Trial of Asmodeus

Asmodeus is an unmatched strategist and orator. The most epic of all his achievements is chronicled in The Trial of Asmodeus, a play based on purportedly true events as researched by the Aasimar bard Anodius.

I literally sit beneath eight tiers of scheming, ambitious entities that represent primal law suffused with evil. The path from this realm leads to an infinite pit of chaos and evil that my will and strength of arms alone beats back, to keep your realms from being consumed. Now, tell me again how you and your ilk are the victims in this eternal struggle.
— Asmodeus addresses the celestial gallery, from The Trial of Asmodeus

In the Reshaping Year of Binding after The Planar Expulsion occurred, and as The Blood War raged, the angels of law and good issued a decree accusing Asmodeus of terrible crimes including the temptation of mortals to evil. Outraged by such claims, the Lord of The Hells petitioned for the right to answer the charges before his accusers. The angels, although shocked at his impudence, accepted his petition and agreed to hear the bargain he proposed. Both sides, he suggested, would present their case to Primus, god of Order, and leader of the Modrons. As an entity of absolute law, Primus could be trusted to issue a fair and impartial verdict. Asmodeus drafted a contract to seal the deal, and the angels — after carefully scrutinizing the terms — agreed to the trial.

When he testified before Primus, Asmodeus attributed his actions to the dictates of law and the survival of the cosmos. He admitted that he swayed mortals to evil, but he and his minions never breached a contract and explained the terms clearly. Had they not obeyed the rule of law in doing so? Was it not mortal ambition, rather than infernal deception, that led so many souls astray?

Asmodeus also pointed out that the souls harvested from the Material Plane went on to serve in the infernal legions that repel the endless tide of The Abyss. Were not such souls put to good use against the demonic hordes, a power that if unchecked would scour the universe of all lawfulness and goodness?

He further asserted that he was bound to the rules and traditions of the devils as established during the millennias long Divinity Wars prior to The Hells creation, compelled to adhere to law and to maintain the devils’ trafficking in souls. If he violated those laws, he would be no better than the demons he fought. Mortals who refused a devil’s offer were left alone, in accordance with the law. Those who struck deals with his followers and then somehow turned the contracts against the devils were freed from their debts. A contract is the law, and the law is a contract.

Primus weighed Asmodeus’s words and listened patiently as angel after angel testified to his crimes. Hours turned to days and days into weeks as more and more of his sins entered the court record.

Even Primus’s patience has its limits, and in time, the remaining angels who were eager to testify were told that only a few more would be allowed to speak. A brawl broke out when one angel, Zariel, pushed her way to the front and demanded to be heard. As the scuffle turned into a battle, Asmodeus looked on with a smirk.

In the end, Primus declined to issue a definitive judgment. He rebuked the angels for their descent into infighting, but didn’t punish Asmodeus for his evil ways. He did, however, issue a command to guarantee his adherence to law. Primus, granted him, and through him, his underlings the right to enter into contracts with mortals for their souls but established an inescapable punishment upon any devil that breaches such a contract. This agreement came to be known as the Pact Primeval, and it subsumes all previous law devils ascribed to throughout antiquity, and serves as the basis for all conduct taken by a devil in the pursuit of mortal souls.

This agreement would later be further ratified when Primus crafted for him the Ruby Rod of Asmodeus that would both confer additional powers and ensure his compliance, as well as the compliance of every devil under Asmodeus's control.