Asmodeus, Navigator of the Stars, is an Earthbound Fiend who was the former Archduke of the Silver Legion. Asmodeus was one of the main instigators of the failure of the rebellion and later one of the more active Earthbound.
His reliquary is a statue shaped from ebony, run through with flecks of gold, built to appear as a many-armed priest staring heavenward.
Biography[]
Before the fall, Archangel Asmodeus was one of the seven members of the Vigil, the highest authority of the Fourth House and the lieutenant of Autarch Tyriel. Asmodeus was put in charge with overseeing the predictions of the diviners. He was the superior of Ahrimal, and passed his warnings on to the rest of the Vigil, who assured him that everything went according to the plan of the Creator.
The archangel was the last member of the Fourth House to join the rebels, without a single word of explanation. Some speculate that Asmodeus joined the rebellion on orders of the Vigil, to act as their agent behind the enemies' line. Others think that Asmodeus had received a disturbing vision of the future that he hid from his peers and that drove him to support Lucifer. The Prince of the Fallen recognized him by making him Archduke of the Silver Legion, an organization dedicated to unraveling the secrets of creation and the mysteries of mankind's divinity.
Asmodeus vowed to push back all the old taboos and discover the truth behind the power of God. When the Legions parted ways after the Siege of Sagun, Asmodeus' Legion was under them in order to unravel God's plan with the Fallen and unlock mankind's true potential. From Tabâ'et, his citadel, he constructed a large library on the surface of the moon that contained the Celestial Names of all members of the Fourth House that joined the rebellion. He used that allure of hidden knowledge to reunite his House again, from across all Legions, and reestablished a diminished form of the Vigil again to watch for events to unfold. These angels soon warned Asmodeus that a catastrophe was imminent. Some speculate that Asmodeus knew of the First Murder before it happened, but chose to not prevent it, for reasons only known to him.
After Caine's sin had poisoned creation, Asmodeus sided with Abaddon in defiance of the Lightbringer, pointing out that since it was mankind who first brought the concept of senseless violence into being, they might not be as perfect as the Fallen had assumed. He spoke in favour of breaking the Legions up, allowing each of them to pursue their ideals for mankind independently from Lucifer and his designs. During the Time of Atrocities, Asmodeus received a vision where he and his fellows were servants of mankind and began to fear them and the potential his Legion had sworn to unravel. In order to prevent this from happening, he allied himself with Abaddon, Archduke of the Ebon Legion, to conspire against the Grand Experiment. It was Asmodeus who first ordered the rape of mortal women by his Legion to create Nephilim, an act that would haunt him during his confinement in the Abyss.
After the rebellion failed and the Fallen sentenced to imprisonment in the Abyss, Asmodeus was eventually summoned by a caste of royal magicians and mathematicians in Sumer. Most of the summoners perished through the infernal energies he radiated. Asmodeus promised his followers knowledge of the future and soon, his cult grew in the Orient around the mask of Mithra. The priests of the cult of Mithra's Wisdom practiced anthropomancy, divination from human entrails, and quickly spread along the Mediterranean. In an alliance with Abaddon, Asmodeus and his servants backed the rise of the Roman Empire, establishing themselves as the pre-eminent Earthbound in the empire, with all other Earthbound having to swear oaths of fealty to them.
The infernal hierarchy of Rome came crashing down in the days of the tetrarchy. Asmodeus planned to install one of his thralls, Emperor Constantine, as the sole Emperor, with Abaddon backing his rival Maxentius. In an unsuspected turn of events, Constantine abandoned Asmodeus for the religion of Christianity. Confused and suspecting the hand of the Morningstar behind this, Asmodeus forced his thralls to carry him to the East, where he established a new cult in the Khmer Empire, with his influence soon stretching even to China. As the influence of Buddhism grew, Asmodeus was forced into stasis and commanded his followers to drop his reliquary into the Red Sea.
References[]
- DTF: Demon: The Fallen Rulebook, p. 45-46, 52
- DTF: Houses of the Fallen, p. 93, 95-103
- DTF: Demon: Earthbound, p. 16-20, 26-27, 30-33, 38