Origin Story: Serpent of Law
This story positioned Asmodeus's origins at the very dawn of time. Called Ahriman at the time, he arose from the primordial chaos as the mightiest of the lawful gods, with Jazirian the only one who could rival him. These two were both serpent-form gods and they set their minds on ordering the multiverse in a lawful way.
Towards that end, the two serpent gods bit each others' tails, forming a circle that defined the borders of a new plane. Born from the soup of chaos through the interaction of the two most powerful entities of law, one evil and the other good, formed the neutral plane of the Outlands. The other Outer Planes arrayed themselves around its circular border, forming the Great Wheel cosmology, and the concept of the Unity of Rings was created. The next law the two created was the Rule of Three in honor of their three aspects: evil, good, and law. However, when they had to decide a center for the multiverse, they disagreed. The Outlands were the ideal place but lawful good Jazirian wanted Celestia to be the center, while lawful evil Ahriman wanted Baator to be it. They tugged each other and bit each others' tail tips off. Unlike Jazirian, Ahriman was a scaled serpent without wings and therefore fell into the Nine Hells. He crashed into Nessus and created the deep fissure called the Serpent's Coil before his fall halted. There, his serpentine body lay bleeding, and from the blood arose the first baatezu.
Having failed to choose a center for the multiverse, the two lawful entities had effectively honored chaos by making every plane infinitely big and therefore every place being the center. The two serpents had spent so much power in creating rules for the multiverse and in their struggle that they were unable to prevent other, newer gods from taking over positions of importance. Ahriman later took the name Asmodeus for himself.
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