-Additional flavor text on Ophion's previous and current BIG, clarification of 200 feet as present upper ceiling on length rather than constant- maintenance of large form possibly difficult when using energy, primary uses large-scale/divine warfare and awe-inspiration while at rest?- plus mythical bits about pregame size
-Scale-color split into its own paragraph
-'Rebels' point in Personality/personal subsection changed to 'rebellious lords' for better flow
-Powers block split into two paragraphs
-Scale of might is clarified as hamstrung by presently languid nature; partially flavor, partially crunch abstract-balance.
-Minor formatting change to 'power brokering' line, addition of 'familiar spirits' to near-divines, more for flavor than clarification
-Addition of 'The World that Was' magical 'item' and its fluff.
-Broke up 'Mortality' section into three text blocks for ease of reading. Modified wording of first block to be less confused/confusing; 'is not immortal, and neither made mortal in the same fashion' rather than 'not made mortal in the same fashion,' making his effectively equivalent (regardless of origins) mortality compact more immediately apparent.
-Necushstan has a flavor text quotation.
-Necushstan has filler text for some basic concepts.

The preferred guise of Ophion is that of an immense snake. Although said to have been hundreds of feet wide and many more long in his entry to the world, said to have stolen the sky and eaten the moon, but his power has waned. In the fullest manifestation he is still capable of, he is a more modest two hundred feet long; this is still too large to navigate some of Nechushstan's monumental architecture, occasionally lending him to shrink further.

His scales are, normally, a ruddy gold tinged with red. Two short limbs sprout from his chest, and forward-pointing hooks line his body, 'the better to carry the world away with.' His heart burns bright as a sun, only barely contained, and his voice flashes with fire. In the farflung time of his arrival and during both periods of deep calm and wrath alike, the gold peels away to the black of the night sky, and the red glow gives way to starry blue-white.

When he must guise himself as a man, going forth in astral projection, he is known to take the appearance of a great man with golden-brown skin, two heads taller than the tallest in many nations and built as a giant, with braided beard down to his chest and braided hair down to his center back. A large turban, both rimmed and crowned with silver and studded with countless gemstones, the center setting dominated by an irridescent diamond, sits heavy on his head, and he is clothed in a heavy and richly decorated kaftan in the same color as his scales, changing its color in the passing of night and day.

While viewed by the cults of the Allgod-born deities as capricious and exceedingly demanding of his followers, the cult of Ophion speaks of him as generous beyond all others, granting boons beyond his demands in return for absolute loyalty. There is truth in both sides; on the level of rulership, while he offers no tolerance towards cults of the 'lesser' gods whom do not pay greater fealty to Ophion's throne (and thus risk their scorn) he is lenient- if watchful- towards those worshipers of familiar spirits whom do, allowing their secondary faith in his 'loyal vassals.' And, while his rule is absolute, it is also heavily distributed amongst both his serpent-spawn, the native spirits and the mightiest mortals, and through this policy of hierarchism combined with absolutism many great works have been wrought through his lands. His is a devil's bargain of loyalty for prosperity, promising vanguardship in ultimate liberation from the world itself.

On the personal level, Ophion bears hubris beyond hubris, unfailingly declaring the world as his empire in rebellion, the gods as 'rebellious lords' and his territory as only the personal demesne of His lordship, rather than the sole demesne. His words are most often sweetly-smug, promising all one may desire, occasionally sagacious in impenetrably riddlic nothing-saying when asked for counsel or challenged in wisdom, and on rare occasions wroth, prophesying every portent of doom and anguish for spite of the lesser over pride unearned. He is known to take a distant paternity to his subjects, granting miracles regularly in demonstration of his personal love of the mortal folk, or else seeing to it that those lesser would-be divinities who have sworn to him grant those miracles outside his portfolio in his stead.



Ophion's power portfolio is largely of a grandiose, sublime nature, the gross over the subtle, and where there is subtlety, it is on the border of grossness. Over the passing of the lesser heavens he has a degree of influence yet, setting the stars temporarily right and wrong and thusly meddling with the significance of days, much to the frustration of both astrologers, whose starmaps and predictions can be made obsolescent for some span, and ritualists, whose works are uncovered by Ophion's agents and spited. His knowledge of large-scale metaphysical workings is great, although the fine work often falls on those of small enough form and mind to attend it, and his general wisdom is relatively deep, though he grows indignant where proven wrong.

His physical might is immense, and he posseses the power to channel starlight through himself into destructive magic, or to swim through the glowing air as if it were water, as well as subtler manipulations along the lines of divine parlour tricks; dancing lights and simulacrums of bright fog. Despite the scale of his personal power, however, he is often quick to tire, or else conservatively lazy, seeing to it that personal weight-swinging is kept to a minimum. Thankfully for the realm, he is possessed of skill in direct brokering of power by compact, amplifying the power of the minormost near-divine familiar spirits in particular, and has seen many lesser mythical creatures flock to him in hopes of standing alongside or usurping their betters in the middle and high-grade powers, much to their frustrations, as these vassals, both willing, able, and relatively numerous, are a great boon in the wars of containment fought against Ophion, although the degree of lack in standardization can make the raising of levies cumbersome.


Not so much an item as a place, the World that Was is, depending on whether one asks Ophion or one of his rivals, a fenced-off fragment of Pleroma, or a counterfeit pocket dimension. Whichever is the truer nature, its substance is tied up with Ophion's own. Carried in the burning radiance of his heart, entry is through Ophion's fanged maw, ink-shaded and full of terror. Braving through this entryway, in the correct frame of mind, is a rite of passage into the deeper circles of Ophion's personal cult, where men sacrifice their old selves and are remade in his image as living weapons against 'ignorance and ruin.'

Those whom pass through the initial blackness, and do not find themselves indefinitely lost, find themselves beneath an unfamiliar sky and wreathed in fog. Twin moons, static in their setting and said to be Ophion's own inner eyes, gaze down on the visitor, and stars charted in no known sky of Roa cast their light through the gentle mist, lending a serene quality to the moss-draped marble ruins. This mist is ever-nourishing to the rampant overgrowth, and exotic flowers both gently pale and radiantly bright dazzle visitors. The land will often seem to recurse on the traveler, and has often been compared to a rolled-up scroll, either end of the resulting pillar placed end-to-end; this is an oversimplification, as walking in one way from the same place may find oneself in entirely different destinations.

Despite its beauty, the World that Was can be terribly dangerous. Serpent-men, both living and dead, rove the expanse to challenge visitors, interlopers and imprisoned alike, else making themselves meditative squatters in the ruins who ill like to be disturbed, and marble guardians set in sharply euclidean shapes patrol unceasingly & without emotion, pearlescent eyes set in every facing that blaze with death-light. Ophion has been known to astrally project himself to mock or tempt those entrapped. The unprepared will find themselves pushed to the brink by peril, but rarely are they killed outright, the nature and purpose of the realm being a supposed 'alchemical adversity.' Thusly can one find entire communities of mad sages and hard-bitten men-at-arms, trapped for years, or decades, even those descendant from the entrapped, who have never known the land of Roa.

Normally, there is no sun; the night never ends. No living, reliable account of day in The World that Was exists outside either the Cult of Ophion, considered unreliable by scholars outside of its ranks for reason of fanaticism and their accounts often ruled as mere metaphor for the cultist's self-actualization into a tool of Ophion, and the entrapped clansmen, whose accounts are ruled as hallucination-derived wishful thinking and the speakings of ongoing but unadmitted converts.


Ophion, though existing outside of the game and rules that the Allgod's children are participating in- and hence, not inside the same compact as they- is not immortal, and neither made mortal in the same fashion, nor is he under the potential protection of the Allgod from fratri-deicide. He is quite open nonetheless in the fact that, in order to penetrate this reality- supposedly- he had to bind his power and present being into an ageless, implacable, yet ultimately mortal quasi-divine form. In so doing, he broke the normal barriers separating this reality from the supposed superreality, thus allowing him to descend and begin his campaign of conquest and liberation from 'the stifling nature of this matter and the chaos of anarchy.'

If Ophion should succeed, he promises an endless frontier of possibility and wonder for those in the world, even those whom are his foes to the last; if he should die, and fail to bring this reality up, on the other hand, he either does not know, or will not say the world's fate, but is clear in his sayings that he will be scattered to the greater cosmos, all that he has brought together as himself over time uncounted and space endless being no longer, and that he will not be able to return.

He has come close to death by divine might before, yet by trickery, has always escaped the deathblow, often even spiting his enemies in so doing, as when he struck down a great god-king of the barbarian hunters through his servant, the Father of Widowers, leading to his present state as a mummified, dying idol, and Ophion's survival, though cowed and humbled.

"Let no one who lives impugn the holiness of Nechushstan and its cause. What a foolish world has seen as calamity, we have realized as hope. What a fearful world has fallen away from, we have marched proudly to meet. What an evil world has seen as its death, we have seen as our salvation! And all shall find their way out again, that none may doubt our virtue!"

(Combination between core continental African, east Indian and Levantine species, focus on 'exotic' fauna)


(Large serpents slithering, walking or flying;
Unconventional or original species should be followed by a description/picture.


(Late Turkic seminomads, Levantine ascetics, Greek philosopher-republics, Sikh religious militants as example potential groups, miracle-modified serpentmen, lizardfolk, medusae and other naga as both subgroups of national subgroups, and belonging to their own over-subgroup of the blessed with potentially distinct intercultural values)