The Dungeon Master's Guide section on Hades (page 63) provides a likely answer: Larvae
A gray land with an ashen sky, Hades is the destination of many souls that are unclaimed by the gods of the Upper Planes or the fiendish rulers of the Lower Planes. These souls become larvae and spend eternity in this place that lacks a sun, a moon, stars or seasons.
...
A larva is a miserable fiend that retains the facial features of its previous form but has the body of a fat worm. A larva has only a few faint memories of its previous life and the statistics in the larva stat block.
Hades is crawling with larvae. Night hags, liches and rakshasas harvest them for use in vile rituals. Other fiends like to feed on them.
How do they get there? Easy: The River Styx. From page 58:
This river bubbles with grease, foul flotsam, and the putrid remains of battles along its banks. Any creature other than a fiend that tastes or touches the water is affected by a feeblemind spell...
The Styx churns through the top layers of Acheron, the Nine Hells, Gehenna, Hades, Carceri, the Abyss, and Pandemonium. Tributaries of the Styx snake onto lower layers of these planes.
The river can double as a source of water for fiends, who would probably find its foul nature refreshing.
So it's not hard to imagine that devils might have settlements near the Styx, just like humans tend to build towns and cities along bodies of water, and low-ranking devils could be sent to collect larvae periodically. Or perhaps some other enterprising fiends sell larvae to them, just like some have taken up jobs as ferrymen on the Styx.
There may also be portals leading directly to Hades (or indirectly through Sigil) and devils might build settlements "inland" from the Styx around such portals. Again from page 58:
Traveling between the Outer Planes isn't dissimilar from reaching the Outer Planes in the first place. (...) Most often, though, characters use portals - either a portal that links the two planes directly or a portal leading to Sigil, City of Doors, which holds portals to all the planes.
Starving may not be a concern for most demons. The Monster Manual suggests most don't last long due to their constant infighting. They might even cannibalize the other demons they defeat.
A demon might spawn as a manes, then become a dretch, and eventually transform to a vrock after untold time spent fighting and surviving in the Abyss. Such elevations are rare, however, for most demons are destroyed before they attain significant power. The greatest of those that do survive make up the ranks of the demon lords that threaten to tear the Abyss apart with their endless warring.
The fewer long-lived demons likely just force lower demons to get food for them:
Demons respect power and power alone. A greater demon commands shrieking mobs of lesser demons because it can destroy any lesser demon that dares to refuse its commands.
There should be no shortage of manes to do menial tasks, and given that they're weak and the Abyss constantly spawns them from the souls of damned mortals, they're probably considered expendable.
Finally, don't forget that the descriptions of the planes are written from the perspective of denizens of the Material Plane. The Abyss and the Nine Hells may be inhospitable to humanoids but that doesn't mean there's nothing there that fiends can eat. The DMG mentions some layers of the Abyss that might support demon "life" without having to travel all the way to Hades:
The Gaping Maw. Demogorgon's layer in the Abyss is a vast wilderness of savagery and madness known as the Gaping Maw, where even powerful demons
go insane with fear. Reflecting Demogorgon's dual nature, the Gaping Maw consists of a massive primeval continent covered in dense jungle, surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of ocean and brine fiats.
Death Dells. Yeenoghu rules a layer of ravines known as the Death Dells. Here, creatures must hunt to survive. Even the plants, which must bathe their roots in blood, snare the unwary. Yeenoghu's servants, helping to sate their master's hunger as he prowls his kingdom seeking prey, capture creatures from the Material Plane for release in the Gnoll Lord's realm.
Given the Abyss's supposedly-infinite layers, there's potential for many such layers to exist.
Yes
There are lots of mechanisms by which PCs can choose to enforce contracts they get NPCs to agree to. Ultimately all of these will come down to either enforcing the terms of a contract themselves or getting some outside party to agree to do it, though. A sufficiently powerful being in D&D will almost always be able to get out of any contract it makes or is subject to, just as the PCs are so able to bypass attempts to enforce contracts they have signed should they so wish, given sufficient magical resources.
Some such methods include:
- Using spells that don't require concentration and can trigger automatically upon breach of contract
- For example, geas is such a spell.
- Using magic items that enforce contracts
- None spring to mind in official material, but there are plenty of homebrew items replicating e.g. 3.5's Contract of Nepthas (Complete Arcane 148)-- magical paper for writing contracts on.
- Using other spells or magical abilities or the threat thereof to enforce the terms of a contract
- For example, fireball is such a spell.
- Using the service of a powerful creature, organization, or other entity, with access to magical abilities, to enforce the contract.
- For example, the Kolyarut (see the Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes entry for the Marut).
- Using lesser creatures to enforce the contract via magic
- For example, placing a glyph of warding on a hostage or their dwelling place or valuables of some kind, or using dominate monster to force a slave to enforce the contract for you
Generally, anything that is itself or can be affected by magic can be used to magically enforce the terms of a contract to some extent, since literally anything can be used to enforce the terms of a contract but not everything can be construed as doing so 'magically'.
Best Answer
It's not specified.
D&D 5th edition's Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is the first sourcebook to reveal that the Ruby Rod was forced upon Asmodeus by Primus, and that devils obey their contracts out of fear of the rod's curse. It's not specified in any other 5th edition book, and the relevant sourcebooks of earlier editions make no mention of this curse either.
D&D 3rd edition's Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells defines Asmodeus, the Ruby Rod, and the rules around mortals making a pact with a creature. On page 23, regarding Faustian Pacts:
Page 25 describes what happens if a soul goes to Baator and demands the right to adjudication on the grounds that their rewards were not granted, or that the mortal was coerced or magically compelled:
If the mortal wins, their soul goes free and may be restored to life with raise dead as normal. Notably, there's no mention of any curse or penalty which affects the devil who made the pact.
Asmodeus and his Ruby Rod are detailed in this book (p.155-157). There's no mention here of the rod's origin with Primus.
In AD&D 2nd edition's Planes of Law, it's suggested that devils obey their contracts because they are experts at creating and exploiting loopholes in contracts, so the contract is always in the devil's favour (p.20):