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How did the demonic/devilish/daemonic/demondandic races begin, and what's the story with the Blood War?

A very generic question for a very specific answer. I've read many "official" takes on the beginning, almost every one of them is different. So I've done my best to put them together into a coherent narrative. Now, this tale might seem to directly conflict with campaign specific tales. The reason I don't find Campaign specific tales valid is pretty simple. I've yet to see a Toril creation myth that also discusses the existence of Krynn.

Simply put, the Campaign creation myths pretty much apply only to that specific world. Outside of there, they mean nothing. And whenever the myth says that the Gods of X world created the Outer and Inner planes, populated them with fiends, celestials, and everything in between.. well, they're lying.

Let me go ahead and get some definitions out of the way

Demons = Tanar'ri
Devils = Baatezu
Daemons = Yugoloths
Demondand = Ghereleths
Nine Layers of Hell = Baator

It should be noted that each race has it's own version of the events of creation. There is no real way to determine what happened. Short of asking one of the Primal Forces, one either has to read hundreds of texts and compile an answer, pick one of the hundreds of theories, or just throw your hands in the air and say "It doesn't really matter how it all got here: It's here now.

So, what did make everything? The primal forces. The one and only thing that every creature, mortal or immortal, deity or not, has in common is.. alignment. That's right. The primal forces are Good, Law, Evil, and Chaos. Good hates Evil, Chaos hates Law, and so on.

Keep in mind that I'm talking about the pure, abstract ideas. Human morality has nothing to do with these forces, and to be honest in this pure form, we humans would call each and every one evil. Law basically demands that everything be in a very very specific order. If applied to a human analogy, imagine an army unit that went through basic training a few hundred times. Imagine they are not trained so much to fight, but to follow orders and obey commands. They literally sleep at the same time, use the restroom at the same time (and for the same needs), if you were to watch them eating, their forks would rise at the same time to deliver the same piece of food to each mouth. When spoken to, all would answer with the same words. Basically, human robots, incapable of independent though and action without some sort of command from above.

... this would still be too chaotic for the primal force of Law. Computers are too chaotic.. we all know how often computers fail. The vacuum of space is too chaotic, as tiny gravitational pulls from nearby (and distant) bodies effect every cubic meter of space.

The same is true for Chaos.. A bottle breaking against a wall isn't chaotic enough.. we all know the outcome will be broken glass. The Chaotic force would demand an equal chance that the glass bottle will become puppies. Or nymphs. Or clones of Harry S. Truman.

Good is the same. Paralyzing goodness. A goodness that would demand that a person ensure that every living creature on existence is well fed before eating himself. And as for Evil.. well, we all should have a good idea about what that is.

[Theory Time]
You could argue that a fifth force exists, one of neutrality.. but being Neutral, this force doesn't really have a stake in anything. Perhaps keeping everything balanced. I personally see neutrality as not being a fifth independent force, but in the case of Neutral Good or Lawful Neutral, a sign of purity. Or, in the case of True Neutral, a simultaneous joining of all four and an absence of all four. True Neutral is all yet none.
[Theory Time]

Back to the origins of the universe...

Good battled Evil, Chaos and Law fought it out. It's pretty much impossible to imagine what this looked like. Four ideas fighting, nothing else. Not even a vacuum. Nothing, literally nothing except for these four forces. But fought they did...to a complete standstill. Evil could not gain an advantage over Good, and the same was true for Law and Chaos. So, they began joining together. Good, while the exact opposite of Evil, had no quarrel with Law or Chaos, so Good split and joined parts with these other two forces. Chaos did the same, as did Evil and Law. So, now there were eight forces duking it out. Law/Good fought Chaos/Evil, and so forth. Again, this ended in an all around stalemate.

So, the forces began to create. While I am not sure who or what the Champions of Chaos or Good were, or even if Chaos and Good had champions, the Champions of Law and Evil are known to me.

Evil created the Barneloths.

Law created the twin serpents, Jazirian; serpent of feathered wings, and Ahriman, serpent of scaled claws.

(This is where it delves into a bit of a myth here.. it's a bit difficult to get your brain around, but then again this is the same place that has Dragons, Unicorns, and elves shooting Fireballs, so I can let this slide)

Keep in mind, at this point, the only physical objects now were these Champions. As Champions of Law, Jazirian and Ahriman decided that this cosmic disorder must be put to an end. Lack of existence was too chaotic, things needed to be defined. Thus, they created the Outer Planes to mirror the cosmic struggle, to give each force a definable (and therefor a bit closer to Order) homeground, for lack of a better term. Jazirian took the tail of Ahriman in her mouth, and Ahriman did the same with Jazirian. Their spinning form defined the Outlands. The other planes soon formed around the Outlands in a ring, mirroring the shape of the serpent's method of creation. All that remained was to name a center. There was one problem.

While both creatures of Law, Jazirian was also a creature of Good, while Ahriman was a creature of Evil. Ahriman desired the plane of Hell, Baator, to be the center, while Jazirian wished that the slopes of Mount Celestia be the central point of the new multiverse. Still, they remained locked in their wheel, spinning. Jazirian tried to guide their path toward the mountain, while Ahriman aimed it toward the pit. Eventually, they each lost their grip on the other. Jazirian, the winged serpent, was able to somewhat arrest her fall, and suffered minor injury upon striking the surface of the mountain. Ahriman wasn't so lucky. He fell hard, and impacted in Baator, his form sinking deep into the lowest plane. The massive crater left behind formed a dark mirror of the lawful Mountain on which Jazirian landed.

At the same time Ahriman and Jazirian were created and began to spin, the force of Evil created a race of creatures called the Barneloths. The mission of the Barneloths, like the Champions of Law, was to promote evil in the universe. The universe, at this time, being nothing. Once the universe was formed, the Barneloths moved to the Grey Wastes. The Barneloths, after centuries of discussion and meditation on the course of evil, realized that they were too close to the true nature of Evil to do what must be done. But they had a solution to the problem. Gathering together the larva that had begun to form, they twisted and shaped their forms until they created Mezzoloths, the lowest of the true Yugoloths.

However, as much as the Yugoloths wish to claim that they were the first of the Fiends, that claim lies with another. Before the Barneloths created the Yugoloths, while they were still in debate over the course of Evil, one Barneloth went to action. Apomps was his name. Taking clay from the Gray Waste, he shaped a race of beings and breathed life into them. Perhaps it was his impulsive action, perhaps it was his own nature, or perhaps the forces of Chaos took an interest in his work. Regardless, the end result was flawed. Evil, yet Chaotic, Apomps was nonetheless proud of his creations, and he showed his work to his brethren. Expecting praise and acclaim, he received curses and insults. In shame, he took his creations and fled, swearing vengeance on the Barneloths and their creations. The name of the first Fiendish race? The Ghereleths.

Back to the Yugoloths.

The first Yugoloth to achieve the rank of Ultraloth became disturbed by a flaw in himself and the others of his race. Because the Primal Force of Evil had joined with both Law and Chaos, traces of these beliefs passed on to the Barneloths and to their creations. The Ultraloth knew that flawed as they were, they could not complete their mission of turning the universe into Evil. The Ultraloth devised a plan. Creating a magical artifact named The Heart of Darkness, he gathered all of the Yugoloth race together, along with larva gathered from across the lower planes. Using the device, he purged the Law and Chaos from himself and his bretheren and into the larva. The lawful ones were driven to Baator, while the chaotic ones were driven to the Abyss. According to the Yugoloths, these larva became what we know today as the Devils and Demons.

Meanwhile, Ahriman lay at the bottom of Baator, broken and bleeding. From the blood that flowed onto the evil ground, fully formed Pit Fiends and Gelugons lept, creating an army loyal to their master.

Perhaps you too see the problem. If the Yugoloths spawned the Devils, how could Ahriman create them from his blood? But the Yugoloth text does hold up to most attempts to discredit it, no matter how well founded in fact the arguments are.

Fact: The Devils are not the native race of Baator.
Fact: Ahriman's blood spawns the highest Devils
Fact: The Yugoloths drove Lawful Larva (the creatures that are capable of becoming Devils or Demons)

From these we can infer what happened. The lawful larva did indeed become the "natural" race of Hell. These evolve into Nupperibos. The Devils take Larva and Nupperibos and shape them into the children of their race, the Lemures. Lemures eventually evolve into higher forms of Devils. So, obviously, Ahriman's forces detected these new interlopers, and changed them into forms they found more pleasing. From this, the race of Devils spawned.

As for the Demons... well, no one tells a Demon what to do and what not to do.

So the Yugoloths began to plan out where they wanted to take the multiverse. The demons, those born of the Abyss itself and the evolved larvae, began to explore their surroundings, finding the other planes. The devils, those born of Ahriman, and those shaped from the larvae, began the same.

The first encounter of a demon and a devil ended in bloodshed.

At the first "official" battle of the Blood War, Yugoloth mercenaries were there. And in the middle of the battle, they switched sides. One would think that neither side would continue to hire the mercenaries after this, yet they do. They cannot afford to not hire them. The mercenaries switch side seemingly at random. Sometimes they switch to the inferior force, making the armies equal in size. Sometimes they switch to the side of the larger force, easily crushing their new enemies from within. And sometimes they seem to switch just because they find it amusing.

Though it seems random, make no mistake that there is a grand plan guiding the betrayals. The Yugoloths want the Blood War to continue as long as possible; for it one side were to win, it would only be a matter of time before they turned on the Yugoloths as well. The pain, misery, and fear brought by the war helps their cause as well.. so long as the rest of the universe believes the lower planes are evil and a threat to all who live in the light, they are.

Ahriman still lies in the pit, broken, bleeding, and plotting. The only creature who has any clue as to what he is up to is his sister, and even she does not know. Oh, she has several theories, one of which is undoubtedly correct, but no one can say which one is correct. Still, both Ahriman and Jazirian hide, defering to the other, newer gods. Ahriman poses as the Ninth Lord of Hell, now calling himself Asmodeus, a Devil lesser than the Gods of Evil (Though this is not true) while Jazirian poses as a minor deity (Also untrue) of Coatls, the winged and feathered serpents. Coatls are her eyes and ears on the planes of existence, yet even they cannot find any trace of Ahriman's plots, or even his existance. Jazirian still does not know where her brother lies, only that he fell in the direction of Baator. She does not have proof that Ahriman lives, though she cannot find any that he has died as well...... but enough about the twins. That comes later.

- End Part 1, Beginnings of the Lower Planes, Blood War, and the Fiends themselves.

Try and keep your questions on the subject at hand. This is about the beginnings of the Universe, Fiends, the Blood War, etc
Each Fiendish Race (Even the Ghereleths) will have their own FAQ, and I'll likely do one for Asmodeus/Ahriman alone, as well as The Blood War itself. So, any questions?

*edit* Changed around a few lines, got rid of the mention of Asmodeus in the text above, added Ahriman to the last lines