"O ye sons of the Dark, do not weep; for He shall wipe all tears away, and all woes, and all their causes, and make thee as Light. O ye sons of Ignorance, do not balk, for He shall make thee wise beyond thy years, knowing Good and Evil and all things thereof. O ye sons of Death, cower not, for He shall do away with thy fears, and He shall remake all in bountiful Life ne'er ending. O ye sons of Mortality, do not fall away from the path that He sets before thou, for to walk it is to be as Gods and to know the Eternal as he does."
The Starserpent, Deceiver, Pretender, The One Who Came Late, Lord of Lords (self-styled), King of Kings (self-styled)
Pride, Stars, Wisdom, Liberation, Serpentkind, Lordship, Wonders
The preferred guise of Ophion is that of an immense snake, once hundreds of feet wide and many more long, though now merely some two hundred long, with ruddy golden scales 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.
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 'rebels' 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, setting the stars temporarily right and wrong and thusly muddling 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. The direct brokering of power by compact, amplifying the power of the minormost near-divines in particular, is something he possesses, 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.
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 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 avoiding of the final blow.
