Jandel, is the main antagonist of the “Steep Steps” series. He is a malevolent entity (presumably from hell) that has his own personal purgatorial realm, in which he kidnaps unsuspecting individuals from the human realm, and places them into an immensely, impossibly long mountain, in which he forces them to climb to the top in an effort for survival
Prelogue[]
The steep steps realm was accidentally created through the clashes of supernatural forces years before the birth of Jesus Christ.
Nearing the end of the holy war, at the beginning of the Second Century, god created the heavens and the underworld as compensation for the damages caused by the immense destruction of the war, however, due to the rushing to heal all the annihilation, a realm was created in between the two realms.
This realm was considered to be a branch of the original purgatory, and was used as an outpost during the war. However, it was later abandoned due to its extremely close approximation to hell. The realm composed of an extremely tall mountain. (Doubling the height of Mt. Everest.) and due to its close approximation to the underworld, it composed of various deposits of magma scattered amongst the mountain. Also, time in this realm passes incredibly differently in contrast to the human-realm. As 80 days in the realm is a mere 3 seconds to the soul’s host body.
Jandel, a demonic entity later attempting to escape the purging of all demons into the underworld later found the steep steps realm on a pure streak of luck. He decided to transform the realm into his own personal territory, and due to the nature of the realm, it was overlooked by even the highest order of angels, which allowed him to continue operating uninterrupted for the next few millennia.
However, Jandel grew hungry, and similar to all demons, this was represented in a hunger for human souls. However, jandel couldn’t interfere in the human worlds as it could risk him being detected, something that could not be afforded. He instead substituted a direct hunt for a more surreptitious method.
He targeted those who were recently involved in near death experiences, such as car crashes, suicide attempts, sickness, etc, and farmed their souls into his realm before they could be intercepted and taken for judgement by angels. This way, he could feast on human souls as much as he’d wish. But however, he encountered a roadblock.
The Highest Order of angels imposed a new law on entities of demonic origin. Which states that “entities with a demonic origin who have made plans to target human souls must undergo an incredibly thorough waiting period of 80 days before consuminG the aforementioned human souls. Jandel made a work-around, in which he would trap the human souls in his realm, where they could attempt to escape in a period of 80 days. However, he could not make it impossible for them to leave due to imposed divine law, which lead to the various human trials encountered in the series.
Jandel then decided to give a name to his realm. It was steep, similar to hell, and had many steps, as to heaven. He named the realm ‘’The Steep Steps”
Steep Steps[]
In the most recent batch of collected humans ferried off to Jandel’s realm, referred to him personally as Batch 1,293,897 Which comprised of exactly 26 people, as opposed to the previous one which composed of 658 Human Souls.
Jandel immediately took a liking to a group of 4 people, who were climbing the mountain at a much more rapid pace than the others. He especially took a fascination with the leader of the group, Sarah, a teenage girl. Jandel made his first sabotage on the group on Day 6, in which he poisoned the groups food, which caused multiple batch members to be slowed down, halting progress until Day 12.
Afterwards, the group managed to scale one-tenth of the island, however troubles emerged. Jandel manipulated the various group members and used their human prejudices and ideologies against them, in which he made a member of the group, an avid racist, attempt to injure a lesbian woman. Jandel engineered this scenario in order to make Sarah push the man off the mountain to his alleged “death” this made the other batch-mates distrustful of Sarah. To the point where they’d refuse to share the rations they collected.
On Day 23, the rations delivered to them by Jandel contained yet again another poisoned ration, which caused the death of Sarah’s best friend, Sinclair. Sarah, enraged lashed out at the other batch-mates, causing them to suggest throwing her off the cliff for the sake of group preservation. This caused Sarah to run away in order to regroup, which proved to be valuable for what would come.
On Day 35, Sarah was forced to return to the main group. Much to the dismay of Simone, the groups self-appointed leader. Simone and Sarah proceeded to have a disagreement during the evening of Day 36, which lead the group to separate into groups led by Sarah and Simone.
Day 61, The mountain has been almost scaled completely, with 11 out of 26 Batch-Mates still alive. Jandel, desperately hungry manipulates the weather in order for the entire upper mountain to become a raging typhoon. This causes 6 members of the batch to be subsequently injured and killed almost instantaneously, and in a fit of opportunistic rage, simone attempts to murder Sarah, before she gets knocked off by the enormous current.
Day 78. With only 5 members of the batch left, Simone manipulates the last remaining member of her group into helping her before killing them by throwing them off a cliff. Before Sarah and her group reaches the top, jandel triggers an avalanche, which causes all of her friends to die.
Sarah and Simone have a battle at the top, before Sarah manages to slit Simone’s throat on accident. Sarah, guilty at the prospect of murdering another person, attempts to commit suicide, after jandel emotionally manipulates her into trying to kill herself. However, she stops at the last moment, and claws herself to the portal leading back to the human world as jandel in the nick of time finally physically manifests and attempts to kill her before she escapes.
Sarah then wakes up in a crashed car. As paramedics carry her off into an ambulance. Sarah opens her eyes and looks up.
When looked closely, a monkey, presumably Jandel can be seen in her eyes, leaving it unclear whether she escaped or not.
Trivia[]
• Jandel can only take an even amount of human beings into his realm. The reasoning for this is unclear. Additionally, he cannot take more than a thousand human beings into his realm.
• It’s implied that Jandel possessed Sara in order to cause more near-death experiences in order for more humans to be sent to The Steep Steps