Ahriman, The Serpent, Asmodeus

It's also briefly mentioned as a possibility in Asmodeus' entry in the BoVD, suggesting that the version of Asmodeus that is seen by his servants is not the real one.

Fiendish Codex II goes into more detail about Serpent's Coil, actually telling us that that's where the real body of Asmodeus lies and that this is apparantly well-known. This is also one of the reasons I don't pay much attention to the FC II.

Two recent threads on the same subject:

Asmodeus=Ahriman?
Vecna and the Serpent

Yes, they did. That's one of the reasons many people don't like the Guide to Hell origin myth. It seemed to come entirely out of left field, messing up the previous ideas (like the yugoloth origin of fiends).

Future designers mostly ignored it or reinterpreted it. The authors of Vecna Reborn and Die, Vecna, Die! certainly weren't thinking of it when they were writing about the Serpent as the personification of magic.

I think it has some merit, but you've got to look at it metaphorically. I think Asmodeus was probably a primal being of Law of some sort, but probably there were more than two. Jazirian is an aspect of the World Serpent archetype, as is the dragon god Io, the bullywug god Ramenos, the yuan-ti god Merrshaulk, and the naga goddess Shekinester (Jazirian is the father of Shekinester's child, the naga god Parrafaire).

There are a few parallel myths that seem to be talking about the same thing in different ways. First is the myth of the "Powers of Creation" who made the Outlands, the Spire, Mechanus, and the mediators of Mechanus according to the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix One. This is vague, and basically just tells us that some primal entities concerned with balance brought order to the planes and banished the gods from the center of the Outlands (presumedly by creating the Spire), creating Mechanus as an alternate place for them to live, and creating the godlike mediators to ensure that they couldn't mess it up too much.

Second is the origin myth in Hellbound: The Blood War, which describes the primal forces of Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil meeting in the unformed Outer Planes, combining and warring with one another to create the present planes. It does not at first personify these forces. Eventually the force of raw Evil spawned the baernaloths, while the other forces spawned other progenitor races that have gone unnamed. The baernaloths created the yugoloths and manipulated the yugoloth General of Gehenna into inadvertently creating the other fiends.

Honorable mention to Faces of Evil, which says that baatezu can be either created from petitioners or they can, rarely, be spawned directly from the mathematics of Baator.

Third is the Twin Serpents described in Guide to Hell and alluded to in the 3e Manual of the Planes and Book of Vile Darkness. It says the Twin Serpents organized the planes into their present ring-shape, decreed the Rule of Threes and the Center of All premises, and then fought each other over the ideals of good and evil. Ahriman/Asmodeus was banished to Baator while Jazirian hid herself in Mount Celestia. The first baatezu, this book claims, were born from the blood of fallen Asmodeus.

Fourth is the story of Asmodeus and the Gods of Law described in the Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells. It says the Gods of Law brought order to the planes by warring against the forces of Chaos. This is mirrored by one of the myths in the Fiendish Codex I, which describes how the Gods of Law brought the first shape and form to primal Chaos, and the pollution left behind by their meddling became the Abyss, which filled with demonic creatures called obyriths who wanted only vengeance. Asmodeus was the warleader created by the Gods of Law, who began descending into brutality and evil while fighting the demons of the Abyss. Eventually he convinced his masters to let him have Baator as a place to punish those who fell from the ideals of Law. There was a climactic battle when the Gods of Law realized he had cheated them, and he ended up in the Serpent's Trench as in Guide to Hell, except he's no longer envisioned as a serpent.

Putting these sources together, we must conclude that the "Gods of Law," the Twin Serpents, and the Powers of Creation likely all describe the same beings. They were probably not at first personified - what Guide to Hell describes as the Twin Serpents was likely the force of Law itself, only vaguely intelligent, interacting with raw Chaos in the only way it could, by organizing it. Asmodeus was probably one of the early progenitors of Law, the equivalent of the baernaloths spawned from Evil. Jazirian might have been another one of them, though this interferes with the World Serpent monomyth. Asmodeus may or may not have looked like a serpent in those days - it hardly matters, and I'm sure he can take on multiple forms. Let's say he did.

The baernaloths, at some point, began interfering with the still-forming planes of Law and Chaos, tainting parts of those planes with evil and installing some of the taint of Chaos and Law into their own creations, the yugoloths, and in the case of those baernaloths known as the Demented taking that taint even into themselves. They inspired jealousy and rage in some of the primal creatures of the other planes and played a part in the creation of the obyriths, either making them directly by casting the chaotic taint within the yugoloths into Chaos, where it evolved into the obyriths on its own, or by corrupting some of the progenitors of Chaos so that they evolved into obyriths, or - most likely - a combination of those two methods. The obyriths went on to create the tanar'ri, a creation the baernaloths probably also interfered with, but that's another story. The first of the obyriths was Obox-ob, while the Queen of Chaos may have been a corrupted being of Limbo before becoming an obyrith.

Meanwhile, in the plane that would one day be known as Mechanus (but which was probably not remotely mechanical at the time), the servants of the primal beings of Law begin exploring other planes and encounter the obyriths. Some of the obyriths are off exploring at the same time, and they encounter the primal beings of Law (as well as a race of the Inner Planes known as the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, and probably the pre-baatezu Elder Baatorians). War starts between Law and Chaos, and I'm certain the baernaloths had something to do with that, as well. Both races encounter the yugoloths, who agree to act as mercenaries in the war.

Asmodeus, the leader of the war, is now thoroughly corrupted by evil (that is, the baernaloths) if he hadn't been long before the war. The episode chronicled in Hellbound: The Blood War as the Intervention of the Celestials is likely the same as the episode chronicled in Guide to Hell as the war between Jazirian and Ahriman, and chronicled in the Fiendish Codex II as the Gods of Law hurling Asmodeus into Baator.

Yes, I'd say that Asmodeus was a being of power enough - he'd become the planar lord of Baator by this point, the same job he has now, the same job Primus has in Mechanus - to distort the plane when he fell, creating the huge chasms and cracks in Nessus (and even the lower eight layers of the plane, if you want to go that far), and that when they say that baatezu - the first pit fiends - were born from his blood, that's the same as them being born from the mathematics of the plane itself as Faces of Evil says sometimes happens. Asmodeus, in many ways, is Baator now, although he wasn't the first inhabitant of it. The beings known as the Ancient Baatorians dwelled there before he ever did, although except for their young, the nupperibos, they'd mostly vanished or gone underground by the time Asmodeus arrived.

The ancient Baatorians were probably born from the larvae cast off by the General of Gehenna, which were formed from the lawful taint of the yugoloth race. The creation of the baatezu by Asmodeus and his minions (fallen servants of Law) was probably manipulated by the yugoloths and their creators as well, although the first pit fiends (who may not have looked anything like modern pit fiends - maybe they were serpentine in form, like their master possibly was) were probably more "pure" in a sense. Asmodeus might well have contracted out some of the process of creation to those more experienced in it, such as the baernaloths. I need to find Shemmy's response to my story of ancient Baator, since I think he named the baernaloth responsible there.

There are many ways Glasya, Asmodeus's daughter, might have been created other than ordinary sexual reproduction. I speculated that the Hag Countess of Malbolge might have made her with samples of the flesh of Asmodeus and Bensozia. Another possibility is that Glasya is a daughter of one of Asmodeus's aspects or avatars, rather than the daughter of his true form.

Chorazin is a rather fuzzy character in my baernaloth mythos, but he's one that I really like. I don't think I've ever come right out and said what caused his falling out with his "siblings" Tellura and Lazarius, and the remainder of the coterie of baern who would become the Demented. Chorazin might have been one of their number originally, but left or been exiled.

Again, while it hasn't come out in a story yet (and Chorazin won't show up till near the end of my first storyhour), his difference of opinion with his kindred predated Apomps' exile, and Apomps might in some ways have been an ideological kindred of his. Chorazin however stayed around and involved till shortly before the General of Gehenna created the Heart of Darkness, and effectively vanished from the face of the multiverse, bottling himself and a massive quantity of pre-Law/Chaos purge yugoloths within a demiplane of sorts a few thousand layers deep in the Abyss. Ultimately, Chorazin's title as the 'thrice damned" might be linked to a trio of successive betrayals or fallings out with various camps of baernaloths or individual ones.

His motivation is similar to Apomps perhaps, but at the same time it's on a grander scale and yet much more petty and maybe even meaningless. He'd destroy the entirety of the multiverse to spite his fellows if he could. Perhaps he's trying.

The baernaloth I'd set up as having had a role in the creation of the baatezu or ancient baatorians (whichever you care to have the 'loths having had a hand in) was named The Shackler. There's a story for him in progress, but nowhere near finished. Still messing with where I want to go with him, but it'll be centered and take place mostly in and around Shackler's Hill on the Waste, which I might have mentioned elsewhere once or twice before.

I'm not sure wether this is canon or not, but I remember reading somewhere that this was the result of a co-ordinated Baatezu strike on that gods worshippers timed right down to the second. all his worshippers were killed and without their power to sustain him he died.

Tactics and strategy in part. a Tanari when attacking is likely to go in guns a blazing, attacking either at random or heading ffor the enemy it percieves to be the strongest. A Baatezu on the other hand will take to time to ascertain the best way of thaking down their opponents while keeping at a safe distance before making a strike with surgical precision.

No, not really. He has abrief mention in the entry on the crawling citadel on Gehanna but that's about it. There's no real yugoloth love in 3rd ed. unfortunately.

An avatar, or possibly an aspect of the great snake that lies bleeding at the bottom of serpent's coil. Or possibly just an illusionary projection.

Yes, Asmodeus is given stats in Book of vile Darkness, but these stats don't neccessarily represent the "real" Asmodeus... if the story from Guide to Hell is true, it's just an avatar or stand-in of some sort, and killing it would NOT be the end of Asmodeus/Ahriman! It MIGHT create a problem for him, though, since he'd have to fake being dead or otherwise cover for his apparent "death"... Of course, DMs that don't like the serpent story can just use him as-is, and if he dies he dies... The Manual of the Planes backs the serpent-at-the-bottom-of-the-pit story, but the Fiendish Codex's story really bites, big time... obviously a fake story given out by Asmodeus to hide his true power and agenda!