Politics in the Netherworld is a full-contact sport. As the Overlord of the Netherworld, you have the ability to resolve gridlock and partisan bickering by any means necessary, up to and usually including violence.
Laharl often requires assistance from the Netherworld’s Senate for certain travel plans or personnel issues, and the Senate, for their part, usually can’t be bothered. It’s then up to you to bribe, beg, or beat the demons of the Dark Assembly until they do exactly what you want them to do.
Bills and Other Options
The Dark Assembly reopens for business in Episode 1 once you’ve cleared the third stage. To call it to order, talk to Pleinair, who is standing in the Netherworld Hospital’s infirmary.
The Assembly’s menu covers a lot of issues that deal with character creation, optimization, and customization. Most of these require you to spend at least a small amount of Mana before they’ll go through, and surprisingly few actually require a full meeting of the Senate.
Before you select an option in the Dark Assembly, you must first pick a character to make the proposal. This character is the one who’ll spend the Mana on whatever you choose to do. Depending on the specific character making the proposal, this may make new bills available. It may seem obvious, but this is Disgaea, so I’ll say it anyway: dead characters cannot propose bills in the Dark Assembly.
Representatives List
This option allows you to scout out the Senators that you’ve encountered before so that you get an idea of what they’re thinking and can prepare to deal with them. It’s a pretty good indication of how dysfunctional the Dark Assembly really is that you can tell what their stance on a given bill is going to be before you propose it.
The number of times that you happen to have killed a Senator does not influence their vote to any serious extent, as whether they’re for or against an upcoming proposal or show up for the vote on it appears to be randomized. That said, so many of them have a serious, preexisting attitude problem that it’s difficult to tell whether or not your actions have had any effect at all.
Create New Character
This allows you to spend Mana to roll up a new character for your roster. You don’t need to get the Senate involved with a new character’s creation unless you want to spend the extra Mana so that your newbie can have a Distinguished or Genius Capability. If that bill passes, character creation continues as usual; if it fails, you’re booted back to the main Assembly menu.
Delete a Character
You can use this option to delete a character entirely, removing him or her and all the character’s equipment from the game permanently. You cannot delete unique characters.
Change Name
Select this option to change a generic character’s name.
Change Colors
This option in the Dark Assembly lets you flip between a character’s default colors, his or her three extra color schemes, and in the case of generic characters, the six extra colors that are unlocked with their job’s higher ranks. You can only choose a color scheme for the character that’s actively making the proposal.
Change Personality
Every generic character has three sets of voice clips that are determined by his or her choice of Evility. This option lets you mix things up by picking a new voice set, followed by choosing one of a generic character’s three possible Evilities. You can mix and match voices with Evilities as you see fit.
Reincarnation
Strangely, Reincarnation doesn’t involve the Senate at any point, even if you go for a Distinguished or Genius Capability.
More Expensive Stuff
This bill can be proposed once per Episode for 30 Mana. If it’s successful, it improves the Product Rank of the Rosen Queen Trading Company by 1, which makes higher-quality weapons and armor available for sale. Once the Product Rank hits 10, this bill is no longer available for proposal.
Increase Movement Range
Increase Jump Power
Increase Throw Distance
Increase Counter Attacks
Increase Critical Rate
These bills are all technically available from the start of the game, but you won’t be able to see that they exist unless you somehow come up with the Mana to pay for them. If any of these bills pass the Senate, the character making the proposal receives a permanent boost to that stat which will even survive Reincarnation.
The bills to improve Movement Range, Counter Attacks, and Throw Distance all cost 5,000 Mana the first time you pass them, and 50,000 the second time; each time they’re passed, they provide a +1 bonus to that particular stat. The Jump Power and Critical Rate bills provide a +5 bonus to their respective stats, and each time you manage to get one through, the next one costs another 2,000 Mana. Thus, the second costs 4,000 Mana; the third costs 6,000 Mana; the fourth costs 8,000; and finally, the fifth costs 10,000 Mana.
I Wanna Be Friends
I Wanna Be Enemies
These bills only become available in the Post-Game after you clear the Final Episode. For 10,000 Mana a shot, you can pass a bill that increases your character’s Likability with any other member of your team by one heart ... or you can go the other way and pay 10,000 Mana to decrease your Likability with another character.
I Want Their Evility
For 100,000 Mana, you can swipe another unit’s Evility. This requires that the character in question have a five-heart Likability rating with you, and will actually force them to do without an Evility until their next Reincarnation.
Delete the Evility I Took
For another 100,000 Mana and another bout with the Senate, you can delete an Evility that was taken via the previous bill. Fortunately, this is likely to pass without too much effort on your part; unfortunately, it does not automatically return the Evility to the character you took it from. That character will either need to get a new Evility from somebody else or Reincarnate to get his or her Evility back.
Switch Main Characters
This allows you to pay 10 Mana and change the character that you’re running around Laharl’s Castle with. On the surface, this appears to be a cosmetic choice, but as mentioned in the Demon Connect section, you can raise Likability with a character by choosing to make them the protagonist for a little while. Your new lead character will get +1 Likability with everyone he or she subsequently speaks to in the Castle. Doing this at least once unlocks A Main Character Is You!, which is a Bronze Trophy.
I Wanna Follow Them Around
You can make this proposal with any character other than the one who’s currently your main, as per the previous bill. For 10 Mana, you can volunteer to follow the main character around, just as Flonne and Etna are following Laharl at the start of the game. This is slightly weird, yes, but every time you return to Laharl’s Castle after completing a story map, your main character will get +1 Likability with whoever is following him or her around.
Triple EXP
This is an easy bill to get through the Assembly and is available very early in the game. It costs 10 Mana, and if the bill passes, the next enemy that you defeat is worth three times as much EXP as usual. This can come in handy immediately following a Reincarnation, and if you further sweeten the deal by equipping gear with Statistician Innocents and turning up your EXP gain in the Cheat Shop.
Bonus Items, Please
For 10 Mana, you’ll start the next stage you enter with the Bonus Meter already set to 3. This is a bit like playing the lottery, since the Bonus rewards are randomly generated, but you can pass this bill in conjunction with Prinny Day (see below) to stack the odds in your favor.
Prinny Day!
If this bill passes, it is officially Prinny Day, and you can only deploy Prinnies on the next map you enter. The Dark Assembly shuts down on Prinny Day, as it is apparently a federal holiday, and does not reopen until such time as you clear a stage. As a side effect of it being Prinny Day, the Bonus rewards on the next stage you enter will all be items, with a greater than usual chance that the items will be of rare or legendary quality. Prinny Day costs 10 Mana.
I Need War Funds/I Need More War Funds
This costs only 10 Mana, but it’s one of the hardest bills to get to pass. The Dark Assembly has been shaking you down for gifts and cash since the start of the game, but this bill is your blatant attempt to extort something from them instead. Almost every Senator will begin the vote at “Loathe” position, which is as negative as they can get, and the minimum amount to bribe them with HL is automatically set at a level that will far outweigh whatever cash you could potentially get from the bill’s passage. If you want to pass this bill, expect that you’ll have to fight whoever shows up in the Senate chamber.
After all that, the amount of cash you get is comparatively small. If you pull this off in Episode 1, expect to get about 30,000 HL for your trouble. This amount goes up in each Episode until, in the Post-Game, you can expect to clear about millions HL in “war funds.” This is chump change compared to what you can shake out of monsters in the Item World, and as such, extorting the Senate is only worth doing if you feel like starting a fight with the jerks.
Double Jump
For 100 Mana, you unlock the option to double-jump when you’re in Laharl’s Castle or in the safe zones within the Item World. To double-jump, push the Circle or R2 buttons while in midair. You’ll jump a second time, gaining more height.
This is necessary to get to a particular treasure chest that appears in the Castle during Episode 10, and to participate in certain activities on Bonus Islands in the Item World.
Calling the Senate to Order
The Dark Assembly is made up of an assortment of demon Senators. A typical meeting includes a random assortment of monsters, such as Ifrits, Prinnies, Golems, and Succubi. There’s also a chance that a character from your roster or from Laharl’s Castle, such as Coward or Meaver, may sit in as a Senator.
Most of the bills that you propose to the Senate start at half support, if that. Senators who are leaning in your direction are blue, while Senators who are inclined to vote against you show up as red. Senators that aren’t tinted in either color are neutral on the subject at hand.
A vote may be presided over by a chairman, who sits at the head of the room. This chairman can be anything from another demon to one of your own characters, and if one happens to be present, they have the ability to influence the rest of the Senate in their favor. Depending on the individual chairman, this influence can be anything from widespread bribery to overt intimidation to throwing explosives into the cheap seats, and if the chairman’s on your side at the time, it can swing the vote your way. It’s always going to be much less expensive to bribe the chairman than it is to bribe individual Senators.
Bribery
This may shock you, but the Senators’ votes can be bought.
Before you call for a vote, you can walk around the Senate’s chambers to deal with them one-on-one. Each Senator typically has a specific item that he or she is interested in, such as Monster Weapons, Hands, food, or pieces of armor. The better the item you give them, the more inclined they are to vote in your favor. Common-quality items barely get their attention; rare or even legendary-quality bribes are much more interesting to them.
Conversely, some items may actually annoy them, and giving them those items as bribes will lower the chance that they’ll vote your way. If you’re trying to bribe a member of your own crew, a low-quality bribe will even cause the character making the proposal to lose Likability. If they’re “not that interested” in an item or worse, giving it to them anyway will lower the chance that they’ll vote in your favor.
There are also several items you can find that work as universal bribes, which will strongly influence a Senator’s vote regardless of his or her specific interests. This includes Angel Food, Gold Bars and Superhero DVDs. These items can be found as rewards from the Bonus meter or can be purchased at the Rosen Queen Trading Company’s branch in the Item World, and they aren’t good for anything besides being used as Senatorial bribes.
Regardless of a Senator’s particular preference as far as bribes go, he or she will usually have at least some interest in items that are of rare or legendary quality. If you happen to have any rare or legendary equipment lying around that your characters have “outgrown” and that you’ve already explored for useful Innocents, it’s often more profitable to use the item as a bribe for a Senator rather than simply selling it to Rosen Queen.
Many Senators are also members of a political party, which usually but isn’t necessarily based on their species. (They may be demons, but they don’t discriminate.) These parties may have rivals in the Senate that stand in opposition to their policies, which you can find out by looking at the Representatives List. Bribing a Senator thus improves your relationship with other members of his or her party, but it comes at the cost of harming your standing with members of the opposition party.
Senators often show up for a vote drunk or asleep, which is indicated by the
or
icons, respectively, as if they’re suffering from the sleep or confusion status ailments. In either event, they’ll end up sitting out the next vote.
You can wake up a sleeping Senator by throwing a Bomb at him or her, or sober up a drunken Senator with Medicine. If you’d actually prefer that a particularly opinionated Senator sit out the vote, you can give him Hard Liquor to get him drunk or put him to sleep with Chloroform. Bombs, Liquor, Medicine, and Chloroform, like Gold Bars and Superhero DVDs, can be found as random rewards as you play through the game.
Failed Bills
If a bill fails in the Senate and you decide to let it drop, you’ll be returned to the Dark Assembly menu. The Mana you spent on the failed bill is used up and you’re back at square one, ready to try again.
Before you reach that point, however, you have a couple of options that you can use to force a failed bill to pass. One is to simply Pay Up; selecting that option allows you to drop money on the table until the Senators change their minds about your proposal. An amount is automatically suggested, and you can raise the stakes to increase the percentage chance that the Senators will let your bill through, up to a maximum that’s equal to the amount of HL you currently possess.
If your payoff is insufficient, the Senators will take your money, then laugh at you and let the bill fail anyway. It’s worth trying, if for no other reason than expanding your Trophy Collection; paying out a total of 100,000,000 HL in bribes to the Senate unlocks the Greasing the Wheels Trophy.
If throwing money around doesn’t work, then your last option to push your bill through the Senate is to pick Persuade by Force. This immediately starts a fight. Your base panel appears directly behind the podium on the chamber floor and the character you used to make the proposal is treated as if he or she is already deployed. (If that character gets killed in the ensuing brawl or returns to the base panel before the end of the fight, it has no effect on the bill.)
A brawl with the Dark Assembly is set in the Senate chambers and begins at Bonus Rank 1, regardless of the level of the Senators involved. (You can thus pummel a room full of level 500 Senators and end up getting rewarded with 7 EXP and a Cicada Husk.) Any Senators that voted in your favor during the bill you’re trying to force through will appear on the map as neutral monsters, and will not attack or be attacked by the other Senators. The Senators who voted against your bill, on the other hand, immediately come after you. This includes any members of your roster who participated in the vote, who will be treated as if they’re enemy units. Naturally, this means they cannot be deployed.
If you can defeat them, the bill you proposed automatically passes. An individual Senator can be anywhere from level 5 to level 1,200, so unless you really luck out, fighting is not going to be your best option until relatively late in the game. Make sure to walk around and double-check the Senators’ levels before you try to push a bill through by force, and if possible, use Hard Liquor or Chloroform to keep the highest-level Senators out of the coming battle. If you manage to pick a fight with the Dark Assembly and win, however, you’ll unlock the Voter Intimidation Trophy.