Plains Faction

The Plains Faction (평원파) is one of the three great blocs into which the seventy-two Demon Lords are divided, alongside the Mountain Faction and the Neutral Faction. Where the Mountain Faction quietly favours coexistence with humankind and the Neutral Faction plays mediator, the Plains Faction is the party of conquest: its members believe that the only proper answer to the demons' barren homeland is to seize the fertile human continent and build a nation by demons, for demons. They are the hawks of the Demon Realm, the Demon Lords who genuinely want the Crescent Alliance campaigns to succeed, and for that reason they are also the faction most willing to bleed for their convictions.

**The faction Dantalion is born into (ch ~50-134).** When the protagonist reincarnates as the weakest, seventy-first Demon Lord, he belongs to the Plains Faction, dismissed at first as a second-rate flunky within it. The faction's true power is its leader, **Barbatos** — the white-haired "Immortal Barbatos," eighth-rank Demon Lord, last master of black magic and wielder of a reaper's scythe — who becomes Dantalion's most important patron and lover. Under her banner serve the faction's strongmen and veterans: the boar-ogre axeman **Beleth** (13th), the grey defensive master **Zepar** (16th), the partisan commander **Leraje** (14th), the brash newcomer **Ami** (58th) and the unlucky **Crocell** (49th). Because the Plains Faction wants war, it is here that Dantalion's talent for engineering conflict finds its natural home.

**Operation Minerva and the union of factions (ch 134-235).** Dantalion's grand scheme is to drag every army — human and demonic alike — into one great war of mutual exhaustion. The bait is Barbatos and the Plains Faction itself: by luring the conquest-hungry Plains hawks into the field he assembles the Eighth Crescent Alliance. Yet the campaign deliberately ends only "adequately" won, because in truth few Demon Lords want a total victory — only the Plains Faction and a handful of war-mad high lords ever did (ch 134). The turning point comes when the Plains, Mountain and Neutral factions act as a single body for the first time in two thousand years: Barbatos takes supreme command, the Neutral Faction (in Dantalion's debt) and the Mountain Faction support her rear, and the old order of the independent high lords begins to crumble.

**The fall of Baal and Agares, and the new order (ch 234-340).** With the independent titans Baal and Agares dead, the artificial authority of the old Demon Lord assemblies collapses and "the winner takes all." At a Walpurgis-style assembly Dantalion forces the independent Demon Lords to choose: submit to the new Demon Lord Army or be crushed. The Plains, Mountain and Neutral factions don the mask of the Habsburg Empire — the Plains Faction needs a "just cause" to conquer humans without uniting them in resistance. In the great distribution of titles, the Plains Faction reaps the lion's share: Barbatos is crowned ruler of Bohemia, deputy general of the Empire and Caesar; **Zepar** becomes Elector of Saxony. Of the seven electors who truly rule the Empire, the factions together hold six of seven votes, and the Plains Faction stands at the very top of the new era.

**War, victory and dissolution (ch 300-487).** As the campaign grinds on, Plains Faction lords fill the front line: Beleth and Sitri spearhead the ogre assault at Le Havre, and the faction's reputation as masters of siege warfare — sharpened by two thousand years of besieging human fortresses — carries battle after battle. But the faction is ultimately a tool of Dantalion's will, not an end in itself; he openly declares he will "use them all," Plains and Mountain alike. The story's bitter coda comes when Barbatos herself is branded a state traitor under Dantalion's own verdict, her limbs severed, delivered to his tent by Ivar Lodbrok to be executed — the leader of the conquest faction undone by the very protagonist she raised up. With her end, the Plains Faction's dream of a demon-ruled continent dies as one more sacrifice on Dantalion's road.

Among the three factions the Plains Faction holds the hardest line: the demons' homeland is a barren hell, so the only worthy future is to seize the fertile human continent and raise "a nation by demons, for demons." This is why its lords are the only Demon Lords who sincerely wish the Crescent Alliance campaigns to succeed, and why the faction is, paradoxically, the most ready to bleed. Dantalion exploits this creed precisely: to conquer humans without uniting them in resistance the Plains Faction needs a "just cause," which is why it agrees to wear the mask of the Habsburg Empire rather than march openly as the Demon Lord Army.

The faction's pillar is its leader Barbatos, the "Immortal" 8th-rank black-magic mistress. Around her stand the veterans and strongmen: Zepar (16th), her right hand and master of defensive war, who is made Elector of Saxony; Beleth (13th), the boar-ogre axeman who loves her; Leraje (14th), an underrated partisan commander in northern Frank lands; the brash newcomer Ami (58th); and Crocell (49th). Dantalion himself, the 71st and weakest Demon Lord, rises from a dismissed flunky to the faction's true strategist. In the field its armies are wielded by Dantalion's vassal Laura de Farnese, the "Iron Chancellor," whose generalship the other Demon Lords come to worship.