Asmodeus

Supreme Master of the Nine Hells

Asmodeus is the most powerful of the nine archdevils that inhabit Hell, and the god of indulgence and trickery.

Appearance

Asmodeus' true form was that of a hundreds of miles long wingless snake with scales. His form's sheer size made it impossible to meet and enter conversations with others. Therefore, he created humanoid looking avatars. The location of his body was kept secret from everyone including other devils and everyone who learnt of the truth about his body was killed within a day.
Asmodeus never showed himself except through avatars or project image, both in humanoid forms. Asmodeus' avatars looked like a tall, muscular man with red skin, cloven hooves, and black hair and horns, surrounded by a pale flame nimbus and bearing a contract. They were always clad in black robes that cover his wounds. In art and otherwise, he is rarely seen without the Archstar, an artifact forged before the Exodus from Heaven that bears his pentagram symbol and takes the form of a flaming ruby mace, rod, or staff. His pentagram symbol has become synonymous with this artifact.

Dogma

Asmodeus believes that the strong should rightfully govern the weak, who in turn owe their masters unwavering obedience. He loves negotiations and contracts, especially those that give one of the parties a distinct, hidden advantage over the other. He expects and appreciates flattery, but its never fooled by it, seeing it as a negotiation tactic, as well as a duty those in inferior positions owe their betters.

Personality

Asmodeus was a lawful creature with the goal of becoming the supreme creature in the multiverse even if it required to destroy the current one and create a new one. While the method he 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 himself was a known fact. He genuinely believed that a bright future awaited the multiverse, if he was to rule it. As arrogant this claim sounded, Asmodeus had the competence to back it up.
When faced directly, he gave off the impression of a confident and eloquent man who was quite reasonable to talk with. In fact, it was quite difficult to see that he was an evil person past his manners that were the best found in Hell. His confidence was real and rooted in his knowledge to be one of the most powerful creatures in existence. However, he was not above pretending to know more than he did. Thus, he pretended to not just know but also foresee the actions of people who genuinely surprised him.
His threshold to reward someone was 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.

Abilities

Asmodeus was a greater deity. However, he was older than the concept of faith and the power of deities like him did neither wax nor wane with the number of worshipers and out of himself, he had no ability to grant spells to his followers. However, there was one way for mortals to gain spells from him, becoming a disciple of darkness. On the mortal side, this agreement meant that the archdevil could take the life of the mortal at any time he wanted, if he was not appeased with sacrifices. The mortal generally did not need to meet any strictures like a dogma or the like and could cast divine magic with impunity. The method through which Asmodeus granted spells was not through his own powers but through using himself as a channel for the divine magic of Hell itself to the mortal cleric. Since consuming Klauth, the favored son of Tiamat, he could grant spells by himself to his followers and sentient sacrifices stopped being a necessary part of his worship.
However, like any other greater deity, he could create up to ten avatars. He deployed one on each layer of Hell to keep tabs on the layers while keeping one spare avatar. His ability to send avatars to the Material plane was stunted. He could send only one avatar at a time to the material plane and doing this made it impossible for him to maintain all other avatars. This was the reason why Asmodeus' avatar was rarely seen on the material plane and he preferred to work through other people.
Everyone within 120 ft of Asmodeus' avatar was under the effect of an awe effect that made it impossible for people to attack him when they were not attacked first by the avatar.
He can cast a large number of spells. He had also the spellcasting ability of a master cleric with the Evil and Devil domains. Limited to when he was in the Pit, he could cast practically any magic he wanted as an exercise of will. He had absolute control over the Nine Hells and could change the landscape of any layer in any way he wanted when he wanted it with his mind. This control over form extended the archdevils too. He could change their forms in any way he wanted. For example, he changed Baalzebul's formerly beautiful form into that of a giant slug. People were not sure whether he could kill an archdevil with a mere thought. Some suspected that he could do so and was responsible for Malagarde's sudden and weird death by using the ability to kill archdevils. Those people were correct, Asmodeus could, and did, kill the Hag Countess.
His protective abilities were impressive. It was impossible to harm him with spells below a certain level of complexity as well as poison, paralysis, petrification, magic dealing with death, illusions, and attempts to influence his mind. Physically, it was impossible to hurt him with weapons that were not enchanted with magic that was at least on the level of a +4 weapon. However, even when hurt by such a weapon, if the weapon was not holy or otherwise blessed the wounds immediately healed.
He mostly fought, which happened rarely, by using the powers of the Archstar instead of his own. He had magical abilities that allowed him to slow people while decreasing their physical combat abilities or instill fear while sapping physical strength by merely looking at somebody. His voice made worked like an irresistible suggestion that made people subservient to him for ten to hundred days. He had a preference to use the abilities to make people flee from him or turn subservient to outright killing them. In the case these abilities did not work, Asmodeus had a strong tendency to retreat and let his minions deal with the enemies. He could summon a pit fiend or two specimens of any kind of devil every hour.
Like any other devil of authority, Asmodeus owned the ability to demote formally subservient devil, meaning any devil in his case, at his whim. He was the only devil with the ability to promote a devil to archdevil status.
Infernal contracts' underlying power was Asmodeus'. This was the reason why breaking a contract with the weakest devil still had the power to consign the oathbreaker's soul into the Nine Hells.
Asmodeus' rhetoric and strategic skills were considered a class onto itself.

Possessions

Each of Asmodeus' avatars held an Archstar of Asmodeus as a badge of office. It aso served as the avatars' main weapon and allowed attacks with elemental forces, force enemies to cower in fear, or provide the holder with a field of healing and protection. In fact, when facing combat, an avatar of Asmodeus primarily fought using the powers of his Archstar instead of its innate powers.
While this was not exactly a possession, Asmodeus owned a private army called the Nessian Guard, which was in store for a great battle. This army consisted of devils that were created from Asmodeus' blood and were truly loyal to him. Over the years, their numbers grew and should Asmodeus manage to heal his wounds and get out of Hell, this army of pit fiends and cornugons would follow.
He owned one of the original copies of the Pact Primeval. Asmodeus' duty was to prevent people from taking the copy away from Baator no matter the costs as it was the basis on which he and the devils were allowed to damn mortals. For example, to make transportation difficult, Asmodeus actually enclosed the document in a giant heavy, meaning over 20 tons, ruby.

Accomplishments

As mentioned above, Asmodeus was a greater deity to whom mortal worship was not worth a lot regarding maintenance of his powers. He also could not grant spells. He used the fact that the vast majority of creatures did not predate the concept of faith like him, and therefore were too young to remember his godhood, as well as his inability to grant spells to his advantage by posing as a non-divine entity. Under this guise, he conducted his various plans in covert and manipulative manner. He was also 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. This was because every damned soul was damned under Asmodeus' name and therefore every soul was also beholden to him. His efforts to corrupt other people were concentrated on important people like demigods or the likes with the goal of turning them to unique devils. For example, Zariel was somebody who got corrupted by Asmodeus and became a unique devil.
All of these plans were done with the goal to destroy the entire construct of the Outer Planes. Asmodeus' fall into the Nine Hells and an ancient struggle with Torag caused him severe wounds and basically creating the underlying laws of the Outer Planes and the distribution of souls drained his powers. Restoring his powers required the healing of his wounds.
The nourishment to heal his wounds was the souls of disbelievers, not agnostics but true atheists. These souls were a bit special. Normally, when a person died, that person's souls became a petitioner on one of the Outer Planes. For example, in Abadar's case, the souls became petitioners on Axis, in other words they needed the ability to become petitioners. However, to become a petitioner, a person needed to have faith and there was one kind of soul that lacked the ability to become petitioners, the souls of atheists, not agnostics but true atheists whose souls landed on Nessus regardless of their moral and ethical outlook. This was, apart from practically unknown in the public, the common assumption was that souls of true atheists would not become petitioners, an exception to the rule that souls go to where their deities awaited. Asmodeus ate these souls to heal his wounds and once healed, he could take back his power from the planes, dissolving the underlying law of the multiverse, causing the, for him, preferable result of reverting everything to the initial state of chaos. He was sure that he alone would survive such an event and remain as the only force that could create a new order according to his will.
Asmodeus was also the inventor of the Infernal language.
When it came to torturing souls, Asmodeus mostly outsourced it to Mephistopheles on Caina.

Infernal Politics

Asmodeus had a lot of underlings starting with the archdevils. These creatures politicked against each other in a lawful evil manner and this spilled over one time to affect Asmodeus, reinforcing his act of not being a god. It was all a charade concocted by the Lord of Lies. By acting to further acting in a lawful evil manner on a lawful evil plane, the devils under Asmodeus followed the rules under which denizens of every other Outer Plane acted. As mentioned above, Asmodeus did not intend to further belief but the lack thereof. His underlings actions served as a kind of smokescreen to hide his true intentions from others.
That said, to Asmodeus, infernal politics were important. One of his main efforts were directed at keeping the status quo, meaning keeping himself at the top of Hell's pecking order. Towards that end, he honeycombed 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 talkative about his plans. However, he 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.
As a general rule, he outsourced his work to devils below him in the full knowledge that they desire his position.

History

The origins of Asmodeus were not very clear. Various stories existed that even disagreed on what kind of lifeform Asmodeus actually was.

Origins

The multiverse started as a soup of chaos. There, demons fought each other. As some form of counter-reaction to all the chaos, the concept of law arose and with it deities of law who started to fight the demons. However, at some point, the deities lost interest in fighting 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 Samael.
As far as killing demons was concerned, Samael was the most successful of the angels. He and his fellows took on some fiendish aspects to increase their effectiveness at fighting their enemies and were put on trial for that. Samael's argument against it essentially was that war was dirty and that they were basically the substitute for the deities to become dirty for their creators were not willing to enter the fray themselves and that therefore, Samael and his people did nothing wrong. The gods realized that Samael had a better grasp around law than they did and could find no counter to his arguments.
In the following years, gods tried to bar Samael and his people from accessing various privileges and rights, but he managed to secure them for him and his people through his legal knowledge by suing the gods and pulling forth arguments they could not counter.
Once the Material plane was populated and made more or less safe from demons, 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 also allowed demons access to mortals. To counter this, Samael invented the concept of punishment. The gods accepted it and Samael and his fellows' duties included punishing those who transgressed divine law, meaning tortured the souls of transgressors.
While the gods understood the necessity of punishment, they had a problem with souls being punished within their lands. So Samael was again put before trial. This time, his argument against the gods was that he simply followed divine law and did his duties. Again, the gods could not counter this argument, but they were not capable of abiding souls getting punished in a place where they could see the cruelty of the deeds. Therefore, Samael proposed to replace the site of torture to a place knowns as the Pit, so the gods did not need to look at it anymore. However, if Samael and his angels changed their workplace to the Pit, they would render themselves unable to draw power from the gods to conduct their duties. Therefore, Samael proposed that he and his fellows were given the right to wring out of the souls they tortured of divine energy to substitute the cut connection. The gods agreed to this and the Pact Primeval was signed.
After becoming the sole ruler of the Pit, Samael took on a new name more befitting his new position. That name was Asmodeus. Asmodeus and his fellows started to work on creating the Nine Hells as torturers and actively started to seduce 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. After doing so in a fit of rage, the Empyrial lord Uriel, the archangel of justice, struck Asmodeus and caused him to fall back to the Nine Hells. His fall left him with severe wounds that have yet to heal. His fall also possibly caused Hell to break into nine layers. When he crushed into Nessus, his fall stopped, not before he involuntarily drilled through Nessus, creating the deepest fissure called the Serpent's Coil. There his serpentine and bleeding body lay around. From the blood from these bleedings arose the first pit fiends, which have kept spawning from every drop of blood ever since.
The God-Fiend also played a key role in the defeat and imprisonment of Rovagug. The Rough Beast was sealed away in the Dead Vault, the only key to his prison kept by the Prince of Darkness himself.

The Blood War

The Blood War was often described as some kind of philosophical war to determine whether law or chaos should have the say over evil. Asmodeus knew the truth for he was present at the time of its beginning. The war was simply the result of a violent first contact between devils and demons that over various acts of retribution grew into a wasteful war. However, what made demons react in such hostile ways towards devils were Asmodeus' actions. To increase his own power he snuck into the demon's domain and he stole a shard of evil from the Abyss to craft the Archstar of Asmodeus from it. The Abyss wanted the shard back.
Asmodeus understood how senseless the Blood War in itself was. However, because other people popularly ascribed deeper meaning to it, he exploited it as a cloak to shroud his intentions. The Lord of Lies annually summoned the Dark Eight to Nessus in order to issue orders of how to go on with the Blood War in the coming year, the pit fiends honestly believed that their lord saw any value in the Blood War, this kept Asmodeus' armies motivated and sharp, his enemies looking for meaning in a war without one, and guaranteed that his underlings were kept busy.

The Trail of Asmodeus

According to the The Trial of Asmodeus, a play that was based on real events according to the author, angels were so disgusted with Asmodeus' action, namely the tempting of mortals to evil and harvesting their souls. They condemned Asmodeus and the Archfiend protested. Angels agreed to have a hearing with Asmodeus after accepting the latter's proposal of asking Abadar of Axis as an impartial judge.
Asmodeus' argument was that he never did anything wrong for he 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 him, mortals always had the choice whether to accept an infernal bargain, devils always held up their end of the bargain, and the mortal turning a contract inert by finding a loophole was respected. Furthermore, souls condemned to Hell were conscripted into the infernal army against the abyssal one of chaos, thereby protecting the cause of law and good from the forces of chaos and evil, which meant the souls were used to further and protect the cause of law.
The angels presented their cases one by one. They did this so often and for so long that Abadar's patience ran out. The judge made at some point clear that he was only willing to listen to a limited number of angels and 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 initial brawl degenerated into a massive punch up among the angels. Abadar scolded the angles for their lack of restraint and denied a final verdict for the case and Asmodeus came out without suffering ay punishment. However, two matters were decided. First, Asmodeus was effectively given the right to sway mortals to evil ad harvest the souls. Second, a decree fell that Asmodeus had to be always equipped with his Archstar of Asmodeus both as a symbol for the aforementioned right that the devils had and that was since then used as a punishment device against devils who did not uphold their end of a bargain they made with mortals.

In Hell

His position secured, Asmodeus lived his life as the overlord of Hell. His tentative goal was to heal his wounds from his fall by receiving atheists' souls from cults cultivated by him. His intra-Hellish politics revolved around keeping his position. He was successful at it and over the years, observed the come and go of many archdevils.
He also recruited new ones. For example, he allegedly steered Baalzebul to the path of corruption by appearing to him as a beautiful venomous flower while he was still an archon called Triel. However he became a devil, Baalzebul became a powerful one and also one of Asmodeus' favorites.
At some point, Asmodeus took on a erinyes as his consort and had a daughter with her called Glasya. Levistus, a powerful pit fiend, tried to get the consorts help with deposing Asmodeus, she did not want to and so he killed her. After Levistus succeeded at taking over Stygia from Geryon, an angry Asmodeus encased Levistus in an ice block where he lay unconscious. Geryon overtook the position of archdevil of Stygia. Asmodeus' relationship with his daughter was a weird one. On one hand, Asmodeus was acknowledged as a caring father—at least as far as devil standards were concerned. On the other hand, Glasya was most easily described as a ne'er do well and troublemaker towards her father and other archdevils.
Graz'zt was an archdevil under the employment of Asmodeus. He was charged with fighting the Blood War and invading the Abyss and getting the shard of evil for him. However, after conquering three layers of the Abyss, he could not advance further due to the resistance he faced by Demogorgon and Orcus. He broke away and turned into a demon lord. Whether he severed all ties with Asmodeus' and if he did, whether it would remain such was not known.
Zariel started off as an observer of the Blood War under celestial orders. She wanted to fight in it too and at some point simply ran off doing that. Her beaten up body was found by Asmodeus' people, she was brought Nessus, nursed back to health, and got installed as the archdevil of Avernus.

The Reckoning of Hell

The Reckoning was an event that consisted of the archdevils revolting against Asmodeus and the latter surviving it without harm. The key catalyst for this were Baalzebul's ambitions that increasingly clashed with Asmodeus'. He tried to smear Asmodeus' reputation as a competent leader and tried to circumvent the infernal bureaucracy. In an attempt to save his amassed military strength, he went as far as withholding his armies in the face of an abyssal invasion until he had to admit that not entering the fray would cause the Nine Hells to end up as a ruin.
At that time, the archdevils acted in a fairly obvious manner to achieve their goals and at the culmination of their scheming, two factions crystallized, that of Baalzebul with Belial, Malagarde, and Zariel under him and that of Mephistopheles with Dispater, Levistus, and Mammon under him. These factions' armies eventually clashed in Malebolge with the intention to determine who should inherit Asmodeus' crown after Baalzebul's machinations were uncovered as part of an investigation. All of their planning and ambitions was for naught, Asmodeus secured the loyalty of Levistus and honeycombed the eight armies up to the highest level. On Levistus' signal, the pit fiend commanders turned on their archdevils and their troops were no more while Asmodeus was literally unscathed.
Various archdevils acted in various manners and Asmodeus generally left them with their realms. He installed the institution of the Dark Eight. Thus giving an effective promotion to the pit fiends who were loyal to him. Regarding the archdevils, in the order of the layers they ruled, Zariel was allowed to keep her layer; Dispater was allowed to keep his layer; Mammon made an embarrassing show of begging Asmodeus' for forgiveness, who did forgive him by allowing him to have his layer, but forbade him to keep his relationship with his daughter; Belial went to the background to evade responsibility and managed hold on power by accepting Asmodeus' condition to hold power together with his daughter Fierna; Levistus was disposed—despite of his loyalty—and Geryon was elevated to the rank of archdevil of Stygia; Malagarde was convinced—by Moloch who worked for Geryon and therefore for Asmdeus—that if he made a convincing show of defiance, Asmodeus would respect him and absolute him from all crimes, none of the sort happened. He was deposed and Moloch, who convinced him to join the fray to begin with, became the archdevil of Malbolge; Baalzebul was allowed to keep his position at the cost of his body being transformed into that of a giant slug, though with the ability to take on his true form in times of need; Mephistopheles was allowed to keep his position. All in all, all archdevils were forced to accept Asmodeus as their superior and Asmodeus could be sure that he knew of the potential usurpers capabilities while also reminding them of their position in a dramatic way.

Divine Classification

Greater Deity

Religions

• Hellknights

Alignment

Lawful Evil

Current Location

The Nine Hells

Species

Devil

Realm

The Nine Hells

Honorary & Occupational Titles

• Supreme Master of the Nine Hells
• Lord of Nessus
• The Lord of the Ninth
• The Cloven
• Old Hoof and Horn
• Lord of Lies
• The Raging Fiend
• The Archfiend
• Dark Prince
• The First
• God-Fiend
• King of Hell
• Lord of Darkness
• Lord of Hell
• Lord of the Pit
• Master of Witches
• Prince of Darkness
• Prince of Devils
• Prince of Hell
• Prince of Law
• Ruler of Hell

Current Residence

Serpent's Coil, Nessus, The Nine Hell

Gender

Depends

Eyes

Fiery

Hair

Long, Black

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Red

Height

13'

Weight

2500 lbs

Holy Symbol

Pathfinder Statistics

Divine Domains

• Evil
• Fire
• Law
• Magic
• Trickery

Favored Weapon: Mace

D&D 5e Statistics

Suggested Domains

• Knowledge Domain
• Order Domain
• Trickery Domain