Asmodeus
The Archfiend Asmodeus (a.k.a. Supreme Mistress of the Nine Hells, Lady of Lies, Princess of Evil, The Raging Fiend)
Asmodeus was the deity of indulgence and ruler of all devils. Asmodeus was a patron of oppression and power, the greatest devil, and the Lady of the Ninth and overlord of the Nine Hells as a whole.
Asmodeus's true form was that of a wingless scaled serpent hundreds of miles long. Her form's sheer size made it impossible for her to meet and enter into conversations with others. Therefore, she created humanoid-looking avatars. The location of her body was kept secret from everyone, including other devils and everyone who learnt of the truth about her body was killed within a day.
Asmodeus never showed herself except through avatars or project image, both in humanoid forms. Asmodeus's avatars looked like a slim, charismatic, red-skinned humanoid over 13 ft tall, with horns on her head and glowing red eyes. Overall, she had charismatic and beautiful looks that captivated people. She always wore very expensive red and black clothing, which were valuable enough to cover the annual national spending of any nation. However, underneath these expensive garments, the body was wracked with bleeding injuries. While she was in pain, she managed to give the impression of someone unconcerned with the pain the injuries caused her. She could manifest ten avatars at once if needed, allowing her to station one on each layer of Hell if she needed to, with a tenth leftover for managing extraplanar duties. Each of her avatars held a Ruby Rod of Asmodeus.
Personality-
Asmodeus was a lawful evil creature with the goal of becoming the supreme being in the multiverse even if it required destroying the current multiverse and creating a new one. While the method she wanted to use to achieve this goal was not publicly known, and the only one who had the necessary knowledge to piece the method together hoped that it was not the one Asmodeus wanted to use, that Asmodeus wanted to take over the multiverse for herself was a known fact. She genuinely believed that a bright future awaited the multiverse if she was to rule it. As arrogant as this claim sounded, Asmodeus had the competence to back it up. When faced directly, she presented herself as a confident and eloquent woman who was quite reasonable to talk with. In fact, it was quite difficult to see past her manners and realise that she was an evil best left in Hell. Her confidence was real and rooted in her knowledge to be one of the most powerful creatures in existence. However, she was not above pretending to know more than she did. Thus, she pretended to not just know but also foresee the actions of people who genuinely surprised her. Her threshold for rewarding someone was fairly low, provided that someone was willing to sign away his or her soul. Once the mortal worshiper was dead, what awaited him or her was eternal servitude. Activities-
As mentioned above, Asmodeus was a greater deity for whom mortal worship was not required to maintain her powers, who predated the concept of faith, and who could not grant spells, while few extant races remembered her godhood. Thus she posed as a non-divine entity in order to conduct her various plans in a covert and manipulative manner. She was willing to pay attention to the fate of individual mortals and not just the grand scheme of things. That said, Asmodeus was effectively freed from the infernal duty of meeting a quota of damned souls, because every damned soul was damned under Asmodeus's name and therefore every soul was also beholden to her. Her efforts to corrupt others were concentrated on important people like angels and demigods with the goal of turning them into unique devils, such as Zariel. All her plans were done with the goal to destroy the entire construct of the Outer Planes. Asmodeus's fall into the Nine Hells and the ancient struggle with Pisces caused her severe wounds and basically created the underlying laws of the Great Wheel cosmology, which drained her powers. Restoring her powers required the healing of her wounds. However, the nourishment needed to heal her wounds was the souls of disbelievers, not agnostics but true atheists. These souls were special. Normally, when a person died, that person's soul became a petitioner on one of the Outer Planes. For example, in Toril's case, the souls became petitioners on the Fugue Plane. However, to become a petitioner, a person needed to have faith, which atheists lacked, and their souls arrived at Nessus regardless of their moral and ethical outlook. This was practically unknown to mortals, as the common assumption was that souls of true atheists would not become petitioners, an exception to the rule that souls went where their deities awaited them. Asmodeus ate these souls to heal her wounds. Once healed, she could take back her power from the planes, dissolving the underlying law of the multiverse, causing the (for her) preferable result of reverting everything to the initial state of chaos. She was sure that she alone would survive such an event and remain as the only force that could create a new order according to her will. Asmodeus was also the inventor of the Infernal language. When it came to torturing souls, Asmodeus mostly outsourced it to the city of Jangling Hiter in Minauros. When demons tried to invade Hell, they first had to go through the first layer, Avernus. A substantial part of Asmodeus's military efforts were dedicated to driving these demons away from the layer. Phlegethos was where the infernal justice system was situated. Asmodeus made sure that this justice system was not independent, but beholden to Asmodeus. Infernal Politics-
Asmodeus had many underlings, starting with the archdevils. These creatures politicked against each other in a lawful evil manner and this once spilled over to affect Asmodeus in the Reckoning of Hell, reinforcing her choice of not being a god. However, it was all a charade concocted by the Lady of Lies. By acting in a lawful evil manner on a lawful evil plane, the devils under Asmodeus followed the rules by which denizens of every other Outer Plane acted. Asmodeus did not intend to further belief but the lack thereof. Her underlings' actions served as a smokescreen to hide her true intentions from others. That said, to Asmodeus, infernal politics were important. One of her focuses was maintaining the status quo, meaning keeping herself at the top of Hell's pecking order. Towards that end, she infiltrated the courts of every archdevil to levels that made them paranoid for no devil could be sure whether an associate was a spy working for Asmodeus or not. As a general rule, Asmodeus was not forthcoming about her plans. However, she was by far the most accomplished devil when it came to intrigue and devils pointed to the result of the Reckoning when they wanted proof of their overlord's superiority. Usually, she outsourced her work to devils below her in the full knowledge that they desired her position. Spreading Disbelief-
Asmodeus wanted to turn people away from belief. She maintained working relationships with evil deities, giving infernal aid in return for supplying her followers with spells in her stead, so said followers could increase their numbers through the display of magical aid. These cults were dedicated to either infernal entities or completely made-up ones in order to gain a following in a specific group or people. When Asmodeus wanted souls to heal her wounds, she directed her allies to stop granting magic to her own followers when the cult's numbers were at their peak to deliberately cause the decline of the cult. While the majority turned to other religions, some lost faith in religion altogether, becoming disbelievers and therefore food for Asmodeus. Asmodeus considered it a particular success when such despairing cults turned to suicide. A second tactic to increase the number of disbelievers was to supply the Athar with aid. This was a school of thought (one that came into being without Asmodeus's doing) that posited that gods were not gods but just another form of powerful creature. Asmodeus aided this faction in a covert manner, and the Athar had no clue that the Lady of Lies was on their side. A third tactic was to make mortals disillusioned with the gods. Contrary to common belief, gods were not omnipotent and were as capable of pettiness as mortals were and Asmodeus fanned such feelings through her manipulations among the gods. Such manipulations were very subtle and took centuries to bear fruit. The Lady of Lies's goal was not to make the gods kill each other directly, but to make the gods pit their followers against each other, thus showing mortals that the gods were petty and turning them away from worship. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Asmodeus Asmodeus had working relationships with evil deities who supplied his followers with spells, for he could not do it himself, in return for his aid in their endeavours. The lawful deities and Asmodeus had an ancient agreement called the Pact Primeval that, among other things, allowed his devils to corrupt mortals and wring divine magic from their souls. From time to time, rumors about various lawful deities allying to take over Baator from Asmodeus popped up, but never amounted to anything. Lawful deities were not really capable of changing the status quo and, even if they were, the ability to agree on who was to take control of the Nine Hells was beyond them.[58] Like the gods, Asmodeus did not want an open war either. Asmodeus kept Tiamat's influence small. Among other things, he took away control of Avernus from her.[60] In fact, she was contractually imprisoned by Asmodeus.
Asmodeus was a lawful evil creature with the goal of becoming the supreme being in the multiverse even if it required destroying the current multiverse and creating a new one. While the method she wanted to use to achieve this goal was not publicly known, and the only one who had the necessary knowledge to piece the method together hoped that it was not the one Asmodeus wanted to use, that Asmodeus wanted to take over the multiverse for herself was a known fact. She genuinely believed that a bright future awaited the multiverse if she was to rule it. As arrogant as this claim sounded, Asmodeus had the competence to back it up. When faced directly, she presented herself as a confident and eloquent woman who was quite reasonable to talk with. In fact, it was quite difficult to see past her manners and realise that she was an evil best left in Hell. Her confidence was real and rooted in her knowledge to be one of the most powerful creatures in existence. However, she was not above pretending to know more than she did. Thus, she pretended to not just know but also foresee the actions of people who genuinely surprised her. Her threshold for rewarding someone was fairly low, provided that someone was willing to sign away his or her soul. Once the mortal worshiper was dead, what awaited him or her was eternal servitude. Activities-
As mentioned above, Asmodeus was a greater deity for whom mortal worship was not required to maintain her powers, who predated the concept of faith, and who could not grant spells, while few extant races remembered her godhood. Thus she posed as a non-divine entity in order to conduct her various plans in a covert and manipulative manner. She was willing to pay attention to the fate of individual mortals and not just the grand scheme of things. That said, Asmodeus was effectively freed from the infernal duty of meeting a quota of damned souls, because every damned soul was damned under Asmodeus's name and therefore every soul was also beholden to her. Her efforts to corrupt others were concentrated on important people like angels and demigods with the goal of turning them into unique devils, such as Zariel. All her plans were done with the goal to destroy the entire construct of the Outer Planes. Asmodeus's fall into the Nine Hells and the ancient struggle with Pisces caused her severe wounds and basically created the underlying laws of the Great Wheel cosmology, which drained her powers. Restoring her powers required the healing of her wounds. However, the nourishment needed to heal her wounds was the souls of disbelievers, not agnostics but true atheists. These souls were special. Normally, when a person died, that person's soul became a petitioner on one of the Outer Planes. For example, in Toril's case, the souls became petitioners on the Fugue Plane. However, to become a petitioner, a person needed to have faith, which atheists lacked, and their souls arrived at Nessus regardless of their moral and ethical outlook. This was practically unknown to mortals, as the common assumption was that souls of true atheists would not become petitioners, an exception to the rule that souls went where their deities awaited them. Asmodeus ate these souls to heal her wounds. Once healed, she could take back her power from the planes, dissolving the underlying law of the multiverse, causing the (for her) preferable result of reverting everything to the initial state of chaos. She was sure that she alone would survive such an event and remain as the only force that could create a new order according to her will. Asmodeus was also the inventor of the Infernal language. When it came to torturing souls, Asmodeus mostly outsourced it to the city of Jangling Hiter in Minauros. When demons tried to invade Hell, they first had to go through the first layer, Avernus. A substantial part of Asmodeus's military efforts were dedicated to driving these demons away from the layer. Phlegethos was where the infernal justice system was situated. Asmodeus made sure that this justice system was not independent, but beholden to Asmodeus. Infernal Politics-
Asmodeus had many underlings, starting with the archdevils. These creatures politicked against each other in a lawful evil manner and this once spilled over to affect Asmodeus in the Reckoning of Hell, reinforcing her choice of not being a god. However, it was all a charade concocted by the Lady of Lies. By acting in a lawful evil manner on a lawful evil plane, the devils under Asmodeus followed the rules by which denizens of every other Outer Plane acted. Asmodeus did not intend to further belief but the lack thereof. Her underlings' actions served as a smokescreen to hide her true intentions from others. That said, to Asmodeus, infernal politics were important. One of her focuses was maintaining the status quo, meaning keeping herself at the top of Hell's pecking order. Towards that end, she infiltrated the courts of every archdevil to levels that made them paranoid for no devil could be sure whether an associate was a spy working for Asmodeus or not. As a general rule, Asmodeus was not forthcoming about her plans. However, she was by far the most accomplished devil when it came to intrigue and devils pointed to the result of the Reckoning when they wanted proof of their overlord's superiority. Usually, she outsourced her work to devils below her in the full knowledge that they desired her position. Spreading Disbelief-
Asmodeus wanted to turn people away from belief. She maintained working relationships with evil deities, giving infernal aid in return for supplying her followers with spells in her stead, so said followers could increase their numbers through the display of magical aid. These cults were dedicated to either infernal entities or completely made-up ones in order to gain a following in a specific group or people. When Asmodeus wanted souls to heal her wounds, she directed her allies to stop granting magic to her own followers when the cult's numbers were at their peak to deliberately cause the decline of the cult. While the majority turned to other religions, some lost faith in religion altogether, becoming disbelievers and therefore food for Asmodeus. Asmodeus considered it a particular success when such despairing cults turned to suicide. A second tactic to increase the number of disbelievers was to supply the Athar with aid. This was a school of thought (one that came into being without Asmodeus's doing) that posited that gods were not gods but just another form of powerful creature. Asmodeus aided this faction in a covert manner, and the Athar had no clue that the Lady of Lies was on their side. A third tactic was to make mortals disillusioned with the gods. Contrary to common belief, gods were not omnipotent and were as capable of pettiness as mortals were and Asmodeus fanned such feelings through her manipulations among the gods. Such manipulations were very subtle and took centuries to bear fruit. The Lady of Lies's goal was not to make the gods kill each other directly, but to make the gods pit their followers against each other, thus showing mortals that the gods were petty and turning them away from worship. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Asmodeus Asmodeus had working relationships with evil deities who supplied his followers with spells, for he could not do it himself, in return for his aid in their endeavours. The lawful deities and Asmodeus had an ancient agreement called the Pact Primeval that, among other things, allowed his devils to corrupt mortals and wring divine magic from their souls. From time to time, rumors about various lawful deities allying to take over Baator from Asmodeus popped up, but never amounted to anything. Lawful deities were not really capable of changing the status quo and, even if they were, the ability to agree on who was to take control of the Nine Hells was beyond them.[58] Like the gods, Asmodeus did not want an open war either. Asmodeus kept Tiamat's influence small. Among other things, he took away control of Avernus from her.[60] In fact, she was contractually imprisoned by Asmodeus.
Divine Domains
Knowledge, Order, Trickery
Divine Symbols & Sigils
Three inverted triangles arranged in a long triangle.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
The origins of Asmodeus were not very clear. Various stories existed that even disagreed on what kind of lifeform Asmodeus actually was.
Origin Story: Serpent of Law
This story positioned Asmodeus's origins at the very dawn of time. Called Ahriman at the time, she arose from the primordial chaos as the mightiest of the lawful gods, with Pisces the only one who could rival her. Towards that end, the 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 honour of their three aspects: evil, good, and law. However, when they had to decide a centre for the multiverse, they disagreed. The Outlands were the ideal place but lawful good Pisces wanted Celestia to be the centre, while lawful evil Ahriman wanted Hell to be it. They tugged each other and bit each others' tail tips off. Unlike Pisces who was a winged fish, Ahriman was a scaled serpent without wings and therefore fell into the Nine Hells. She crashed into Nessus and created the deep fissure called the Serpent's Coil before her fall halted. There, her serpentine bleeding body lay bleeding, and from the blood arose the first baatezu. Having failed to choose a centre for the multiverse, the two lawful entities had effectively honoured chaos by making every plane infinitely big and therefore every place being the centre. The two deities 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 herself. 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 Hell 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 she and her 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 she and her people had done nothing wrong. The gods realized Asmodeus had a better grasp of law than they did and could find no counter to her arguments. Over time, the gods tried to bar Asmodeus and her people from accessing various privileges and rights, but Asmodeus managed to secure them through her 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 her fellows' (including Mephistopheles and Dispater) 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. She argued again that she simply followed divine law and did her duties, and again, the gods could not counter her, 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 Hell, so the gods did not need to look at it anymore. However, if Asmodeus and her angels moved their workplace to Hell, they would be unable to draw power from the gods to conduct their duties. Therefore, Asmodeus proposed that she and her 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 her fellows started work in the Nine Hells as torturers and actively started seducing mortals towards evil so that they would end up in Hell 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 she fell and fell through Hell, either through the nine layers or breaking it into the nine layers. Thereafter, Asmodeus carried serious wounds from her fall. Origin Story: He Who Was- In this version, Asmodeus was an exarch in the service of an unknown god, but after retrieving a shard of evil, she killed that god. Asmodeus put much effort in wiping out this god's name, so she was known only as He Who Was. According to one legend, this god was a control freak who supervised every single aspect of every single person living in his realm. The all-encompassing supervision and control force on Asmodeus suffered was the start of her need to rise up against her god. She was again the greatest warrior and general of that god's army in the Dawn War, but applied brutal methods that at one point caused innocent casualties. As Asmodeus did not want to see the errors of her ways, the lawful good god condemned and fired Asmodeus. Afterward, Asmodeus worked as a watchman over Tharizdun's prison. During this time, Pazuzu, a demon lord of the obyrith, came to her and they had a conversation. The demon's flattery caused Asmodeus to develop a sense of pride that became arrogance and the desire to rise up against He Who Was. Asmodeus maintained a stable secret alliance with Pazuzu, who served as her general and was vital in eventually killing He Who Was. A side effect of Asmodeus's corruption was that she began to hear the location of the shards of evil. She retrieved one by going down to the bottom of the Abyss through the Blood Rift, created her Ruby Rod with the shard, and killed her god with it when it looked bad for the deities during the Dawn War. The corrupting influence of the shard turned Asmodeus and the members of her army into the first devils. He Who Was had cursed Asmodeus and since then Asmodeus could not leave Hell. He Who Was's curse also affected Asmodeus's angelic army, which was stationed in Phlegethos, the site of which later became known as the Lake of Fire. Afterward, Asmodeus managed to lay the groundwork for emerging stronger from the Dawn War, while all other participants were weakened. Publicly, the other gods condemned Asmodeus's actions, but privately some started making deals with the future lady of devils, because He Who Was had been infamous for his incompetence, which would have caused the gods' defeat in the Dawn War and with it their end. Asmodeus made deals with both the gods and covertly the primordials, but in the end decided to take the divine side. One of these bargains gave her the eternal right to use souls to maintain Hell. With this right, Hell became a divine realm of material affluence, while all other realms had a poverty problem. This was due to Asmodeus's great management skills, and a very dark touch. Among others, this was done by turning Hell into a giant torture chamber where magical energy was tortured out of souls. She modified the Nine Hells so that as many souls as possible could enter the astral dominion. For example, because of the damage done by the Dawn War, the system of souls being transferred to the realms of their deities did not properly function. Souls that appeared outside of the proper divine realm could not enter any realm except the Nine Hells and a lot of souls made use of this unique aspect of the Nine Hells. After the Fall-
Asmodeus was acknowledged as the oldest devil in existence, but not everyone believed her to be the first ruler of Hell, and they were correct. Contrary to how the Pact Primeval legend presented Hell, Hell had not been an empty wasteland, but had been inhabited by another race. The nupperibo, the result of leaving a soul in Hell alone to evolve without the torturous process of the baatezu to turn it into a lemure, were assumed to be members of this race. They were the baatorians and their ruler was Zargon. When Asmodeus came to Hell, she and her devils purged the baatorians, enslaving them and slaying their lords, with Asmodeus killing many herself. However, when fighting Zargon, Asmodeus could not kill her because the creature constantly regenerated around his indestructible horn. Thus Asmodeus ripped off the horn and threw it into the Prime Material plane, falling onto some world, to the spot where eventually the city of Cynidicea arose. However, over the centuries Zargon regenerated around the horn and terrorized the people of Cynidicea, who worshiped him and appeased him by sacrificing sentient beings. Depopulating their own people, they began to take their victims from other lands. This attracted the rage of a barbarian nation who attacked them, but Zargon killed their hero, and then a few of their gods. But Asmodeus stepped in and defeated Zargon once more, not because she cared for the dead gods, but because she did not want the original ruler of Hell free. To ensure that Zargon stayed sealed away, Asmodeus encased the elder evil in stone and buried Zargon's worshipers alive. The Trial of Asmodeus-
According to the The Trial of Asmodeus, a play based on real events according to its author, disgusted angels condemned Asmodeus for tempting mortals to evil and harvesting their souls. The Archfiend protested and the angels agreed to have a hearing with Asmodeus after accepting her proposal to ask Primus of the modrons to be an impartial judge. Asmodeus argued that she'd never done anything wrong for she consistently acted as a lawful creature in accordance with infernal tradition in service to the cause of law and the continued existence of the multiverse. According to her, mortals always had the choice whether to accept an infernal bargain, devils always held up their end of a bargain, and a mortal who nullified a contract by finding a loophole was respected. Furthermore, souls condemned to Hell were conscripted into the infernal army against the Abyss's forces of chaos, thereby protecting the cause of law and good from the forces of chaos and evil, which meant the souls were also used to further and protect the cause of law. The angels presented their cases one by one, but with so many and for so long that Primus's patience ran out. The judge declared she would only listen to a limited number of angels, not all of them. After this pronouncement, Zariel, at that time still an angel, started a brawl to get to the front row to get her case heard. This degenerated into a massive punch-up among the angels. Primus scolded the angels for their lack of restraint and refused to give a final verdict, and Asmodeus suffered no punishment. However, two matters were decided. First, Asmodeus was effectively given the right to sway mortals to evil and harvest their souls. Second, a decree was made that Asmodeus must always carry his Ruby Rod of Asmodeus, both as a symbol of the devils' right and as a punishment device against devils who did not uphold their end of a bargain made with mortals. In Hell-
Her position secured, Asmodeus ruled as overlord of Hell, with the goal of healing her wounds from her fall by receiving atheists' souls. She created a bureaucratic system based in Grenpoli on Maladomini. It was believed that Asmodeus, at some point, financed a project to create the yugoloths. She paid night hags to create them so she would have an army not tied to Hell. This plan, if true, ultimately failed, because the tool to control the yugoloths, the four Books of Keeping, got lost over time. Her intra-Hell politics revolved around keeping her position. She was successful at it and over the years observed the coming and going of many archdevils. She also recruited new ones. For example, she allegedly steered Baalzebul, while still an archon called Triel, onto the path of corruption by appearing to her as a beautiful venomous flower. Baalzebul later became a powerful devil and one of Asmodeus's favourites. According to one theory, Stygia was not one of the original layers of Hell but a world whose denizens handed over their souls to Asmodeus to save themselves. The alleged method by which Asmodeus saved them was to transport the doomed world to Hell as its newest layer. At some point, Asmodeus took Bensozia as her consort and had a daughter with her called Glasya. Levistus ambushed Bensozia and tried to get her help in deposing Asmodeus, but she refused, so in a rage Levistus tried to rape Bensozia and when she wouldn't submit she murdered her. After Levistus succeeded in taking over Stygia from Geryon, an angry Asmodeus encased Levistus in an ice block where she lay unconscious. Geryon took over the position of archdevil of Stygia. Asmodeus's relationship with her daughter was a weird one. On one hand, Asmodeus was acknowledged as a caring mother—at least by devil standards—and on the other, Glasya was most easily described as a ne'er-do-well and troublemaker towards her mother and other archdevils. Another archdevil who either fled or left Baator was Gargauth. The exact circumstances were not known, but Asmodeus played a crucial role. Gargauth left either because he tried and failed to oust Asmodeus and had to flee or because Asmodeus killed Beherit, Gargauth's closest ally, which prompted the Outcast to leave. Graz'zt was once an archdevil under the employ of Asmodeus. She was charged with fighting the Blood War, invading the Abyss, and getting the shard of evil for her. However, after conquering three Abyssal layers, she could not advance further because of the resistance she faced from Demogorgon and Orcus. Instead, she broke away and became a demon lady herself. Whether she'd truly severed all ties with Asmodeus and whether she would remain a demon lady was unknown. Another was Malkizid, an exiled former solar under the employment of Corellon. He was cast out for siding with Lolth and fell into Hell, where he gained influence. At some point in history, he angered Asmodeus and was banished. Zariel started off as an observer of the Blood War under celestial orders. But she wanted to fight in it too and eventually ran off to do that. Her beaten body was found by Asmodeus's people, she was brought to Nessus, nursed back to health, and installed as the archdevil of Avernus. The Reckoning of Hell Post-Spellplague Era-
When Dweomerheart collapsed in the wake of the Spellplague of -10025 BM, Azuth fell into the Hells where Asmodeus, sensing her opportunity, devoured the lesser deity and became a god herself. She then ended the Blood War by forcing the Abyss underneath the Elemental Chaos. But she knew the war could restart at any time and with a united demonic front, if she did anything like invading the Abyss. Therefore, she organized her strength so that when the war restarted it would do so under circumstances favourable to him. It turned out that Asmodeus had had some divine influence on The Scarlet Domain that had waned, but her ascension restored it and her cult was on the rise. It began to be practiced overtly when Asmodeus's worshipers presented their goddess as someone from whom absolution from all kinds of sins could be gained, as mortals had thought of the Blue Fire of the Spellplague as some form of divine punishment. Although many believed Asmodeus killed Azuth when she consumed his divine essence, in fact Asmodeus had fused with Azuth, and both deities coexisted in the same body. Most of the time, Asmodeus overpowered Azuth, using his divine powers while the God of Wizards was in a dormant state. But on a rare few occasions, Azuth was able to gain control of their shared body, and because of her strange behaviour many denizens of the Nine Hells believed Asmodeus had grown mad. After the Spellplague, Asmodeus re-instituted Belial as an archdevil, which presumably meant that she'd demoted Fierna from that position. Post-Second Sundering-
In -999 BM, Azuth had regained most of his strength and was able to choose Ilstan Nyaril as his Chosen. Asmodeus and Azuth began to struggle for control of their shared body and as a result the hierarchy of the Nine Hells was jeopardized. Ilstan and Farideh, one of the Chosen of Asmodeus, devised a plan to separate both deities and avoid a potential devil invasion of all the multiverse. They contacted the god Enlil through his Chosen, Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi, and Asmodeus agreed to release Azuth from her body and resurrect the Untherite god Nanna-Sin as a non-god immortal and in exchange Enlil allowed Asmodeus to consume Nanna-Sin's divine spark to become a god unto herself. In a ritual performed in Djerad Thymar amid the First Tymanther-Unther War, on Vimisk 10 of -753 BM, Ilstan sacrificed his life to allow Azuth to become an individual god once more. At some point after the Second Sundering, Asmodeus demoted Bel and re-elevated Zariel to the position of archdevil of Avernus. Another archdevil she restored to the position was Fierna. This was a unique ruling that made Belial and Fierna equals in a system that otherwise mandated that every layer-ruling post had to be filled with only one person. On the Scarlet Domain, Asmodeus's worshipers comprised two groups: those who wanted to have some form of independence from gods, and those who had no intention of dealing with devils, only wanting fun and/or clemency from Asmodeus. On dying in the Scarlet Domain, a mortal's soul was shunted to the Fugue Plane, where it waited until whatever god they worshiped in life cared to take the soul to itself, for a length of time depending on how well the soul adhered to the deity's tenets. In that time, it could be approached by devils offering a new life as a devil. The first group hoped they would be specifically approached by a devil on dying. The second group would be offered a reprieve from the wait. Asmodeus also supplied pacts for warlocks.
This story positioned Asmodeus's origins at the very dawn of time. Called Ahriman at the time, she arose from the primordial chaos as the mightiest of the lawful gods, with Pisces the only one who could rival her. Towards that end, the 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 honour of their three aspects: evil, good, and law. However, when they had to decide a centre for the multiverse, they disagreed. The Outlands were the ideal place but lawful good Pisces wanted Celestia to be the centre, while lawful evil Ahriman wanted Hell to be it. They tugged each other and bit each others' tail tips off. Unlike Pisces who was a winged fish, Ahriman was a scaled serpent without wings and therefore fell into the Nine Hells. She crashed into Nessus and created the deep fissure called the Serpent's Coil before her fall halted. There, her serpentine bleeding body lay bleeding, and from the blood arose the first baatezu. Having failed to choose a centre for the multiverse, the two lawful entities had effectively honoured chaos by making every plane infinitely big and therefore every place being the centre. The two deities 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 herself. 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 Hell 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 she and her 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 she and her people had done nothing wrong. The gods realized Asmodeus had a better grasp of law than they did and could find no counter to her arguments. Over time, the gods tried to bar Asmodeus and her people from accessing various privileges and rights, but Asmodeus managed to secure them through her 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 her fellows' (including Mephistopheles and Dispater) 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. She argued again that she simply followed divine law and did her duties, and again, the gods could not counter her, 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 Hell, so the gods did not need to look at it anymore. However, if Asmodeus and her angels moved their workplace to Hell, they would be unable to draw power from the gods to conduct their duties. Therefore, Asmodeus proposed that she and her 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 her fellows started work in the Nine Hells as torturers and actively started seducing mortals towards evil so that they would end up in Hell 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 she fell and fell through Hell, either through the nine layers or breaking it into the nine layers. Thereafter, Asmodeus carried serious wounds from her fall. Origin Story: He Who Was- In this version, Asmodeus was an exarch in the service of an unknown god, but after retrieving a shard of evil, she killed that god. Asmodeus put much effort in wiping out this god's name, so she was known only as He Who Was. According to one legend, this god was a control freak who supervised every single aspect of every single person living in his realm. The all-encompassing supervision and control force on Asmodeus suffered was the start of her need to rise up against her god. She was again the greatest warrior and general of that god's army in the Dawn War, but applied brutal methods that at one point caused innocent casualties. As Asmodeus did not want to see the errors of her ways, the lawful good god condemned and fired Asmodeus. Afterward, Asmodeus worked as a watchman over Tharizdun's prison. During this time, Pazuzu, a demon lord of the obyrith, came to her and they had a conversation. The demon's flattery caused Asmodeus to develop a sense of pride that became arrogance and the desire to rise up against He Who Was. Asmodeus maintained a stable secret alliance with Pazuzu, who served as her general and was vital in eventually killing He Who Was. A side effect of Asmodeus's corruption was that she began to hear the location of the shards of evil. She retrieved one by going down to the bottom of the Abyss through the Blood Rift, created her Ruby Rod with the shard, and killed her god with it when it looked bad for the deities during the Dawn War. The corrupting influence of the shard turned Asmodeus and the members of her army into the first devils. He Who Was had cursed Asmodeus and since then Asmodeus could not leave Hell. He Who Was's curse also affected Asmodeus's angelic army, which was stationed in Phlegethos, the site of which later became known as the Lake of Fire. Afterward, Asmodeus managed to lay the groundwork for emerging stronger from the Dawn War, while all other participants were weakened. Publicly, the other gods condemned Asmodeus's actions, but privately some started making deals with the future lady of devils, because He Who Was had been infamous for his incompetence, which would have caused the gods' defeat in the Dawn War and with it their end. Asmodeus made deals with both the gods and covertly the primordials, but in the end decided to take the divine side. One of these bargains gave her the eternal right to use souls to maintain Hell. With this right, Hell became a divine realm of material affluence, while all other realms had a poverty problem. This was due to Asmodeus's great management skills, and a very dark touch. Among others, this was done by turning Hell into a giant torture chamber where magical energy was tortured out of souls. She modified the Nine Hells so that as many souls as possible could enter the astral dominion. For example, because of the damage done by the Dawn War, the system of souls being transferred to the realms of their deities did not properly function. Souls that appeared outside of the proper divine realm could not enter any realm except the Nine Hells and a lot of souls made use of this unique aspect of the Nine Hells. After the Fall-
Asmodeus was acknowledged as the oldest devil in existence, but not everyone believed her to be the first ruler of Hell, and they were correct. Contrary to how the Pact Primeval legend presented Hell, Hell had not been an empty wasteland, but had been inhabited by another race. The nupperibo, the result of leaving a soul in Hell alone to evolve without the torturous process of the baatezu to turn it into a lemure, were assumed to be members of this race. They were the baatorians and their ruler was Zargon. When Asmodeus came to Hell, she and her devils purged the baatorians, enslaving them and slaying their lords, with Asmodeus killing many herself. However, when fighting Zargon, Asmodeus could not kill her because the creature constantly regenerated around his indestructible horn. Thus Asmodeus ripped off the horn and threw it into the Prime Material plane, falling onto some world, to the spot where eventually the city of Cynidicea arose. However, over the centuries Zargon regenerated around the horn and terrorized the people of Cynidicea, who worshiped him and appeased him by sacrificing sentient beings. Depopulating their own people, they began to take their victims from other lands. This attracted the rage of a barbarian nation who attacked them, but Zargon killed their hero, and then a few of their gods. But Asmodeus stepped in and defeated Zargon once more, not because she cared for the dead gods, but because she did not want the original ruler of Hell free. To ensure that Zargon stayed sealed away, Asmodeus encased the elder evil in stone and buried Zargon's worshipers alive. The Trial of Asmodeus-
According to the The Trial of Asmodeus, a play based on real events according to its author, disgusted angels condemned Asmodeus for tempting mortals to evil and harvesting their souls. The Archfiend protested and the angels agreed to have a hearing with Asmodeus after accepting her proposal to ask Primus of the modrons to be an impartial judge. Asmodeus argued that she'd never done anything wrong for she consistently acted as a lawful creature in accordance with infernal tradition in service to the cause of law and the continued existence of the multiverse. According to her, mortals always had the choice whether to accept an infernal bargain, devils always held up their end of a bargain, and a mortal who nullified a contract by finding a loophole was respected. Furthermore, souls condemned to Hell were conscripted into the infernal army against the Abyss's forces of chaos, thereby protecting the cause of law and good from the forces of chaos and evil, which meant the souls were also used to further and protect the cause of law. The angels presented their cases one by one, but with so many and for so long that Primus's patience ran out. The judge declared she would only listen to a limited number of angels, not all of them. After this pronouncement, Zariel, at that time still an angel, started a brawl to get to the front row to get her case heard. This degenerated into a massive punch-up among the angels. Primus scolded the angels for their lack of restraint and refused to give a final verdict, and Asmodeus suffered no punishment. However, two matters were decided. First, Asmodeus was effectively given the right to sway mortals to evil and harvest their souls. Second, a decree was made that Asmodeus must always carry his Ruby Rod of Asmodeus, both as a symbol of the devils' right and as a punishment device against devils who did not uphold their end of a bargain made with mortals. In Hell-
Her position secured, Asmodeus ruled as overlord of Hell, with the goal of healing her wounds from her fall by receiving atheists' souls. She created a bureaucratic system based in Grenpoli on Maladomini. It was believed that Asmodeus, at some point, financed a project to create the yugoloths. She paid night hags to create them so she would have an army not tied to Hell. This plan, if true, ultimately failed, because the tool to control the yugoloths, the four Books of Keeping, got lost over time. Her intra-Hell politics revolved around keeping her position. She was successful at it and over the years observed the coming and going of many archdevils. She also recruited new ones. For example, she allegedly steered Baalzebul, while still an archon called Triel, onto the path of corruption by appearing to her as a beautiful venomous flower. Baalzebul later became a powerful devil and one of Asmodeus's favourites. According to one theory, Stygia was not one of the original layers of Hell but a world whose denizens handed over their souls to Asmodeus to save themselves. The alleged method by which Asmodeus saved them was to transport the doomed world to Hell as its newest layer. At some point, Asmodeus took Bensozia as her consort and had a daughter with her called Glasya. Levistus ambushed Bensozia and tried to get her help in deposing Asmodeus, but she refused, so in a rage Levistus tried to rape Bensozia and when she wouldn't submit she murdered her. After Levistus succeeded in taking over Stygia from Geryon, an angry Asmodeus encased Levistus in an ice block where she lay unconscious. Geryon took over the position of archdevil of Stygia. Asmodeus's relationship with her daughter was a weird one. On one hand, Asmodeus was acknowledged as a caring mother—at least by devil standards—and on the other, Glasya was most easily described as a ne'er-do-well and troublemaker towards her mother and other archdevils. Another archdevil who either fled or left Baator was Gargauth. The exact circumstances were not known, but Asmodeus played a crucial role. Gargauth left either because he tried and failed to oust Asmodeus and had to flee or because Asmodeus killed Beherit, Gargauth's closest ally, which prompted the Outcast to leave. Graz'zt was once an archdevil under the employ of Asmodeus. She was charged with fighting the Blood War, invading the Abyss, and getting the shard of evil for her. However, after conquering three Abyssal layers, she could not advance further because of the resistance she faced from Demogorgon and Orcus. Instead, she broke away and became a demon lady herself. Whether she'd truly severed all ties with Asmodeus and whether she would remain a demon lady was unknown. Another was Malkizid, an exiled former solar under the employment of Corellon. He was cast out for siding with Lolth and fell into Hell, where he gained influence. At some point in history, he angered Asmodeus and was banished. Zariel started off as an observer of the Blood War under celestial orders. But she wanted to fight in it too and eventually ran off to do that. Her beaten body was found by Asmodeus's people, she was brought to Nessus, nursed back to health, and installed as the archdevil of Avernus. The Reckoning of Hell Post-Spellplague Era-
When Dweomerheart collapsed in the wake of the Spellplague of -10025 BM, Azuth fell into the Hells where Asmodeus, sensing her opportunity, devoured the lesser deity and became a god herself. She then ended the Blood War by forcing the Abyss underneath the Elemental Chaos. But she knew the war could restart at any time and with a united demonic front, if she did anything like invading the Abyss. Therefore, she organized her strength so that when the war restarted it would do so under circumstances favourable to him. It turned out that Asmodeus had had some divine influence on The Scarlet Domain that had waned, but her ascension restored it and her cult was on the rise. It began to be practiced overtly when Asmodeus's worshipers presented their goddess as someone from whom absolution from all kinds of sins could be gained, as mortals had thought of the Blue Fire of the Spellplague as some form of divine punishment. Although many believed Asmodeus killed Azuth when she consumed his divine essence, in fact Asmodeus had fused with Azuth, and both deities coexisted in the same body. Most of the time, Asmodeus overpowered Azuth, using his divine powers while the God of Wizards was in a dormant state. But on a rare few occasions, Azuth was able to gain control of their shared body, and because of her strange behaviour many denizens of the Nine Hells believed Asmodeus had grown mad. After the Spellplague, Asmodeus re-instituted Belial as an archdevil, which presumably meant that she'd demoted Fierna from that position. Post-Second Sundering-
In -999 BM, Azuth had regained most of his strength and was able to choose Ilstan Nyaril as his Chosen. Asmodeus and Azuth began to struggle for control of their shared body and as a result the hierarchy of the Nine Hells was jeopardized. Ilstan and Farideh, one of the Chosen of Asmodeus, devised a plan to separate both deities and avoid a potential devil invasion of all the multiverse. They contacted the god Enlil through his Chosen, Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi, and Asmodeus agreed to release Azuth from her body and resurrect the Untherite god Nanna-Sin as a non-god immortal and in exchange Enlil allowed Asmodeus to consume Nanna-Sin's divine spark to become a god unto herself. In a ritual performed in Djerad Thymar amid the First Tymanther-Unther War, on Vimisk 10 of -753 BM, Ilstan sacrificed his life to allow Azuth to become an individual god once more. At some point after the Second Sundering, Asmodeus demoted Bel and re-elevated Zariel to the position of archdevil of Avernus. Another archdevil she restored to the position was Fierna. This was a unique ruling that made Belial and Fierna equals in a system that otherwise mandated that every layer-ruling post had to be filled with only one person. On the Scarlet Domain, Asmodeus's worshipers comprised two groups: those who wanted to have some form of independence from gods, and those who had no intention of dealing with devils, only wanting fun and/or clemency from Asmodeus. On dying in the Scarlet Domain, a mortal's soul was shunted to the Fugue Plane, where it waited until whatever god they worshiped in life cared to take the soul to itself, for a length of time depending on how well the soul adhered to the deity's tenets. In that time, it could be approached by devils offering a new life as a devil. The first group hoped they would be specifically approached by a devil on dying. The second group would be offered a reprieve from the wait. Asmodeus also supplied pacts for warlocks.
Divine Classification
Goddess/Archfiend
Alignment
Lawful Evil
Species
Realm
Church/Cult
Children
Current Residence
Ruled Locations
Comments