The Pestilent | The Sufferer | The Cursed
Sekh stands at a respectable 14'6", resembling a dying tree in his height and lankiness. While be bore some colour once, his hues have now all faded into monochrome: His skin is ashen grey, and his hair, once shining, hangs starkly white, dull, and limp. His eyes, black and bloodshot, are rimmed with dark circles, and his skin is marred by a creeping pattern of blackened veins. His robes, inky black with decorations in gold (the only colour that remains on his body) wraps around him like a tattered gossamer shawl with many layers (see "Additional Lore" for an image more accurately representing his robes). From tattered sleeves protrude skinny arms and bony hands. His fingers, abnormally long, seem to taper to a claw-like point with unsettling long fingernails. A noxious smoke seems to rise in thin tendrils from the folds of his robes, as if the fabric beneath is constantly smoldering.
Sekh would look like a miserably dying creature if not for the nonchalant mannerisms and commanding, authoritative presence. However, if thinking that Sekh himself is sick, one would be right - a curse from eons ago left him ill and in constant misery (more information on this at the bottom of the sheet) - but he hides his misery well, and has grown somewhat used to it.
Gender
Male
Personality
"If I let everyone succumb to illness, who would be left to worship me?"
Sekh comes off as a tired god, exhausted and disinterested with the world. However, he does care for his people, and wants them to succeed, but en lieu of directly teaching them, he provides challenges that they must learn to overcome in order to better themselves and their technology. Toward most other gods, Sekh is dismissive and sarcastic, and his distaste is barely hidden.
Normally a patient god, Sekh is in constant pain, and this often bleeds into his personality in the form of impatience, frustration and short-temperedness.
Pestilence
Suffering | HealingDeath | Defilement | Famine | Medicine | Poison | Resilience
Avatar
"Scourge"
Sekh's avatar is a massive black swarm of every pestilence and plague he controls, from disease to locusts and other vile creatures. It can take on any shape, and act either as a group of individuals or as one collective unit. It is large enough to spread through entire cities, or blot out the sun in an enormous black cloud above.
While not necessarily good for one-on-one combat, it can level entire populations with its plagues, should any city or civilization induce the rage of Sekh.
The Scourge is capable of dispersing itself into as small and spread-out a unit as a single insect. Therefore, it often acts as an overseer for Sekh; when it spreads, nothing in Xepthys can escape its watch. Its flying insects often even act as heralds for Sekh, conveying messages from around the nation and even outside its borders.
Stance
While not quite yet taking a stand nor supporting another, Sekh does like the idea of a ruling alliance of gods with dark domains, after having endured so many eons of distaste and disgust from the other gods. There are rumours that he and Azo'do, the god of Death, have been plotting something, but nothing concrete has happened yet.
Loyalty During the Rebellion
When the God of War was scheming to usurp their father's throne, Sekh, in his simmering anger at his father over his curse, sided secretly with his brother and helped him in his scheming. However, when it came the time to take sides in battle, Sekh sided with his father: War was too strong to defeat through force alone, so Sekh was charged with inflicting War with a sickness to weaken him. Fearing further punishment if he refused to comply, Sekh betrayed his brother and did as he was asked. In retrospect, Sekh recognizes that it would have been unwise to allow his warring brother to rule the cosmos, but still regrets that he couldn't defeat his father and sister.
Centre of Power
Sekh's centre of power is a large feather. This feather was the one plucked from his wing when his sister, Oksana, dripped a cursed poison into the follicle from which it was torn. Once white, it is now streaked with inky black - notably different than the still-white feathers that float about the floors of his home temple.
Relations
Azo'do
Xepthys shares borders with [Death Nation], one of its few trade partners. Sekh and Azo'do share a brotherly camaraderie.
Oksana
Sekh despises Oksana, goddess of Storms and enforcer of cosmic order, for she was the one who administered his curse.
Illyona
Sekh has a civil relationship with this sister. Though they are strained at times due to conflicting outlooks and beliefs, they can understand each other's suffering, and that links them together.
Naqqash
Sekh takes an indirect fatherly interest in Naqqash. He reminds Sekh of what his own children might have been like, and does his best to give him guidance.
Powers
As could be assumed, Sekh has power to control pests and disease. He can send a swarm of locusts to besiege a field, a troupe of plague rats to a quarreling city, and of course, set illness into any mortal being, including humans, animals, and even plants (or infect water).
However, an unexpected feature of Sekh's power is his ability to heal and cure illness. He can strike mortals ill, but also cure them; he can set a scourge of pests to a crop, but also restore a bountiful harvest. Anything he gives, be it illness or health, he also has the power to take away.
As well, Sekh can dissipate his body into a noxious smoke, and rematerialize again. When he walks, he seems to glide along the ground, with his robes from the waist down dissolving into a mass of sinking smoke. Traversing any distance further than a few steps, his body seems to dissolve into this same inky black smoke and re-materialize at his destination. Since his curse leaves him physically weak and inept in combat, he often uses this technique to evade attackers if necessary. He also employs this tactic to transform smoothly down to mortal size or scale himself up to heights of multiple storeys (however, at greater sizes than his natural height, he does not materialize as an entire body, but more often as a figure from the waist up or a bust; he doesn't tend to hold these forms for very long, and normally uses them to intimidate mortals).
Godly Equipment
Sekh's curse makes him physically weak in direct combat, so he tends to avoid it. In the place of sword or shield, Sekh creates poisons and diseases powerful enough to strike even his siblings ill. He has a few ways to administer these: sometimes he will send a flying insect from Scourge to carry the pestilence and bite his victim, or fill a dart with his mixture and throw it. In situations that require more force, he has a dagger. This god's bane dagger is a flamberge style, the blade able to be laced with whatever pestilence he needs.
His dagger, insects and darts are all god's bane weapons, however they (with possible exception of the dagger) do not have the power on their own to do any significant damage to a god.
Demi Gods
Sekh's curse makes him unable to sire children: Any and every mortal to lay with him dies of the same god's bane disease that plagues him before they had any chance for childbirth; if they should miraculously survive, any children to come forth from him would be sickly, deformed, and unfit to live.
Xepthys, Pestilent Land of Sekh
Lands
Most of Xepthys is barren wasteland, teeming with vermin and disease, and unfit to sustain civilized life. The soul is nutrient-rich (due to the frequent death and decomposition of creatures) but dry, pockmarked with spindly trees, and near-impossible to farm; any water found on the surface is stale, stagnant and unsafe to drink. Dotted across this land are dense pockets of civilization linked by dusty, unguarded roads, twisting like veins across the desert-esque lands of Xepthys. These cities and towns are almost exclusively founded on top of underground water deposits, which re the only source of drinkable water in Xepthys. These settlements also often feature plots of carefully cultivated farmland, tiny herds of livestock and small temple hospitals.
While the stagnant ponds and lakes of Xepthys create small oases, the people of Xepthys adamantly avoid them: These oases are always teeming with disease-spreading insects, rabid wild creatures, and venomous desert reptiles.
Most of Xepthys' vegetation is rather plain, (such as spindly, leafless trees which appear to be dead, but actually thrive in the deserts and various skinny cacti with long thorns) there is a vibrant blue flower called the Mahat Blossom that thrives in Xepthys: These flowers are highly valuable for medicine, and are sought after by brave Xeps, willing to face the dangers of he oases where they bloom. These flowers and their seeds are easily the most expensive good in Xepthys, and having them growing in one's garden is a sure sign of wealth or nobility.
People
The people of Xepthys, called Xeps, are resilient humanoids with monochromatic skin and hair colours varying from stark white to coal black. They are extremely adaptable and have grown immune to a wide variety of diseases that most other civilizations would never have come into contact with. As such, Xepthys makes an unpopular trade partner, as its citizens will often carry diseases and spread them among their trade contacts.
Culture
Xepthys is widely known for two things: Highly advanced medicine and impressive, alternative agriculture. Being in the domain of Pestilence, it was necessary for the people of Xepthys to develop good techniques of treating disease; otherwise, they would all succumb to it. As well, while the soil of Xepthys is fertile, it is unyielding and dry. As such, the Xeps have developed techniques of well digging and irrigation that have made agriculture and farming possible. They also make a habit of growing medicinal plants in potted gardens; it is considered normal for every home in Xepthys to have a rooftop potted garden, filled with assorted medicinal herbs.
Even living in desolate lands, the people of Xepthys have adapted and thrived. They hold no contempt for their god, but only gratitude for his healing and respect for his power to destroy. They believe it is by his good grace that they prosper, and by his unyielding rule that they have learned to sustain themselves so effectively.
Twice a year, all of Xepthys participated in a nameless festival, often dubbed by Xeps as "Medicine Day", during which the citizens of Xepthys harvest their medicinal plants and make them into medicines. It's a social event, in which communities gather in a central place and make an event out of fashioning their treatments: Sharing recipes, remedies and supplies, selling wares, playing music and making large meals for the entire community to share. These are days of music, fellowship, and community, and looked forward to by all.
Technology
Post-Classical Era-style governing and philosophy with technological echoes of the Medieval. (Basically the time period of the black plague with some technologies advanced beyond their time, closer to medieval level)
Sephtun, The Capital
This monument, in the courtyard preceding the temple in which Sekh himself resides, stands roughly two stories tall and is fashioned from glossy petrified grey wood, rare ivory, onyx, and flecks of gleaming amber. It is designed in the likeness of the spindly, dead-looking trees that can be found in the wastelands of Xepthys (a motif that is carried on within Sekh's temple). The top figure is shaped in the image of Sekh; the lower figure has no official identification, but it is often assumed to be a strangely humanoid likeness of Azo'do, God of Death, with whom Sekh retains a close relationship.
Named in part for its founder, this is where Sekh himself resides. It is a dense urban centre with many interesting amenities, including a state-of-the-art sewer system, created in order to reduce the possibility of waste-induced disease. The capital is a centre for all goings-on within the nation, from trade to government, but most of all, worship.
There are two main sects in the worship of Sekh, both centered in Sephtun. These two sects can be found across Xephtys, though many smaller, regional sects also exist. One sect, called the Compassionates, worships the aspects of Sekh's power related to healing and resilience. Their temple is somewhat of a hospital, where the sick and dying go to seek refuge and care, or to make their peace with Sekh himself. Priests and Priestesses of this sect care for the sick and come to Sekh to pray for health and other such favours.
The Sufferers, a group of Sekh-fearing fanatics, worship and revere his power to destroy, from scourging crops to inflicting plagues and everything in between. They give him routine offerings to keep themselves and their followers in Sekh's favour; they believe that Xepthys survives due to Sekh's mercy and sparing them from his pestilence. They preach subservience and reverence to Sekh in order to keep Xepthys safe from his horrors. They have taken to seeking out infection by every disease in Xepthys, hoping that by suffering them and surviving them, they can grow closer to their god.
Sekh pays heed to both of these sects equally, and acts slightly different with each of them, to better keep within their unique perceptions of him.
Beings
While Xepthys lacks any immortal life aside from Sekh himself, it does house various unsettling and often terrifying creatures. One such creature is the Harrowed Wasp: Believed to be the offspring of the Scourge itself, Harrowed Wasps are ruthlessly violent wasps that will actively attack any creature in a one-hundred-metre vicinity of their nest, even if said creature is not disturbing the nest. Its sting has been acclaimed to be the most painful experience known to Xeps, and its venom can easily kill in one sting. This venom is often used in poisons, and must be harvested extremely carefully; many an alchemist's apprentice has died trying to harvest this venom.
Sekh was born as a god of healing, under the name Sekhmahat ("Sekh" meaning "illness" and "mahat" meaning "cure/curer of"). For eons he flew about the mortal realm on his white feathered wings, in an endless quest to relieve suffering and cure illness. He was passionate in this endeavor, to the point of compulsion: he became obsessed with eradicating all disease from the mortal realm, and creating a world without suffering or untimely death.
Sekhmahat very nearly completed his mission; however, when his father Rieth, King of all gods, got word of his mission, he was outraged. Disease was part of the natural order of the cosmos, and as king of the cosmos, Rieth could not allow that order to be disrupted. So, he cast upon Sekhmahat a curse: He would be forced to spread the plagues he had worked to hard to eradicate, and would eternally suffer from an illness that even he could not cure. Rieth charged his second child, Oksana, with the administering of this curse.
Oksana found her brother in his temple, poring still over his notes and records, searching for a final cure. She informed her brother of the charges laid upon him, but Sekhmahat could not retaliate: for the will of Rieth was absolute, and Sekhmahat was helpless to disobey. Even as she plucked a feather from his wing and dropped Rieth's plague into the wound, and stripped him of his name's suffix of "cure", all he could do was stare his sister in the eye and swear a divine vow that he would have his revenge.
In the time that followed, Sekh's shining white feathers grew dull and fell to the floor of his temple, where he hid himself ad his wings shriveled and shrunk to nothing, his body weakened, and pain filled his veins, and sickness claimed his heart. A century he stayed hidden away, while the sick and dying cried for his help, as he himself withered to a sickened shell of his former glory. It broke his heart, and hardened it; when he finally emerged, his land grew sick and weak, and he was left to coldly rule as a husk of his former glory.
To this day every breath, every step, every beat of his charred and shrivelled heart sends pain shooting through Sekh's blackened veins, like ground glass in his blood; mouth forever dry, though wine and water repulse him; eternally starving, though his stomach turns at the sight of food. The shed feathers that mock him of days past still litter his temple floor.
@Yennefer Check this completed shit out!
I'll probably edit it a millioin times but fuck it it's done
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