Editing Asmodeus (section)

===2e===
The book Guide to Hell gave us a completely new view of Asmodeus. At the dawn of creation, beings of Law began to rise up from the primordial soup. The mightiest of these were Ahriman and [[Jazirian]]. Jazirian was a feathered and winged serpent, while Ahriman was scaled and forked of tongue. They bit down onto each other's tails and together began to create Law in the chaos. The first thing that they created was the Unity of Rings: everything keeps happening over and over again. This place, the first ring, became known as the [[Outlands]]. When it was defined the other planes fell in around it, thus creating the [[Planescape|Outer Planes]].

Next up after this was to honor their three aspects: Law, Good and Evil. From this came the Rule of Three, stressing the importance of the number three in all things. Finally there needed to be a third rule: the Center of the Universe. This is where it started to go wrong: while the Outlands would have been the obvious choice, Jazirian pushed for [[Celestia|heaven]], while Ahriman pushed for [[Baator|hell]]. The two began to pull and struggle at and with one another, until they eventually [[rip and tear|tore each other apart]]. Jazirian flew up to the heavens: each drop of blood she spilled from her severed tail tip turned into a fully-formed [[couatl]]. The wingless Ahriman though began to fall: he in fact fell so hard that upon hitting the seventh layer of hell, he fell ''through'' and in his crash created two new layers. Where his blood hit the ground, Pit Fiends sprung up. Ahriman got stuck in his pit, unable to leave.

[[File:Jazirian_and_Ahriman.jpg|250px|thumb|left|Jazirian and Ahriman, busy creating the three rules of the multiverse.]]
In their struggle the two serpents had lost much of their power, and began to nurse themselves back to health. In this time, the other gods overtook them, banded together and began to colonize the [[plane]]s. So, Ahriman began to hatch a new plot. He took the guise of Asmodeus, a near-power just short of being a god: the arch-devil and the lord of evil. But he is more than that: more potent than even the gods and not dependent on the adoration of mortals. He is trying to get into power by ways of three plans: the [[Blood War]], the Politics of Nobility, and Armageddon.

Asmodeus fakes that the Blood War is of great importance to him: he sees it as little more than a series of skirmishes that turned into a full-blown war. But by staying at war with the [[Tanar'ri]] he makes the upper powers think that if one of them were to win, they would flood out to the rest of the planes and create a massive war that would end all life. Thus, they continue to let the fiends fight amongst themselves. The second plan, the Politics of Nobility is more or less the same thing but internal: by keeping the devils occupied with struggling with one another they won't have the resources to fight Asmodeus and his plots.

The third one is a far more sinister plot: those who die without believing in anything. Since only the believers can go to an afterlife, those who do not believe are instead sent elsewhere, namely Nessus. But instead of becoming petitioners here and starting out as [[Baatezu|Lemures]], they become chow for Asmodeus. The process of being eaten by a primordial serpent takes centuries, [[grimdark|during which the petitioners remain fully aware as they are devoured, feeling nothing but excruciating pain for centuries.]] Being destroyed in such a way completely undoes the soul in question, so it cannot be brought back in any way. Every soul devoured this way heals Ahriman's wounds a bit more, and when he has fully healed Ahriman will break free of his prison and cast the multiverse back into the primordial chaos it came from. Nobody, not even Jazirian would be able to stop him, and he would remake the universe to his liking. And this is a Bad Thing. The lore of Asmodeus eating the souls of atheists has not really been continued out of this book as athiests currently just go to the afterlife that matches their alignment or the wall of the faithless in the forgotten realms.