Levistus

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The Lord of Stygia is currently in quite a predicament. The handsome and mostly-human-looking (his completely black eyes are something of a giveaway) rogue archduke is trapped in an indestructible prison, locked away by Asmodeus for the crime of murdering Bensozia, the Overlord's queen and mother of his daughter Glasya. It is said Levistus attempted to seduce her away from her husband, in both senses of the word, and when Bensozia told him to get bent, he killed her in a fit of rage. Asmodeus's punishment was swift: Apparently deciding that mere demotion or death were too good for him, he imprisoned Levistus in a massive glacier more than half a mile across, completely impervious to any sort of magical or mundane damage. This prison floats in the waters of Stygia, occasionally drifting into and out of the Styx.

The truth however is more perplexing. Asmodeus' consort, Bensozia, never loved the big man. But since he is the Overlord of Hell she couldn't exactly just dump him because that would make him look bad, which would have dire consequences for her. So she approached Levistus, whom she started to push towards a coup, and the two began to have an affair. Levistus, however, had trouble keeping it in his pants and seduced Glasya at the same time, with whom he also started an affair. When the Princess of Hell had a big fight with daddy, she stormed off to Levistus and wanted to become his consort. Instead, she walked in on him balls-deep in her mom. In a fit of rage and jealousy she murdered Bensozia.

Now, if all of this soap opera crap this were to come out, Asmodeus would be humiliated and his position would be rather damaged, so the big man's majordomo had the idea to pin all the blame on Levistus instead. And so Levistus ended up as a popsicle.

At least, that's the fourth edition version of the story, in other editions Bensozia was a deeply devoted and loving wife so dedicated to Asmodeus she wouldn't even speak unless he asked her to, and in return he was a dutiful husband and spoiled her deeply, and Levistus tried to straight up rape her to make her his consort in what is probably the most boneheaded decision ever made in D&D, only for her to fight back. An angry Levistus then killed Bensozia, only to find out that his attempts to cover up his crime from the embodiments of Lawful Evil were absolutely futile. He was then forced to confront the most powerful of all devils who had just found out that one of his vassals tried to rape and actually did murder the only person Old Scratch ever really loved. Not a good position for anyone to be in.

Asmodeus was angry, angrier than he'd ever been before or since, and was so enraged that he thought that simply killing or deforming Levistus was too good for the ink-eyed fuck. So instead he trapped him forever in indestructible ice, aware of the world around him but barely able to influence it at all, given a little taste of freedom and an eternal hope of escape to scramble all his resources after, all to deepen the despair of his perpetual confinement. Then he stripped away his old position, of course. The grieving Asmodeus would never take another consort again. This would have been the end of Levistus's story, were it not for one of the most perplexing turns of events in Hell.

After the rebellion of several Archdukes, Asmodeus made the bewildering decision to strip Geryon, the only archduke that remained loyal to him during these events, of his title of Archduke and force him into exile. In his place, he appointed Levistus as the new Lord of the Fifth.

But Asmodeus cleverly avoided either imbuing Levistus with the proper mantle of an Archduke or freeing the murderer from his icy prison. Since that day, Levistus's minions have tried to free their old boss using every possible weapon, magic, trick, and skill check they can scrounge up, even sacrificing good-aligned fire creatures in a bid to destroy the prison, but thus far nothing has even dented it (maybe try sacraficing chaotic-aligned fire creatures?). The fact that he is still imprisoned fills Levistus with hate: for his fellow Archdukes, who naturally shun him like a leper, for Glasya and her rise, and most especially for Old Scratch himself. As such he is working tirelessly to subvert the rule of the other archdukes by planting spies in their courts, working through avatars and long-range communications for obvious reasons. He plans to make overtures to Glasya in order to see if she would be willing to aid in overthrowing her father. Whether or not he knows that Glasya hates him and would use any possible justification to destroy Levistus that presents itself is unknown. Perhaps he does and will try to avert this, trying to be more careful than the last time he tried to turn someone close to Asmodeus against him.

Despite being the planes' evilest popsicle, Levistus still has cults in the material plane. Though these are barely worthy of the name, as usually people who make pacts with Levistus are individuals trapped in desperate straits who turn to him for an escape from seemingly inescapable situations; condemned criminals, cornered bandits, and Drow defectors are all examples of people who would turn to Levistus for aid. Levistus grants them a one-time-only teleport with a mile range that also heals them completely.

Levistus gets a writeup in Dragon 427, which details his plan to blockade Avernus and starve Hell into submission.