Devil (Dungeons & Dragons)

• 1. Introduction

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  A devil in Dungeons & Dragons speaks with total certainty: "My legions are the only thing standing between your precious Seven Heavens and the bottomless hunger of the Abyss. I did not fall into the clutches of evil. I rose to shoulder a cosmic burden."

  Those lines belong to one of the game's ruling fiends, a being who calls her rank a duty rather than a fall. Devils, also known as baatezu, are Lawful Evil creatures native to the Nine Hells of Baator. The game presents them as tough opponents built for experienced players.

  They climb a strict, ranked hierarchy. At the top sit the Archdevils, called the Lords of the Nine, each ruling a separate region of Hell. To devils, the mortal worlds of Dungeons & Dragons exist to be exploited. Their central project is the Blood War, a centuries-long fight against demons.

  This documentary asks who enforces that hierarchy. It asks why the game once erased the word devil from its own rulebooks. And it asks what drives the fiend who insists she rules Hell out of duty, not desire.

• 2. The Infernal Chain of Command

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  The 1977 Monster Manual gave the game its first devils. Among them were the barbed devil, the bone devil, the erinyes, the horned devil, the ice devil, the lemure, and the pit fiend.

  The lemure sits at the very bottom of the ladder. It is described as a mindless, tormented creature that attacks in mobs, serving as cannon fodder in the Blood War.

  Above the lemure stand lesser devils, among them the barbed devil and the bone devil. Greater devils rank higher still, including the horned devil, the ice devil, and the pit fiend. The pit fiend carries the title lord of devils, prized for its great strength and deadly power.

  Four archdevils appeared alongside that first bestiary: Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, and Geryon. By the time of the Book of Vile Darkness in 2002, the Lords of the Nine had a fixed roster tied to each of Hell's nine layers. Bel ruled the First; Dispater the Second; Mammon the Third; Belial and Fierna together the Fourth; Levistus the Fifth. The Hag Countess held the Sixth, though the book notes she is not technically a devil but a powerful night hag. Baalzebul governed the Seventh, Mephistopheles the Eighth, and Asmodeus the Ninth, the lowest and most feared layer of all.

  That same roster would later be tested by rebellion, when one ruler lost her throne to her own general.

• 3. A Name Erased and Restored

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  Don Turnbull reviewed the new Monster Manual for the British magazine White Dwarf #8 in 1978. He judged devils the most prominent new monsters in the book. Turnbull wrote that "they are all pretty strong and compare not unfavourably in this respect with the Demons we already know."

  TSR's Deities and Demigods sourcebook drew a blunt verdict from a televangelist, who called it "exactly like witchcraft." TSR worried the comparison would fuel protests from religious groups who saw the game as a doorway to Satanic worship. When 2nd edition arrived, the company dropped the words devil and demon from every monster description. Devils became baatezu; demons became tanar'ri.

  That substitution lasted until 3rd edition rolled out in 2000, when the original terms returned to print. Baatezu never fully disappeared, though. The word stuck around afterward as the name for one specific, powerful subset of devils.

  The purge of the word devil from the page could not stop new fiends from multiplying, as authors kept expanding Hell book by book.

• 4. New Authors Expand Hell

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  Gary Gygax's article "From the Sorcerer's Scroll: New Denizens of Devildom" appeared in Dragon #75 in July 1983. It introduced five abishai, one for each of the colors black, blue, green, red, and white, along with the bearded devil and the smaller spined devil. The same article named Glasya as a princess of Hell and introduced dukes Amon, Bael, Bitru, Hutijin, and Titivilus. It also added the archdevil Moloch to Hell's roster.

  Ed Greenwood expanded the setting further with a two-part feature called "The Nine Hells," published across Dragon #75 and #76 in 1983. Greenwood's dukes of Hell included Agares, Alocer, Amduscias, Balan, and Bathym, alongside princesses Cozbi, Lilis, and Naome. Part II added dukes such as Abigor, Barbas, and Bune, a queen of Hell named Bensozia, and Adramalech as Hell's chancellor.

  Greenwood returned in Dragon #91 in November 1984 with "The Nine Hells Revisited." It introduced greater devils including Armaros, Azazel, Cahor, and Dagon. It also added a new archdevil, Gargoth.

  By the time the 4th edition Monster Manual arrived in 2008, every devil's alignment had simplified from Lawful Evil to just Evil. Devils in that edition also all spoke a new language, Supernal. As of July 2012, only two of the Lords of the Nine, Dispater and Glasya, had published game statistics in Dungeon magazine's Codex of Betrayal feature.

  One of Hell's Lords still awaited a spotlight far bigger than any stat block.

• 5. King of the Nine Hells

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  Standing over 13 feet tall, Asmodeus appears as a giant human with dark skin, dark hair, red eyes, handsome features, and small horns on his forehead. His look draws directly on popular medieval and modern conceptions of Satan. His name comes from a Judeo-Christian demon of the Book of Tobit, and from a fallen angel of the same name in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

  Asmodeus carries a unique artifact called the Ruby Rod. The Rod lets him attack with elemental forces, force enemies to cower in fear, or wrap himself in a field that heals and protects him. Even its lightest touch can cause grievous wounds.

  A single garment from Asmodeus's wardrobe costs more than an average nation spends on food in a year. His power over other devils is absolute enough to permanently reshape their bodies. He turned Mammon into a humanoid, serpent hybrid and cursed Baalzebul with the form of a gigantic slug with tiny, useless arms.

  The Book of Vile Darkness describes him as "calm, chillingly reasonable," a being whose modest bearing hides his true power. He is also, by the game's own account, an ancient schemer who lays plans millennia in advance, patiently biding his time until they bear fruit.

  Those long-laid plans rest on an origin story that even Asmodeus's own sourcebooks cannot agree on.

• 6. Conflicting Stories of the Fall

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  Fiendish Codex II calls Asmodeus "the bravest, toughest, fiercest and most beautiful of angels," created alongside others to fight the demons of the Abyss so the gods could focus on building worlds.

  After eons of that fighting, Asmodeus and his fellow angels began to resemble the very demons they battled. Afraid, the gods put him on trial and demanded he leave the Upper Planes. Asmodeus argued, correctly, that he had broken no law, and won the right to stay.

  When the gods' new worlds came under attack, Asmodeus told them their problem was that obedience had always been voluntary. He proposed a fix: threaten mortals with punishment. The idea became the Pact Primeval. That contract let Asmodeus and his devils settle in the abandoned realm of Baator. There they would punish wicked souls and harvest magical energy from them.

  The gods eventually noticed fewer mortal souls reaching the Upper Planes at all. They found Baator transformed into an endless nightmare, crowded with devils Asmodeus had made from tortured souls. When confronted, Asmodeus offered four famous words: "Read the fine print."

  The Codex admits this account is myth, not history. What the game treats as fact is starker: Asmodeus was cast out and fell into the Lower Planes, and his wounds have never healed.

  The Manual of the Planes tells a different story again, describing Asmodeus's true form as a giant serpent. In that version he fell before the current gods even existed, and the fall itself carved out Hell's eighth and ninth planes. No one who tells the tale of his true serpent form is said to survive more than 24 hours afterward.

  Guide to Hell names him Ahriman, twin brother of Jazirian, the god of the couatls. The two once built the current order of the planes together before splitting over opposing views of law, one lawful good and one lawful evil.

  Fourth edition offers yet another version, naming Asmodeus a former angel serving a god called only He Who Was. Believing his master too forgiving, Asmodeus rebelled after a conflict called the Dawn War, guided by the demon lord Pazuzu. Pazuzu helped him seize a shard of the Abyss's evil, the same shard that became the Ruby Rod. The rebellion killed He Who Was, whose dying curse turned Asmodeus's followers into the first devils and his realm, Baathion, into the Nine Hells of Baator.

  During that war Asmodeus worked alongside the god Bane, a partnership neither of them enjoyed personally. Bane alone was not surprised by the later rebellion. He quietly sent advisors rather than soldiers, hoping to avoid drawing other gods into the fight. Asmodeus is said to still owe Pazuzu a favor he has never repaid.

  Whichever version is true, one of Asmodeus's own subordinates would later prove that Hell's thrones are never permanently settled.

• 7. Zariel's Reclaimed Throne

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  Thousands of years ago, a pit fiend named Bel deposed Zariel as ruler of Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells. Zariel reclaimed her seat only after Bel proved unable to manage the Blood War in her place.

  Before any of that, she served as an angel of Celestia, tasked simply with observing the Blood War from a distance. Instead, she marshaled her own forces and charged directly into Hell. The plane's corrupting nature overtook her, and she fell from grace. Asmodeus then placed her in charge of Avernus.

  Zariel first appeared in the 2nd edition book Guide to Hell in 1999. She resurfaced in 3rd edition's Manual of the Planes in 2001 and again in Fiendish Codex II in 2006. Fifth edition finally gave her a full stat block in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes in 2018. A year later, she featured heavily in the adventure module Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus.

  Bel, the pit fiend she later dethroned in turn, is far from the only devil with a title and a grudge.

• 8. A Cast of Infernal Ranks

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  Five abishai patrol Hell in a rainbow of menace: black, blue, green, red, and white. Advespa are wasp-like devils that patrol the infernal skies, while amnizu are short, stocky, winged guardians of Hell's gates. Ayperobos are small and hateful, banding together in swarms to bring down far larger foes.

  Kocrachon serve as insectoid torturers, while logokron devils prefer subtler cruelty. A logokron delights in learning the true names of its foes, then uses them to torment or enslave. Xerfilstyx guard the River Styx in Avernus, stealing the memories of anyone who crosses.

  Kalabon are stranger still, spawned from the rotting flesh of the Hag Countess's own carcass. They can fuse their individual bodies into a single, larger amalgamation that fights as one creature.

  Hellfire engines are not born but built, cold iron constructs enhanced with hellfire to fight celestials and demons alike. The chain devil, known as the kyton, tortures its victims with an infernal command of chains. The hellcat, or bezekira, is an invisible, catlike devil the size of a tiger.

  A separate subgroup, the hellforged devils, began as constructs before the Nine Hells slowly transformed them into living beings. The coal devil serves as an enforcer, the glass devil as a spy, and the lead devil as a hunter sent to capture prisoners alive. The obsidian devil polices Hell's own ranks, the sand devil gathers intelligence, and the spiked devil is covered head to foot in sharp iron spikes.

  The spiked devil's iron-covered hide is the last new rank the source names, a small, sharp footnote in an infernal hierarchy that keeps adding names with every edition.