Origin Story: Pact Primeval
This origin story had Asmodeus fool the gods into signing the Pact Primeval, a contract between Asmodeus and gods that effectively allowed devils to legally take mortal souls to Baator by corrupting them and draw energy from them. This story was accepted by sages across the multiverse, but was held to be myth rather than an exact account, while the existence of other stories was acknowledged. This story was mostly told by devils, of course.
In this version too, the multiverse started as a soup of chaos, where demons fought each other. As a reaction to chaos, the concept of law arose to counter it, and with it deities of law who fought the demons. But eventually the deities wearied of fighting infinite demons and wanted to do something else. So they created angels to fight the demons for them. The best specimen of this new species in every regard was Asmodeus.
As far as killing demons was concerned, Asmodeus was the most successful of the angels. But he and his fellows took on some fiendish aspects to increase their effectiveness at fighting demons, and for this they were put on trial. Asmodeus's argument was that war was a dirty business and that they had done the deity's dirty work for them, yet upheld their laws, and that he and his people had done nothing wrong. The gods realized Asmodeus had a better grasp of law than they did and could find no counter to his arguments. Over time, the gods tried to bar Asmodeus and his people from accessing various privileges and rights, but Asmodeus managed to secure them through his legal knowledge by suing the gods and pulling forth arguments they could not counter.
Once the Prime Material Plane was populated and made more-or-less safe from demons, the gods noticed that mortals had a tendency to disregard divine law and overstep boundaries. The gods had a problem with this for it invited chaos and allowed demons access to mortals. They had free will, and could chose not to follow law. To counter this, Asmodeus invented the concept of punishment. The gods accepted it and Asmodeus's and his fellows' duties now included punishing those who transgressed divine law, meaning torturing the souls of transgressors.
While the gods understood the necessity of punishment, they had a problem with souls being punished within their lands. So Asmodeus was again put on trial. He argued again that he simply followed divine law and did his duties, and again, the gods could not counter him, but they couldn't abide souls being punished in a place where they could see the cruelty. Therefore, Asmodeus proposed to shift the site of torture to what would be Baator, so the gods did not need to look at it anymore. However, if Asmodeus and his angels moved their workplace to Baator, they would be unable to draw power from the gods to conduct their duties. Therefore, Asmodeus proposed that he and his fellows be given the right to wring divine energy out of the souls they tortured as a substitute. The gods agreed and the Pact Primeval was signed.
Asmodeus and his fellows started work in the Nine Hells as torturers and actively started seducing mortals towards evil so that they would end up in Baator instead of the gods' divine realms on dying. Once the gods found this out, they confronted Asmodeus, who merely pointed them to the contract's fine print.
This version made it appear as though Asmodeus's and the lawful gods went different ways by relatively peaceful means. However, the parting was not peaceful—the deities threw Asmodeus out of the Upper Planes and he fell and fell through Baator, either through the nine layers or breaking it into the nine layers. Thereafter, Asmodeus carried serious wounds from his fall.
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