runs the House in Exile, a clan of demons banished from Hell and stuck on Earth. Though originally bitter at their exile, Inbeda and his ilk have grown to enjoy the abject luxury Earth affords them that Hell did not. Inbeda takes many contracts to get by but in-particular he works well with the Illuminati, and Inbeda has a soft spot for Kirsten Geary in particular. Though Inbeda can understand various languages he can not speak any non-hell tongues, to overcome this issue when interacting with humans he purchased the Mask of Kan'Ami to translate for him. The beleaguered spirit possessing the mask tries to convey messages in the most high-brow manner possible, even as Inbeda aims to be nothing but crude.

Banished from Hell
Inbeda does not enjoy speaking of his past. What is known is that his brother, Ihan-sha, organized a coup against him and sold him into slavery on Earth. No indication is given how Inbeda escaped slavery but eventually he did and with his freedom he sought out other demons forsaken by their kin and bond to service on earth. These oni-demons united to form a tenth tribe of hell, The House in Exile. With Inbeda as their savvy leader the House in Exile began to pull down all the contracts they could on Earth, making deals with those looking to make Hellish packs. Demons make pacts with humans for at least one of two reasons; Either the demons wish to consume their summoner's soul, as human souls are composed of Anima, a life-giving magic that has dried up in hell and demons starve for, Or to just bask in the relative bless that is Earth compared to the anima desolate waste-land that is Hell. As the House-in-Exile were stranded on the Anima rich Earth anyway, they saw no need to work for souls or safe-passage - instead Inbeda simply charged money. With Inbeda able to provide all the services any one of his demonic former brethren could, but without needing to be paid in souls, The-House-in-Exile easily undercut the Children of Hell thus simulations ensuring their prosperity while literally and figuratively taking food out of the mouth of those who had exiled them in the first place.

By the 1990s, The-House-in-Exile had fallen on hard times, their contracts dried up. Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Sony and Yamaha all stopped making contracts with Inbeda or tried to get out of those they were already in. Even the secret society of the Phoenicians stopped proving reliable. In this time of hardship though it was the Illuminati who came through. With several multi-year contracts, retainers and reliably on-time payments The-House-in-Exile was set for years, overtime dropping their other clients to work almost exclusively for the Illuminati. Inbeda only takes outside contracts now when they are exceedingly high paying. It was one of these side-contracts however that would cause Inbeda and indeed all of Tokyo a catastrophic outcome.

The Bomb
The Phoenicians were organizing an operation and needed tactical support to get the timing of it perfect, for this they hired Inbeda. The-House-in-Exile were hired to kill numerous safety, security, communication and transport personnel. Inbeda was suspicious of the shear amount of seemingly random people with menial jobs all asked to be killed all at once, but had his people professionally carry-out all the contracts. By all accounts the Phoenicians paid but Inbeda would find out later what he and his were being used for. The Phoenicians had transported in a relic from Egypt, which was weaponized by the new-age-self-help group, The Fear Nothing Foundation. The FNF were in-fact a subset of a death-cult who were selling nihilism as the ultimate method to escape one's fears and under the influence of another like-minded group The Morninglight they reconstituted the relic as a bomb to be set off by of of the Fear-Nothing-Fondation members sent into the Tokyo subway as a suicide bomber of a dimensional-dirty bomb.

The people Inbeda had killed were subway-switch operators, security guards for the tracks and communication experts, each of whose job if preformed would have prevented the bomber from getting on the subway, much less allowed him near a highly populated area. The bomb went off though earlier than FNF had intended due to the nerves of their chosen bomber. The bomb irrupted in with corrupted anima known as The Filth. The Filth warped everyone it touched into an eldritch horror consumed by madness. Those transformed into Filth could infect others by their nearest touch and so between the explosion and the contagion Tokyo was soon plunged into a living nightmare with a possession plague.

Inbeda was applaud at what he had helped to occur. His new home was made as inhospitable as his old one. Being a demon, Inbeda and the House-in-Exile were immune to the effects of The Filth. They opened their head-quarters, the Jigoku no Yu Bathhouse, to any survivors while killing any infected who tried to seize it. Of-course being an opportunist, Inbeda still insists those seeking refuge do so by taking on roles as prostitutes to please him and his men.