the combat abilities of Baalthas Zezal

[Plane]

I was reading the backstory on page 188 of Dimension Book 10 and I'm a little unclear on how this guy functions.

He notably started out as a normal Raksasha, who got half-killed via one of Succor's rituals and then somehow managed to take out four greater demons and three lesser demons who were sent to finish him off.

We don't know specifics on the species except one of them was a Gallu who had seriously wounded him. He drained the essence of the Demon Bull who "turned to ash" as a result - though it had already been wounded.

This all happened BEFORE he was elevated to the rank of Prince. He has a "Life Drain" attack doing 1D6x10 MD - you normally need a supernatural PS of 51-60 to do that. His is only 20 meaning he would normally do 1D6 MD per punch without using the ability.

At first I wasn't sure if we were meant to combine these (like 1D6x11) til I looked at his attacks on page 189 - "six physical attacks or three life force trains". This means he can output 3D6x10 MD to a foe per melee round, akin to a boom gun blast. There's mention of a full-melee grab doing 2D6x10 MD but that's less damage than three attacks so I don't understand the point aside from avoiding the need for strike/dodge interactions.

The gallu are greater demons statted on page 72 and have 160-650 MDC so they can stand up to some punishment. This could've been a weak one, who already injured might have only needed 60 MD to finish it off.

I'm not clear on why it would "turn to ash" on death though. Normally demons leave corpses when they die in Hades... does Life Drain somehow change this?

We are also told "This infusion of the Demon Bull's life energy was all that Baalthas needed to defeat his other pursuers"

What would that mean in this context? Is the depleted MDC used to heal Zezal? Does it reference the doubled PPE he gets?

Another interesting thing is how the whole death demon thing works. We're told Zezal could make death demons PRIOR to becoming a prince (indeed Abdul Ra finding the death demons spreading is what induced him to promote Zezal) yet it seems like it's his deific powers are used to create them?

I had wrongly assumed becoming a prince gave him the deific powers - seems more like he already had them as a result of the interrupted Succoer Bemoth ritual and was already a de facto self-made Demon Prince and Abdul Ra's "promotion" was purely ceremonial in recognizing deific nature he already possessed?

The mechanics are also strange:
188 "he discovered that he had an infectious attack. Demons who became infected by him turned into a new type"
189 "As a result of his change, he has the Ability of Deific Curse: Pox and Pestilence, and Create Minion. Essentially, the power to create Death Demons"

Death Demons normally infect via an intentional bite - they bite and draw blood, choose to transmit the magic disease, and it takes root if there's a failed roll vs disease.

This is not listed as one of Zezal's powers though... so what 'infectious attack' are they talking about here? Do we just assume he has that bite too, even though it doesn't say so?

Having the three deific powers, we can assume if he activates all 3 of them in combination he can create an entirely new death demon immediately (without needing to wait for 3-9 months of incubation) but this explictly only works on demons and not mortals...

Pox/Pest/CM have costs defined in Dragons and Gods - is it 800+severe for Create Minion, 1500+token for Pox and 400+token for Pestilence. All in all we're talking about 2700 PPE and 70% of his base HP+SDC (or MDC) to do all three of them.

There's no listed cost (not even some token PPE) for the death demons using their infectious bite, strangely enough, so that seems like the best way to do it.

I'm just not clear on whether the bite is an option for Zezal if he doessn't want to risk using 70% of his life force on his deific abilities. He only has 2200 PPE for starters so he wouldn't even have enough to use all three deific abilities at once, though like any wizard he can probably do PPE overcharges at leylines and so on to store up enough for grand experiments.

Death Demons themselves provide a minimum of 44 PPE each (average 75+24=99 PPE) thogh I don't know if Zezal is capable of drawing on that to fuel his deific abilities - they seem to innately know spells but it doesn't mention leanring new ones or having PPE-lending powers.