Asmodeus

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Asmodeus is THE evil god AND an arch-devil in Dungeons & Dragons. He is the absolute ruler of the Nine Hells, stationed squarely in its infernal core of Nessus. His daughter Glasya is one of the commanders in charge of a "lower" level.

Fluff

Asmodeus was introduced in AD&D 1st edition. In the Monster Manual, no less! His domain was detailed in Dragon magazine. It's mostly stayed the same since.

Asmodeus was part of the Creation War. After defeating the Primordials, the evil gods set out to kill each other over who would take over the Universe while the good and neutral ones tried to stop them. Asmodeus was able to get a large number of angels to side with him and led a rebellion against the heavens. He was struck down and landed on Baator, which originally had seven Hells but he made two more just for s and g. There he set up his kingdom of hate. Yeah, he's kind of a dick.

Asmodus takes on the form of a boring, run-of-the-mill Halloween devil. Oh, except for being 13 feet tall. Of course, his real form is a giant snake that, if he were to assume the form, would be large enough that he could wrap himself around Baator and bite his own tail. Yeah, he's Jormungandr (from Viking mythology). He has impossibly high charisma and can only really be damaged with Holy items. His Ruby Rod has a lot of at-will spells that he can use, and he can alter lesser beings. Typically, he's a patient schemer who can wait epochs for his plans to resolve, but during the rare times he doesn't use stars forming and dying to time himself, he uses guile rather than force... usually.

...Yes. It's called the Ruby Rod. The Ruby Rod of Asmodeus. It's been around since forever, and, yes, it looks exactly how you think it looks. Some of his followers even carry similar Ruby Rods, but they are far inferior in length, girth, and potency to his.

This has been an obvious dick joke. Please, continue with the article.

3.5 e

In 3.5 Asmodeus got a new backstory and became a magnificent bastard of massive proportions. In the ancient days the Gods were troubled by mortals because they would do bad things over and over again. Asmodeus, one of the smartest people ever, pointed out it was because there was no consequence for doing this and invented "Punishment" which took the form of a rod with which to strike the guilty. The Gods liked the idea and so Asmodeus and his followers went about punishing mortals that did wrong all over the heavenly realms. Well the Gods of Good that they served got disturbed by this; sure there were results and mortals were being less of a collection of dicks because of it, but they didn't like evil souls being tortured in their herb gardens. Asmodeus had a solution. He wrote up a giant contract that would make him and his followers separate from the Gods, give him his own realm (a little one-layerer called Baator), and he and his followers would get energy from those they punish, leaving the Gods free from having to manage the thing. It was such a good idea that all the Gods signed it. When Asmodeus and his followers arrived at the dirt hovel plane, they thought he had gone mad. Then he explained the rest of his plan.

A few millenia later, the Gods started to notice something was up with the number of souls they were getting. Investigating, they found that Asmodeus had been a productive bastard. 9 layers of hellscape, legions of devils, and innumerable tortured evil souls. Except some of those souls had been bought or corrupted by Asmodeus and his followers.

St. Cuthbert the God of Retribution drew forth his mace and shouted "You fiend! You are only supposed to punish the wicked, not tempt them into acts of evil!"

Asmodeus smiled, held out the contract, and said "Read the fine print."

In this edition we see why Asmodeus re-installed Levistus to his former position as leader of the 5th layer of hell without freeing from his iceberg prison and more importantly, not providing the traditional promotion makeover.

4e

In 4th edition Asmodeus isn't the most powerful devil ever. He is the GOD who is in charge of the devils. That's right, the bastard managed to plot and assassinate his way to divinity. The only thing that can possibly stop him is if any mortal manages to, without divine aid, discover the name of the God he assassinated and stole divinity from and get enough worshipers of that God going to bring them back to life. Asmodeus killed every one of that Gods followers and destroyed every mention of that God in mortal texts...and is constantly double checking to make sure he didn't miss anything.

Followers

Yeah, anyone lawful evil basically. There are a few who worship other beings, but most of them go to this guy. He's very convincing. They're all gonna go to Hell. And while he might promise you something nice once you get there, he's lying.