Nessus
The Nine Layer of the Nine Hells
Nessus is a spherical cavern the size of a continent that surrounds the core of Baator. The devils of the ninth dwell in iron citadels that protrude from the crevasses and stalactites formed by Nessus's "floor". These iron citadels house all manners of world breaking things, such as a half fiendish tarrasque, the orb of total neutrality, a spell which details how to create a world-sized demiplane, parts of vecna, wand of annihilation spheres, a codex of the doors of sigil, a list of names of all the yuguloths, trapped and imprisoned primoridals, as well as galleries of samples of races from every material plane world Asmodeus has dealt with.
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 slim big, meaning a bit more than 13 ft, charismatic red-skinned humanoid with horns on the head with glowing red eyes. Overall, he provided charismatic and beautiful looks that captivated people. He always had a perfectly trimmed beard and wore very expensive red and black clothing, each of these cloths was valuable enough to cover the annual national spending of any nation, and each of his ten avatars held a Ruby Rod of Asmodeus. Underneath these expensive garments, the body was wracked with bleeding injuries. While he was in pain, he managed to give off the appearance of someone unconcerned with the pain the injuries caused him.
Asmodeus, Supreme Master of the Nine Hells, Lord of Nessus, The Lord of the Ninth, The Cloven, Old Hoof and Horn, Lord of Lies, The Archfiend, The Raging Fiend, Prince of Evil
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.Activities
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 Jazirian caused him severe wounds and basically creating the underlying laws of the Great Wheel cosmology drained his powers. Restoring his powers required the healing of his wounds. Asmodeus was also the inventor of the Infernal language.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. During the Dawn War, he stole a shard of evil from the Abyss to craft the Ruby Rod 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. All that said, for Asmodeus, the Blood War was not a trivial matter. To be more precise, he was well aware of the danger the demons represented for the continued existence of the multiverse. If they were not kept busy with the Blood War, they would eventually take over the multiverse, kill everybody living on it, and finally kill each other into extinction. One of Asmodeus' goals regarding the demons was to get them under his control. He already stole one shard of evil, his goal was to steal the entire thing from the bottom of the Abyss. Such an act would give him control over the entire demonic race. Asmodeus hated the gods of the Upper planes for essentially leaving the devils alone to do the dirty work of keeping them and the multiverse safe from the demons. He intended to take them down after taking down the demons and conquering the planes of law. However, Asmodeus exempted himself from the duty of providing soldiers and other aid to fight the Blood War. One way he intended to deal with the Blood War was to change its supposed objective from a law-chaos struggle to a good-evil struggle. Towards that goal, Asmodeus intended to strike a bargain, more precisely a temporary cease-fire, with the demons. This cease-fire had to endure only a timeframe that was long enough for him to organize matters that would eventually turn the Blood War into a good-evil struggle that would serve his ends in causing destruction on the Upper planes. His devils continually damned souls to Baator in order to turn them into new devils and with it expand the infernal army.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.Spreading Disbelief
As mentioned above, Asmodeus could not grant spells to his followers and he wanted to turn people to a lack of belief. He maintained working relationships with evil deities, the bargain being infernal aid in return of supplying his followers with spells in his stead, so said followers could increase their numbers through the display of magical aid. These cults were either dedicated to infernal entities or to completely made-up ones to gain following in a specific group or people. When Asmodeus wanted souls to heal his wounds, he directed his allies to stop granting magic to his followers when the cult's numbers were at its peak. This was done to intentionally cause the decline of said cult. When this happened, the majority turned to other religions, but some extremists lost faith in religion altogether, becoming disbelievers and therefore the necessary food for Asmodeus to heal his wounds. Asmodeus particularly considered it a success when such despairing cults turned into suicide cults. A second tactic to increase the number of disbelievers in the multiverse, which Asmodeus pursued was to supply the Athar with aid. This was a thought school that came into being without Asmodeus doing that posited that gods were not gods but just another form of powerful creatures. Asmodeus' aid to this faction was done in a covert manner and the aided had no clue that the Lord of Lies was on their side. A third tactic to spread disbelief was to make mortals disillusioned with the gods. Contrary to common belief, gods were not omnipotent, they were as capable of pettiness as mortals were and Asmodeus fanned such feelings through his manipulations among the gods. Such manipulations was very subtle and took literal centuries to bear fruits. The Lord of Lies's goal was not to make the gods kill each other in direct fashion, but to make the god pit each others' followers against each other. Thus giving the Cloven the necessary opportunity to showcase mortals how petty their objects of worship actually were to drive them away from worship altogether.Relationships
Deities
As mentioned above, Asmodeus had working relationships with evil deities who supplied his followers with spells for he could not do it by himself in return for his aid in their endeavors. Baatorian deities were quite respectful around him. 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 out divine magic from their souls. From time to time, rumors about various lawful deities allying with each other to take over Baator from Asmodeus popped up, but they 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 over control of the Nine Hells was beyond them. Like the gods, Asmodeus did not want an open war too.Tiamat
Asmodeus kept Tiamat's influence small. Among others, he did take away control over Avernus from her. In fact, she was contractually imprisoned by Asmodeus.Devils
Asmodeus was baatezu and the creator of the baatezu. It was from his blood the first of them arose. He was an entity that outranked both common and noble baatezu and fell in a category onto himself, but was still a devil like the others. Among the devils, Asmodeus ruled supreme and made his superiority publicly clear in an event called the Reckoning and every single devil served Asmodeus either directly or was capable of tracing a line of authority back to Asmodeus from its own position in the infernal hierarchy. One exception to this rule were the abishai. In their case, the one at the top of the hierarchy was Tiamat. Asmodeus was only their commander when he personally assigned them tasks. Abishai knew that while disobeying Tiamat's orders could potentially spell their end, disobeying Asmodeus' orders did so for sure. Among greater devils, Asmodeus was the default authority to report to. Every time, a devil managed to get an opportunity for promotion to greater devilhood, they needed the approval of a superior, an archdevil. In the case that a devil could not be sure of itself to whom it was supposed to report to, Asmodeus was the one they had to choose. Asmodeus was also the source of priestly magic the devils used alongside the archdevils.Archdevils
As mentioned above, Asmodeus ruled supreme among the devils. This included the archdevils too. He annually called the archdevils (including Levistus) to his court. When the position of an archdevil needed to be filled for some reason, it was Asmodeus' right to choose the new one. His choice always fell on one of the unique devils who stood above the greater devils but below the archdevils. The archdevils themselves wanted to bring down Asmodeus from his throne and take over the position as the ruler of hell. However, since the Reckoning, they had to admit that Asmodeus was superior to them and caved in. Practically all of them did not have the courage to move openly against him.Mortals
Asmodeus did not need mortal worship to maintain his strength as a greater deity, but neither did he obtain more power from mortal worship. As mentioned above, he wanted to lure mortals to atheism to receive souls with which to heal his wounds. However, Asmodeus had a large following, which was much larger than any other infernal cult, in fact larger than all the others combined, to the point that the cult of Asmodeus was viewed as the first choice for prospective devil-worshipers. Furthermore, every diabolic cult was viewed as a subdivision of Asmodeus' cult and ultimately swore allegiance to the Lord of Ninth and not to the entity it was named after. In fact, what boons the cults of the other archdevils could provide was not determined by the cult's object of worship but by Asmodeus. While Asmodeus maintained cults that were dedicated to fictional entities, his cults in which he was worshiped as an archdevil fell into a category called a revealed cult. This meant that devil-worshipers who were Asmodeus-worshipers did so while knowing that their object of worship was a devil. To members of these cults, signing up with one meant to join a secret mutual-aid society. Members helped each other into position of influence and material affluence. The majority of its members were dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, and humans. He also tried to make inroads into hobgoblins and other people with a lawful evil outlook. Leaders who proved their worth were given the ability to drain vitality from an ally. The motivation of people to pick up his worship was essentially greed and the worship started with entering a pact with Asmodeus that consigned the worshiper's soul to the Nine Hells on death. Tieflings who descended from Asmodeus were the ones that were considered the standard of the race. While the term used here was "descended", it did not mean that practically all tieflings could trace back their ancestry to Asmodeus. Around the time of the Spellplague, a ritual was conducted that gave all tieflings of Toril what was called the mark of Asmodeus, which turned them into effective descendants of his. Asmodeus also worked as a supplier of pacts of warlocks and a tiefling's or half-fiend's warlock-pact was most likely one made with him.Origin Stories
Serpent of Law
This story positioned Asmodeus' origins right at the literal dawn of time. He, at that time called Ahriman, arose from the primordial chaos as the mightiest of the lawful gods with Jazirian being the only one who could rival him. These two were both serpent-formed gods and they set their minds on ordering the multiverse in a lawful way. Towards that end, the two serpent gods bit each others' tails and the resulting circle created the borders of new plane, a plane born from the soup of chaos through the interaction of the two most powerful entities of law, one of whom was evil and the other good, the Outlands, the plane of neutrality. The other Outer Planes arrayed themselves around the circular borders of the neutral plane and with it the Great Wheel and the concept of the Unity of Rings was created. The next law the two created was the Rule-of-Three in honor of their three aspects, evil, good, and law. Disagreement between the two came when they had to decide a center for the multiverse whose rules they were creating. The Outlands were the ideal place but lawful good Jazirian wanted Celestia to be the center, while lawful evil Ahriman wanted Baator to be it. They tugged each other and bit each others' tail tips off. Unlike Jazirian, Ahriman was a scaled serpent without wings and therefore fell into the Nine Hells and his blood created the baatezu. Not having chosen a center for the multiverse caused the two lawful entities to effectively honor chaos by making every plane infinitely big and therefore every place being the center. The two serpents invested so much power in creating rules for the multiverse, and in their struggle, that they lost too much to prevent other newer gods from taking over positions of importance. Ahriman took the name Asmodeus for himself.Pact Primeval
This origin story posited Asmodeus as the one who fooled the gods into signing the Pact Primeval, a real existing contract between Asmodeus and gods, one of the original copies of it was found on Nessus, that practically allowed devils to legally draw mortal souls to Baator by corrupting them and draw energy from them. This story was the version accepted by sages in the multiverse, but the existence of other stories was acknowledged as was the nature of the Pact Primeval-version as a myth and not as a report of hard facts. In this version too, 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 Asmodeus. As far as killing demons was concerned, Asmodeus 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. Asmodeus' 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, Asmodeus and his people did nothing wrong. The gods realized that Asmodeus 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 Asmodeus and his people from accessing various privileges and rights, but Asmodeus 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 Prime 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, Asmodeus invented the concept of punishment. The gods accepted it and Asmodeus' 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 Asmodeus 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, Asmodeus proposed to replace the site of torture to Baator, so the gods did not need to look at it anymore. However, if Asmodeus and his angels changed their workplace to Baator, they would render themselves unable to draw power from the gods to conduct their duties. Therefore, Asmodeus 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. Asmodeus and his fellows started to work in the Nine Hells as torturers and actively started to seduce mortals towards evil so that they would end up in Baator 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' and the lawful gods went different ways by relatively peaceful means, scholars pointed out that the parting could not have been peaceful for Asmodeus carried heavy wounds from his departure to Baator.He Who Was
In this version, Asmodeus was an exarch under the employment of a god and after retrieving a shard of evil, he killed that one. Asmodeus put a lot of effort in extinguishing this god's name and therefore he was merely known as He Who Was. According to one legend, this god was a control freak. He supervised every single aspect of every single person living on his realm. This all-encompassing supervision and control Asmodeus suffered was the start of Asmodeus' need to rise up against his god. He used to be the greatest warrior and general of that god's army in the Dawn War. He applied brutal methods that at one point caused innocent casualties. The lawful good god condemned his general for Asmodeus did not want to see errors in his ways. Asmodeus was fired for it but not killed. After this, Asmodeus worked as a watchman over Tharizdun's prison. During these days, Pazuzu, a demon lord of the obyrith, came to him. They had a conversation and the demon's flattery caused him to develop a sense of pride that crossed over to arrogance and the desire to rise up against He Who Was. A constant of Asmodeus' relationship was a stable but secret alliance with Pazuzu. For example, Pazuzu worked as a general for Asmodeus and was vital at eventually killing He Who Was. A side effect of Asmodeus' corruption was that he literally started to hear the location of the shard of evil. He retrieved one shard of evil by going down to the bottom of the Abyss through the Blood Rift, created his Ruby Rod with the shard, and killed his god with it when it looked bad for the deities during the Dawn War. It was the corrupting influence of the shard that turned Asmodeus and the members of his army into the first devils. He Who Was cursed Asmodeus and since then Asmodeus could not leave Baator. He Who Was's curse affected Asmodeus' angelic army, which was stationed in Phlegethos The site was what was later known as the Lake of Fire. After killing his master, Asmodeus managed to lay the groundwork for him coming out stronger out of the Dawn War, while all other participants were weakened. Publicly, the gods condemned Asmodeus' actions. Privately, some started to make deals with the future lord of devils. The reason for this was He Who Was. The lawful good god was infamous for his incompetence, the degree of which was such that it would have caused the gods' defeat in the Dawn War and with it their end. Asmodeus made deals with gods and covertly with primordials, but in the end decided to take the divine side. One of these bargains gave him forever the right to use souls to maintain Baator. With this right, Baator became a divine realm of material affluence, while all other realms had a poverty problem. This was due to Asmodeus' great management skills, but this had a very dark touch. Among others, this was done by turning Baator into a giant torture chamber where magical energy was tortured out of souls. He modified the Nine Hells so that as many souls as possible could enter the astral dominion. For example, due to the damage caused by the Dawn War, the system of souls being transferred to the proper realms of their deities did not properly work. Souls that appeared outside of the proper divine realm could not enter any realm except of the Nine Hells and a lot of souls made use of this unique aspect of the Nine Hells.After the Fall
As mentioned above, one reason why the Pact Primeval-version of Asmodeus' origin story was not taken at face value was that it did not give an explanation for Asmodeus' violent fall into Baator, instead it made into a peaceful, albeit not friendly, parting with gods. However, the truth was Asmodeus literally fell into Baator and carried heavy wounds from the fall, which possibly caused Baator 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 baatezu.In Hell
His position secured, Asmodeus lived his life as the overlord of Baator. His tentative goal was to heal his wounds from his fall by receiving atheists' souls from cults cultivated by him. He created a bureaucratic system that had its center in Grenpoli on Maladomini. It was believed that Asmodeus at some point, financed a project to create the yugoloths. He payed night hags with the goal to create them, so he had an army that was not tied to Baator. This plan, if it was true, ultimately failed, because the tool with which the yugoloths were to be controlled, the four Books of Keeping got lost over the time. His intra-Baator 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 Bensozia as his consort and had a daughter with her called Glasya. Levistus tried to rape the consort and get her help at deposing Asmodeus, she did not want it 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 unconsciously. 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. Another archdevil who either fled or left Baator was Gargauth. The exact circumstances were not known, but Asmodeus played a crucial role in what was known. Gargauth left either because he tried and failed to oust Asmodeus and had to flee because of it or Asmodeus killed Beherit, Gargauth's closest ally, which prompted the Outcast to leave. 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. Another one was Malkizid. This one was an exiled former solar under the employment of Corellon. He was cast out for siding with Lolth and fell into Baator 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. 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 Baator 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, Moloch, and Zariel under him and that of Mephistopheles with Dispater, Geryon, and Mammon under him. These factions' armies eventually clashed in Maladomini 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 Geryon and honeycombed the eight armies up to the highest level. On Geryon's signal, the pit fiend commanders turned on their archdevils and their troops were no more while Asmodeus was literally unscathed. According to another recounting of the events, the battle was an everyone-against-Baalzebul-battle, which he lost. 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; Geryon was disposed—despite of his loyalty—and Levistus was put back to consciousness and elevated to the rank of archdevil of Stygia; Moloch was convinced—by Malagarde 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 Malagarde, 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; 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. The reasons why Asmodeus deposed Geryon were a mystery. However, there were at least three possible explanations that were accepted by scholars. The first one was that this spurred an increased sense of loyalty in Geryon and he started to work even harder for Asmodeus in the hopes of being reinstalled into his old position; the second one was that it was meant as some kind of reward by Asmodeus, if it was the recipient did not think it that way; the third one had to do with Asmodeus' desire for faithless people, Geryon at some point came—at least for a moment—to the conclusion that life was pointless and became food for Asmodeus who hungered for the faithless.Other Layers of Hell
Firestorms
These racing walls of fire are several hundred feet long, 5-10 feet deep, and 10 to 60 feet high.The River Lethe
This may branch off from the River Styx. Those who touch its green waters must save or be feebleminded. Even if cured, all memories prior to touching the river are gone. It is said that this river flows through dimensional space in an incomprehensible plane and it passes through the Prime Material plane.Malsheem
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