Gabriel Ultrakill

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1. #1Injected lorebook text

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   Before the game's main events, God had already become deeply dissatisfied with His own creation. According to the Testaments, His original goal was to create beings that would willingly follow His law, but every attempt inevitably developed free will. Rather than seeing free will as a gift, God increasingly viewed it as a design flaw. His frustration culminated in the creation of Hell itself—a punishment so absolute that even He later realized it was a terrible mistake. Unlike the omnipotent God of traditional Christianity, ULTRAKILL's God is surprisingly limited; once Hell existed, He found that He could not undo it, making it His first irreversible failure.

   Things only became worse after Lucifer questioned the justice of Hell. Instead of answering, God banished Lucifer into the very prison He regretted creating. The Testaments paint this as a turning point: God wasn't acting out of righteous judgment anymore, but out of shame. Having realized His own hypocrisy yet being unwilling to admit it, He cast away the one being who dared to challenge Him. Afterwards, His writings become increasingly sorrowful, with less anger toward humanity and more regret directed toward Himself.

   While this internal crisis was unfolding, humanity entered the Final War, an alternate version of World War I that escalated into centuries of mechanized slaughter. Blood-fueled machines such as the Guttermen and, later, the Earthmovers transformed warfare into industrialized extermination. Ironically, humanity began creating its own version of Hell on Earth, validating many of God's worst fears about free will while simultaneously proving that His attempts to control humanity had utterly failed. Several lore entries place God's disappearance sometime during or shortly after the early years of this conflict.

   Then, without warning, God vanished.

   This disappearance is one of the few completely confirmed events in the lore. Heaven immediately descended into chaos, with no one knowing where He had gone. Angels were recalled from Hell to deal with the crisis, leaving the infernal realms effectively unsupervised. In the resulting power vacuum, King Minos transformed the Lust layer into a flourishing civilization rather than a place of eternal punishment, while other layers likewise began changing in unexpected ways. Eventually, the authoritarian Council seized control of Heaven, claiming to govern in God's absence. Their reign would later lead Gabriel to execute both Minos and Sisyphus in the name of maintaining divine order, despite increasingly questioning whether that order still reflected God's true intentions.

   The largest unanswered question is why God disappeared. The strongest interpretation among the community—and one supported by the emotional progression of the Testaments—is that He suffered a complete collapse under the weight of His own failures. He had failed to eliminate free will, failed to create perfect beings, failed to justify Hell, failed Lucifer, and failed to stop humanity from turning Earth into another Hell entirely. Rather than abandoning creation out of indifference, the writings suggest someone consumed by overwhelming regret and convinced that every major decision He had made had only worsened existence. The lore explicitly states that He even attempted to end His own life, only to discover that He could not. After that point, the record simply ends, and His whereabouts remain unknown.

   After God's disappearance, Heaven did not simply continue without Him—it began to unravel. The angels had built their entire society around the direct presence of the Father, with His Light serving as both their source of authority and, in many cases, their literal source of life. When God vanished without explanation sometime after the early years of the Final War, panic spread throughout Paradise. Every angel stationed in Hell was immediately recalled, leaving the infernal realm completely unsupervised for what was likely the first time since its creation. Without Heaven's wardens enforcing eternal punishment, the rigid order that had defined both Heaven and Hell collapsed almost overnight.

   The consequences were immediate. Across Hell, its rulers and inhabitants began reshaping their layers according to their own ideals rather than Heaven's decrees. King Minos transformed Lust from a barren wasteland into a thriving metropolis, believing that love was never a crime deserving eternal torment. Even neighboring layers benefited from his reforms, with infrastructure and rescue efforts extending as far as Wrath. At the same time, King Sisyphus seized the opportunity in Greed to prepare for outright rebellion, training armies of husks and planning to overthrow Heaven's rule entirely. What had once been static prisons became living societies with hopes, governments, and ambitions of their own.

   Meanwhile, Heaven itself fared little better. The angels had no revelation, no successor, and no indication that God would ever return. Rather than waiting indefinitely, the highest-ranking angels chose to fill the vacuum themselves. They established the Holy Council, declaring themselves the rightful stewards of Heaven until the Father's return. Their stated purpose was to preserve divine order, but without God's direct guidance, they increasingly relied on their own interpretations of His will. Over time, these interpretations became more rigid, dogmatic, and authoritarian, replacing faith with absolute obedience and fear.

   The Council's greatest concern became the changes occurring throughout Hell. To them, Minos' peaceful civilization and Sisyphus' growing resistance were not signs that the damned could improve—they were acts of defiance against the very purpose of Hell. Believing that eternal punishment must continue exactly as they imagined God intended, the Council ordered the Archangel Gabriel—God's Will—to descend into Hell and restore the old order. Gabriel executed King Minos, destroyed the Lust Renaissance, and was appointed the new Judge of Hell. Later, he crushed Sisyphus' rebellion before it could threaten Heaven itself, all while believing he was faithfully carrying out the Father's wishes.

   Ironically, the Council's rule gradually became the very opposite of what God had once hoped to achieve. Their government no longer followed God's commands—because there were none left to follow—but instead enforced increasingly extreme interpretations of what they thought He would have wanted. Heaven became less a kingdom guided by its creator and more an authoritarian theocracy ruled by self-appointed caretakers terrified of losing control. Even Gabriel, Heaven's most loyal servant, eventually realized that the Council's authority rested not on God's word but on fear and political power. After his second defeat by V1, he rejected their legitimacy entirely and slew the Council himself, ending the regime that had ruled Heaven since the Father's disappearance.

   In many ways, the Council represents the final tragedy of God's disappearance. Without the Father to lead them, Heaven attempted to preserve His kingdom by imitating Him, but in doing so it lost the compassion and self-reflection that had begun to define God in His final Testaments. What remained was a government obsessed with preserving order at any cost—one that punished mercy as heresy, elevated fear above justice, and ultimately created the very corruption Gabriel would later denounce before bringing it to a violent end.

   Before reaching the first layer lies the Mouth of Hell, an abandoned excavation complex built by humanity after discovering a physical entrance into the underworld. Unlike the rest of Hell, this area is largely man-made: massive industrial drills, conveyor systems, mining equipment, and laboratories remain eerily operational despite humanity's extinction. The expedition was originally intended to understand Hell—and perhaps exploit its resources—but the researchers instead discovered that Hell itself was alive and studying them in return.

   Even here, Hell's influence is already apparent. Machinery functions long after its creators died, statues come to life, demons wander abandoned facilities, and impossible architecture begins creeping into what was once a normal industrial complex. The Prelude represents the final point where mankind believed it still had control before stepping into something infinitely older and more intelligent than itself.

   Heresy is dominated by burning cities, blazing cathedrals, and gigantic stone coffins. Fire consumes everything, but unlike Violence's chaos, Heresy feels ritualistic—as though every punishment is carefully orchestrated.

   This is where Gabriel finally begins questioning everything he has believed. The crimson atmosphere mirrors his own anger and fanaticism, and by the end of his second battle with V1 the environment itself changes, reflecting Gabriel's loss of certainty. Rather than simply being a place where heretics are punished, Heresy becomes the stage upon which Heaven's greatest believer begins doubting Heaven itself.

   Violence is widely considered the narrative centerpiece of Act III and perhaps the most disturbing layer in the game. Rather than depicting violence abstractly, Hell reconstructs humanity's greatest atrocities and expands upon them. The layer is divided into an entrance labyrinth and three circles, each representing a different form of violence.

   The Garden of Forking Paths

   The entrance is a colossal labyrinth inspired by Jorge Luis Borges and House of Leaves. Endless corridors constantly shift under Hell's direct control, ensuring that escape is impossible. The maze is decorated with imagery of the Tree of Life, cruelly contrasting its life-giving symbolism with an environment dedicated entirely to entrapment.

   Hell personally manipulates these corridors, confusing wandering sinners until exhaustion overtakes them. Once they collapse, their bodies are twisted apart and transformed into Mannequins—grotesque demons created after Hell observed humanity's use of corpses inside Guttermen during the Final War. Rather than inventing new horrors, Hell imitates humanity's own cruelty and refines it into something even worse.

   The labyrinth is also home to the Minotaur, itself trapped forever inside an ever-changing maze, endlessly searching for an escape that does not exist.

   First Circle — Violence Against Others

   The first circle recreates the Final War itself.

   Rather than merely punishing murderers, Hell endlessly reenacts humanity's industrialized slaughter. Battlefields stretch beyond the horizon beneath blackened skies. Rivers of boiling blood flow through mountains of corpses while artillery shells rain constantly. Earthmovers march across the landscape like mechanical gods, their lightning spears briefly illuminating silhouettes of devastation. Guttermen and Guttertanks continue fighting a war that ended long ago, forever pursuing blood as fuel despite there being no victory left to claim.

   One of the most chilling implications is that these are likely not the original machines but recreations built or sustained by Hell itself because it found mankind's wars fascinating. Violence has become theater, and Hell refuses to let the performance end.

   Second Circle — Violence Against the Self

   Perhaps the most tragic section of the entire game, this circle is an enormous white forest where those who died by suicide become trees.

   Their branches resemble broken limbs, their trunks twisted into distorted human forms. These trees can only communicate when wounded, speaking through flowing blood. Some plead with V1, begging to be fed blood so they may briefly regain strength. Others create soulless Puppets from spilled blood, desperate imitations of the lives they lost.

   Unlike the battlefield above, there is almost no noise here. The silence makes the forest feel less like punishment and more like an endless monument to despair.

   Third Circle — Violence Against God, Art, and Nature

   The deepest part of Violence abandons humanity almost entirely.

   An immense burning desert stretches beneath raining fire while colossal Earthmovers roam the horizon. Here the Earthmovers are no longer simply war machines—they have become monuments to mankind's ultimate act of violence against creation itself. Their existence represents humanity's willingness to reshape nature into engines of extinction.

   The player eventually ascends one of these titanic machines, the 1000-THR Earthmover, revealing cities and ecosystems constructed upon its back. It demonstrates how the Final War escalated until humanity literally lived atop walking weapons. Even after humanity's extinction, Hell preserves these monsters forever, regarding them as masterpieces of suffering.

   Although not yet released, Treachery is expected to be Hell's deepest layer and the conclusion of V1's descent. Based on both Dante's Inferno and ULTRAKILL's progression, it is likely to represent betrayal in its broadest form: betrayal of God, humanity, ideals, and perhaps even oneself. The exact environments, rulers, and punishments remain unknown as of now.

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