Editing Asmodeus (section)

===[[3.5e]]===
In 3.5 Asmodeus got a new backstory and became a magnificent bastard of massive proportions. In the beginning there were only the [[Obyrith]]s and their spawn the [[Tanar'ri]], but the newborn universe didn't like this and so spat out good-aligned beings of Order™ to fight them. Asmodeus was one of these, and decided that to truly defeat the demons, they would have to know them, and that  in order to do that, they would have to become like them. Thus he became the first Lawful Evil being (don't ask us how Chaotic Good came to be). 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 were no repercussions for doing so, and so 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 after imprisoning its former ruler [[Zargon]], they thought he had gone mad. Then he explained the rest of his plan.

A few millennia 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 alongside a novelty oversized magnifying glass, and said (verbatim) "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 him from his iceberg prison and more importantly, not providing the traditional promotion makeover. That being 
* Everyone would scratch their heads about Levistus having a high ranking job, you know, with the whole 'killing the leader's true waifu' thing, instead of scratching their heads about a Hag (and not a devil) being the ruler of Malbolge.
* Since Levistus having the gig of leader of 5th layer was just a distraction, he wasn't granted the promotion upgrade. The nine hells have better use for divine energy than that. Also why let a treacherous bastard out of the ice? And of course maintaining the punishments would attract attention to the strange situation that Levistus was in.
Why was the ruler of Malbolge a hag? To have a disposable regent keeping a seat warm for ruling a layer of hell until he thought his daughter would handle the job right.