1. Noice. I knew quite well things were full, but I kept to my promise to Cap'n and threw in expecting to be a reserve player. Good to see it didn't go to waste, although I was happy to have written it out either way. Was an enjoyable exercise.
2. Plate armor is a keepsake of the source material in earlier RP in a different format, a bunch of bootleg Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Warriors, with demons swapped out for magimutant dragon-men and gribbly gods swapped out for a mythical and possibly-dead, Smaug-tier dragon. I considered dropping down the armoring down to plated mail as in Iran, India, or for somewhere more relevantly Nordic, Rus, but it just didn't feel right not to have a proper big tin can man. I went for meteoric iron- it may or may not have been supplemented in crafting with telluric iron, a terrestrial equivalent of naturally metallic alloy, which ordinary people and scientists both thought was just another form of meteoric iron 'til some of them noted the sharp edges and corners, which would've worn down in atmospheric entry- because it's the most plausible to be cold-worked, and an excellent way to get high quality steel in hot work without overmuch understanding of alloying or the technical basis for blast furnaces (as in Europe) or for selective crushing and picking of ore (as in Japan.) Naturally has a bit of nickel and carbon worked into it. Perfect stuff to last through the ages, especially if kept in a cool, relatively dry cavern beneath a human construction.
3. Throw together a PM discussion, and whatever needs to be roughed out can be roughed out. From what I'd seen in their sheets and more importantly the OP hider for the Tribes- I'll look over again, mind- there were no explicit clans or tribes, so all I had to go on was an unfilled number, which I could squeak the Lindings into. Lots of nice folklore in Shikoba's sheet, though, giving an impression of a great deal of lore as extant in-world even as it may be yet to be written in a fleshed-out way. I like that kind of imagination baiting. Rare's sheet for Mathis is entirely open-ended, casus belli to pull out information where necessary- colored by southron perspective- about locales the party may arrive at, but does not itself contain such. At some point, the full list of the other five main tribes beside the Lindings ought to be written, codified and canonized.
4. Dragon-lording is plainly mythical and open-ended, as I wasn't sure if dragons were intelligent like men or merely very clever animals, like dogs or apes. And in regards to what it said of dragons by extension, it might be pure metaphor, human attribution of anthropomorphism where there is none, and a means to insert a myth-snippet of invented history. It might have been a myth-snippet suggesting an actual and himself largely bestial dragon in the far past of the Lindings, that somehow arrived into a semi-symbiotic relationship of sacrifices in exchange for 'protection,' or rather, said dragon's territorial defense of its easy food source in abundant deer in the thickets and aurox cattle of the more pastoral Lindings in the few flats, and 'wisdom,' in the form of magic mushrooms derived from dragon dung growth instead of cowpatty and being thusly stronger, actually magical, even. Thus, their myths, culture, and the tone regarding Tuarung that speaks of him as semi-sapient. Or it may be suggesting that a proper, sapient being of a non-degenerated line, fitting in entirely with the god-men, dwarves, elves and giants of the rest of the open-ended myth, whom actually allied himself with the Lindings in the prehistory of the game world and taught legitimate esoterica, with the mushrooms as a conjured medium that survived to this day, a lineage that Tuarung is not a member (at least not a non-degenerated one) and so is the lording still a metaphor even in that case.
All that is confirmed about the Lindings' myths is that there's some really old hereditary armor, a big hammer for ringing big things, and a dinner gong the size of most of a large castle tower's upper floor, suspended in open air by chains as wide as cows and as thick as men. And at some point, some nonsense left them with the impression of dragons as natural sovereigns over the material world, thus anthropomorphizing Tuarung in-sheet, whether or not his forebears were actually sapient.
I particularly like that your history seems very Tolkien-esque.
I'm glad you got that vibe, because a bastardized half-approximation of a mythical feel, Tolkienish or Prose Edda-ish- going so far in the former case as to crib Smaug's boast in intentional homage- is exactly what I was going for, both in the writing style of the middle half onward and the events themselves. The kind of thing you'd find in a mediocre fanfiction about such-and-such OC group of First/Second Age men, written on blue-line notebook paper and haphazardly tucked into the back end of a dog-eared copy of the Silmarillion, yeah?
Still present and foreseeably so over here. Did you see the sheet, Kyle? I dropped it after you'd gone off, and at the very endpost of a page, so I imagine it was lost amongst the bantz. Give it a looksee if you've the time.
My bloated-ass sheet, for perusal and consideration. Refurbished some old conceptual junk and kitbashed it together. I took liberties in the absence of much information on the North, and so I hope I am not trundling over anything established behind the DM screen in so doing. Off-and-on tack-ons and a desire to have something rather completed meant it took a bit to get it hammered out to a degree I felt somewhat satisfied with as being potentially compelling. I feel that the smaller sections, ala skills & personality, are a bit anemic in comparison to the history, which by contrast is exceedingly dense, hopefully not in unuseful fashions. At the very least, those small sections are- at worst- a bit below par for the course.
Character Theme –Walk the Wyrm's Spine --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ormr is a head over many men at six foot, seven inches, blessed in this respect by blood or fate. His eyes, when seen, are green and piercing, his hair is blonde and long-braided, and his beard similarly braided down to the chest. A long scar traces up the left side of his chest, up from the sternum and over the heart. He looks older than his years, hard-bitten, but with no lack of vitality.
His features are very often hidden by a suit of fullplate, supposedly a relic of faraway times, worked from meteoric iron in the deep cold. Patterened with scale engravings, the helm stag-horned and faced with a wolflike draconic visage, its craftsmanship is out-of-place to its supposed origin in the farther north. Additional frills beyond the armor are sparse; he is often taken to wearing a heavy fur cloak to keep out the wind, and no more as an overlayer, while the underlayer is similarly furred and padded.
Ormr is, in many ways, the archetypal stoic northern doomseeker. Reserved and of few words when he can help it, substituting action in their place. He is seemingly heedless of the ruin around him, taking all in stride as the plague consumes his homelands, and if he is sorrowful for their plight, then he certainly shows nothing of it. If he is weary, he will not be the first to call it to attention. If outright retreat, and not tactical withdrawal, is most wise, he will be last to call it.
The free companies and refugees he travelled south with knew him little and knew less of him. Occasionally, hearsay and rumor would be passed of his lineage, the disgraced son of the mad chief of Lindlund, but never overloud, never within earshot, and never widely. The small fair fame he had in this, and in his martial services to those insulted amongst the feuding tribals, and rarely in actions against the Vasili, has been largely overshadowed by the plague, and this does not bother him in the least, for he yet has no need of renown. In those days, a scarce few would come to him, to ask of him or his advice, and his answers always pointfully obscure in both cases. Relatively wise in the right ways of the North, he often found himself a mediator, a role in which he was impartial and quick to suggest or himself dispense justice, either in mercy or severity as necessary.
Despite this practical courtesy, his social sensibilities are dulled and cold when it comes to interrelation. To the point, and little else. While his self-interest is unspoken, it is clear in his avoidance that there is more to his joining than a mere desire to cleanse the North of what ails it, or even to return home, of which he does not speak to most. With the increasing disarray of the tribal lands and the sheer flood of rumors that travel south, there is little to pick out about him, despite some small former prominence. What, then, can be discerned about his ulterior motives? Only that he seeks it to the ends of the earth, to the grave and beyond if need be.
In days all too far past,it is said that the North was a land mythic. Great dragons and beasts walked the earth seeking the craftswork of those below them, and faefolk mingled with men openly. Magic, good and bad, ran wild, yet the former always triumphed in health over the latter. The bitter cold of the eternal snowfall was matched tenfold by the heat of the hearthfires of giants, god-men, dwarves, and elves, and nothing was hidden from them. So say the tales of yore. These days are remembered fondly in northern tales - the mystic recitals of druids and skalds - the wistful recounting of a primordial age that may have never even been.
Twenty-five years ago the dragon Turaung was slain. His contemporary grandeur paled relative to his mythical forebears, whose armor was tenfold shields, with teeth as swords and claws as spears, thunderbolt-tails, hurricanes in wing and breathing death, but he was a true dragon nonetheless, and lorded himself over men as he saw as his right. On this day, a seven-tailed comet flew overhead, shining like the sun, and in its wake followed the sibling-stars, which one could not parse in one moment and the next as one or two, merging and breaking at will.
Many of the northern shaman debated the meaning of this celestial manifestation; only a quiet few of a particular cult, gifted with ill-known lore, could speak to its nature, and they remained quiet. Eleven years before, Ormr, son of Sindri, chief of the Lindings, had been born beneath that comet's first passing- the sibling stars absent- and the shamans of the Wyrmkin of Lindlund, Land of the Lime Tree Copse, did see the signs. And they did know what was to come.
Lindlund, that land south of Falkreach and north of Fort Cain, is often said to be one of the most myth-touched lands in the North outside the unknown reaches of the Grey Islands and the wastes 'cross the mountains. Strange, then, that the petty king of this chiefdom would be the most mundane of men. A widower ill-gifted in rulership, weak in the sword, vile in lecherousness, and poor in humor, Sindri son of Hrafn was unliked by his vassals and the commonfolk alike, kept on the throne only because of the holiness of his ancient bloodline. He was nothing alike to his father, a man of good blood and better character, highly esteemed by his peers and his allies, even and especially outside Lindlund. But Ormr, too, was not alike to his father, and in this was he blessed.
Though born as a babe and as an adolescent 'man' under the sign of a seven-tailed comet and sibling stars, something that might be considered exceedingly auspicious in the south and a sign of a special fate, it drew no great attention in the North. In those lands, every child is born under peculiar signs, once as they come into the world, and once as they grow old enough to tread paths of learning and labour, every father and mother marking down the omens for interpretation, and moreso in Lindlund, a realm regarded both with romance and as exceedingly pompous for such a middling demesne. Ormr's signs, when heard as boasts from an ill-liked chief who fancies himself king, were altogether expected and regarded with skepticism; the shaman searched for all manner of interpretations of the comet's passing in lieu of this explanation. Neither the Wyrmkin nor Ormr himself cared overmuch for these feelings; the former traced the way of things in their meditations, and the latter was young, and humble, and good of heart, birthsign or no.
Sindri, generally distant and uninterested in his progeny despite a token love, left his raising to the court, to those men whom knew Hrafn son of Alawīdaz, and the men who knew them. Then were the seeds of nostalgia sowed, for these men were old and set in their ways, be they Wyrmish or more conventionally heathenish. Far from his father, apatheistically content to laze and enjoy what luxury he could afford to the shame of Hrafn, the young Ormr was eager, befit with a vitality and energy beyond children his age. He learned the sword-ways, the good laws of courtesy and hospitality, the writing and reading of runes, and the outer mysteries of the Wyrmkin, through whatever kernels of knowledge and truth the court shamans might bemusedly share to the boy in riddles and games. It would not be bold to say that he was loved by his guardians, and in his sparse interactions with the commonfolk, he was sure to endear himself, not for mere practicality's sake, but a sincere belief in the good law.
It was inevitable, then, that the good law, in good application, should meet its opposite, and in bad application. Sindri was never a pious soul, but always fearful, both for his own mortality and the poorly afterlife he had garnered for his mediocrity, that of an unvirtuous stick-picker, or so the shamans told him. Always, they demanded that he avert course, but the bad king was adamantly indecisive, dependent on Providence. And, in an ugly light, it did shine down on him. Evangelists of the south, flaggelants and psychotics all, had beat a manic path on the backs of local hospitality and following ejection for its abuse; rather than turn for home, they had always gone further north, to 'save these miserable barbarian heathens' souls.'
They were at the end of their doomed road; word had spread far and wide of their desecrations and shrill blasphemies, and they would have no more hospitality. All that was left was Lindlund, and the wilds. They all but commanded the bad king to sponsor them, take them in and convert; in return, they told him all he wished to hear. A heaven without works and a stay from hell. And he granted their every request. The court was deeply disturbed, on the verge of rebellion, but Ormr was too young, and too unblooded, now forteen years of age. He could not take the throne, and a regency was inconcievable; the old blood was the holy of holies, and to put any man in supremacy over it was unspeakable, no matter the circumstance. Any coup would have to wait.
It was not long 'til Ormr began to understand his guardian's anxieties. Self-hating to the point of madness, this particular crop of Lightists called out to the One for everything, at every turn, scraping and groveling. But in the next moment, they would turn on their fellow with venom and fire and hate, chastising for every perceived impurity, and their wrath was worse on the peasantfolk. Necessary defense against their assaults became all too regular, but Sindri forbade any harm to befall them. A band of incompetent foreign hystericals had become a second court practically overnight, and had eagerly set to breaking parts of the populace into line, by any and all means.
But it was not these aspects that Ormr grew to despise. Not the substitution of rapture for love, not the begging of an unanswering deity, not the rages and paranoias, not the floggings, not the blasphemies, not the complete and utter disrespect for the good and right Law, and the disallowance of rightful reprisal. These he hated, but they were not what he despised. What he truly, truly despised most of all was the dichotomy between adherents; either they were utter hypocrites, who believed not a word of what they preached, or complete madmen, who believed every word of self-contradicting psychosis. And both were endlessly caught in iniquities contrary to their preaching. Happy was he, then, when he heard of the rise of Cain the Great, Cain the Deliverer, Cain the Hero, and myriad other titles, whom spoke against the softness and rot southwards, the festering of Vasili's disrespect for the Law, some six-hundred years on. And so did the boy, over four years a stranger to this new court, confiding with and being confided in with his old teachers, so did he become enamoured with that rising star amongst the northmen.
It was to Ormr's great surprise, then, when Sindri decided to lend his sword to Cain's forces. Why a change of heart now? He had no love of the old ways, nor any personal love for the other tribes, nor any animosity towards Vasili, and his vizier-flaggelants were outright hostile. Yet it was one of these flaggelants who was key, a much-scarred man with black beard and mane, disjointed and flashy in his fashion, psychosis clear in his eyes and seeping up from his soul, a Vasiliman by the name of Kaganovich. A would-be prophet, he was utterly convinced that, in order for the Light to prevail, the weak and sinful south-men would have to be annihilated to the last. A new covenant was in order, one with the men of the North, in whom he saw great potential, if their loyalties could be turned from the Law to a construct of his own devising. He would rot the very soul out of the North and put a simulacra in its place in the postwar, turning Cain's New Kingdom to his New Light. And, inevitably, he had informed Sindri of a high place in this new order, to which the bad king was most pleased. Soon, Kaganovich had converted a fair number of the other Lightists, and had surrounded himself with a solid core of true believers.
Prophets, however, are rarely alone, and rarely sincere. One of the most well-respected and inscrutable of the Wyrmkin Shaman, a mad old seer known only as Stag-Horns- for he wore the skull of a stag, and took its name for himself, as was the way of the more eccentric ascetics- had his own tale to tell of the future, and one which Sindri was most displeased with. Ormr's destiny, his truestmost fate, was to be a Hero in the archetypal sense; to live and to die for his people. 'Should he go under arms in the name of Cain,' Stag-Horns rasped, 'then the most glorious fate of all awaits him!' And the old peers of Hrafn were proud, and even Sindri, a cold, deprived and depraved man, felt a swell of warm paternal love for a moment. But, as Stag-Horns continued, 'that glorious fate will await him in a suiting death, for in this path he is doom-bound.' And pride gave way to murmurings, and murmurings to fear, and fear into outrage. The weaponthanes and runic men despaired, for Ormr was a bright and young soul, tragic to part with, and they beat their chests with fist and sword against shield. The flaggelants were enraged that a heathen still held sway in the court, and turned their venomous tongues against the son of the Lindings and the false prophetry on display.
It was Sindri's word that was deciding, for bad chief or not, he was King of the Lindings, and his word was the law when it came to the old blood. Though fearing for his power in the age of the New Light should he go on without an heir- for he could produce none, having gone barren with disease from his iniquities and depravities- he was, for the first time in his life, afraid for his son, for in him he saw a determination he had never known, and apparitions of the future threw themselves upon his ailing mind, bloody and terrible. For the first and only time, love motivated him. He explicitly forbade Ormr from raising his arms in Cain's name. And again, the court was in uproar. Swords flashed, voices rose up in anger and adulation both, and more than one scathing verse classic and improvised was thrown against the name of Sindri and the Light. At the height of the uproar, Stag-Horns made all silent with the low crack of his staff's butt-end against the floor. 'You, then, will go in disgrace,' he proclaimed, his gaze and all gazes upon Sindri, 'And his fate will be yours in a different way.' Then was Stag-Horns banished in a final outrage, barred from returning to castle Lind, and Ormr was locked away for the wartime.
Then did the Lindings go to war at Cain's side, and many acts of great valor were done in his name. The good and right ways and all the might of the North was on their side; there could be nothing but victory, they thought. But treachery would come again into their midst, both expected an unexpected, for Kaganovich's evangelists had not the slightest luck in swaying men or banners to their cause. To sway men whom were already utterly convinced in their ways, ways revitalized by a triumphant hero, was impossible. And Sindri was impatient, and spiteful, and envious, and syphilis ate away at his mind. He was swiftly becoming a joke, a soon-to-be-villain of the great prose, whose ways were worse and more despised than the south-men, whose fate was to be supplanted by the son of Ormr, the good son of the Lindings, whom may soon be. The New Light would have to come in a different way.
Then did Sindri throw his lot in with the traitor Tanner and his peers, those men whom- for whatever reasons they may have had- did want to see Cain die. Men with a messiah will hear no prophets, and both Sindri and Kaganovich knew this. So they worked to murder Cain the Hero, supplying hooked-arrows, and foul alchemies, and a forgotten old blade whose name was Treachery. And Cain did die, to the horror of all, and Tanner suffered for his crimes, and died in turn. But Sindri, and Kaganovich, were not discovered in that time. The Lindings withdrew- forcibly and with great protest, the most righteous and most mighty refusing to lay down their arms and fighting for Cain's name to the bitter and bloody end- and the alliance of the north fell. Then did they gloat openly, when the weaponthanes had returned to their posts and the field-men to their homes, of the failure of Cain, for he refused to embrace the New Light. In all but the most explicit terms, they were clear in their conspiratory nature in Cain's murder. So did many of the good men of the Lindings throw down their badges, and pennants, and cloaks, and all marks of their allegiance, refusing to serve Sindri and pledging to return when 'the good son did sit upon the throne.'
These men were lucky, for Ormr could do no such thing, tied in blood as he was. A few of the most loyal had elected to stay, to guard against treachery and guide Ormr yet a while longer, yet they grew old. Now free from his doomed fate, the house arrest placed on Ormr was lifed, yet there was naught for him to live for. One night, he disappeared into the woods and groves, to whatever fate awaited him. Death, or providence. And providence smiled upon him, for there he found the exile Stag-Horns, alive and well. And Stag-Horns had much to tell him, about his old fate, and his new one, and the way of things, and the things that harness the ways. He was taught to use the Soma in the mushrooms of the linden-root, that strange plant that can at once calm the mind, bring utter tranquility, and also call up the most furious and divine wrath. He had learned to read the runes; now he learned which runes to read, with the old mysteries transmitted to him now. His heart grew harder, and bolder, and when his father or the mad priest would confront him with false sayings and taunts, he would have a counter-saying prepared, and they could not assail him. In this was Sindri driven finally away from any affection, falling into a black hate of his kin.
Three years have gone on, and Ormr is twenty-one years of age. Sindri speaks not to his, for he is withering fast, and seeks no reminder, and fails to remember. He is old, and he will die soon enough. The remainder of the old guard, both those near as old as he of Hrafn's time and the young and vital who took after him, have thoroughly thrown in with Ormr, while his flaggelants and their converts are falling to attrition from disease and self-wounding and exposure and more. With a maiden of Falkreach, daughter of their Chief, Ormr had fallen in love, both walking the paths of the lime tree copse. He would be wed, and she would be with child, and Sindri, a ruined man with an evil mind, would assuredly be forced to step down, and the entire farce of the New Light cast out. He, in so few words, was doombound. The words of Stag-Horns echoed in his mind; 'you will go in disgrace, and his fate will be yours, in a different way.' The bad king was beset by visions every night, and every day, whispering and babbling. The Light spoke to him, and it told him that his only hope was to extinguish his line; to become a kinslayer. He would rise from his grave as a god-king of the Lindings and the north-men, and the rest of the peoples of the world would be his inheritance. Perhaps the product of his broken mind, perhaps an illusion set in place by the mad prophet Kaganovich. His choice was singular.
In the blooming time of the dawn of Spring, when the snow grows thin, and the green fruit grows, and all things flower, Ormr, son of Sindri, and Dagheiðr, daughter of BaþufriþuR, stood beneath the First Tree at the heart of the royal copse, said to be the ancient progenitor of all lime trees. There they were to be wed, beneath all the gods and before all the good men of Lindlund and Falkreach. Then might they have ascended to the throne of Lindlund to set right what has gone wrong, and bear the Good Son to rule after them, but fate is cruel. The Bad King appeared in the midst of all in sparking smoke and foul smell, preaching evil things and death upon all attending. And the flaggelants appeared in the rear and all around, with arms in hand and bleeding scrawl upon butchered skin. And many did die in that day, for all had bound their sword into scabbard with knotted loops of tight thread, in deference to peace and the groom- who solely did not bind his sword- that they could not rise to their defense quickly enough. In an instant, Sindri slashed Dagheiðr below the ribs, and struck her down, and cleaved the heart-breast of his own son wide, but not deep, and he was made to bleed, but not die. In foul smoke, he manifested again amongst the attendants, and joined his foul host.
But Ormr was not a weak man, nor a fearful one, and flew into a rage of mourning. He held his bride as she died, each speaking their vows to become as husband and wife, and laid her to rest against the First Tree, then struck down three flagellants in the drawing of his sword. And BaþufriþuR cursed him, and his name, for he had allowed his only daughter to die, even as they came together in the defense of those still living to slaughter manyscore of evil men. Kaganovich fled, and Sindri disappeared. BaþufriþuR called to arms all the fighting men of Falkreach, first those amongst him, and soon, all his banners, and laid siege to Castle Lind with such haste as to leave his daughter where she lay. Ormr grieved a while longer for his lost love, before setting to pursue his father and slay him, no matter how grievous the punishment on the kinslayer. But in that moment, Stag-Horns appeared again, and stopped him where he stood. 'Rash action will malign your fate,' he warned, 'so you must follow me now, to the secret places of your old blood.' And had any other man said such in that time, Ormr would have struck him down without mercy, and without remorse, such was his grieving. But he knew Stag-Horns was wise, and followed him through the deep woods, to a secret place only he and the Wyrmkin now knew.
In the shadow of Castle Lind, they came upon a sheer rock face, too high to climb or to fall from, thus left ungarded by the Falkreach men. Ormr, even wounded, was angered and at a loss, and the bolster of Soma only made his passions rise higher. But Stag-Horns was wise, and touching the stone, revealed it as a secret door, carved with the likeness of the Wyrm and opening only to the old blood. Ormr took the blood of his breast, and let the stone taste of it, and it opened to a passage without light. Stag-Horns, still wise, let unseen sconces taste of the blue flame, and their way was lit. So they plunged into the forgotten reaches of Castle Lind, that even Ormr had not known until now, and came to a hollow beneath the castle, carved into the very hills it was seated on. The true seat of the ancient Linding kings, carved from a great rough of quartz, and seated in it was a suit of armor finer than any Ormr had seen before, not mail, but great scales and plates of darkened metal, and in its lap was an implement of lore nearly forgotten, the Wyrmhammer. 'You are no longer Ormr Sindrison, but œðikollr the Wildman, first to uptake this weapon, first to walk the Wyrm's spine, and you will remain he until the right signs appear,' spake Stag-Horns. And though Ormr was hesitant for but a moment, the appearance of Kaganovich in the far door did away with all doubt. Threatening all manner of tortures, dispensing with all pretense of his false-faith and casting spells of an evil light, he was silenced first with the strike of the fist, and then with a puff of dry-snow from Stag-Horn's pouch, falling into deep sleep.
When Ormr emerged from the deep place again, he had taken the new name, and the new face, and drug the half-corpse of the exploiter of his father's corruption behind. He and Stag-Horns returned to the grove, where Dagheiðr still lay, embraced gently by the snow and the branch, but not touched. And with the hammer of the Wyrm and the great iron stake, they crucified Kaganovich against the First Tree, still living, by leg, and hand, and heart. And he woke, and screamed, and preached blasphemies, confessing their falsehood, and foretold damnation and ruin on all houses, and the return of a great dragon. When he would not cease, he was silenced with a final nail between his lips. Some of the fighting men of Falkreach were attracted to the clamour, and seeing the strange figures standing over the body of their chief's daughter, they launched into the attack. Once-Sindrison and the shaman of old fled, disappearing into the thickets, losing their pursuers. When the fighting men returned, they found Kaganovich was still alive. The first nail they pulled from his mouth, he screamed his blasphemies again, and his anguish; the second from his heart, and then he died in a final gush of blood. And though the maiden had died weeping, and though she was beneath the bleeding prophet, the fighting-men swore that her lips had curved into a tranquil smile, and neither tear, nor snow, nor blood stained her.
From then on, Ormr Sindrison was no longer. He fully embraced the personae of œðikollr, and determined himself to one day return to his home and oust his father, or else his memory, to clear the name of his blood in vengeance for his lady-love, to whom he vowed chastity unto death. So he set out as a free hirdman, occasionally guided by the stag-horned shaman, and turned his eyes away from Lindlund, though not his ears. The siege was successful, and castle Lind stormed, for the fighting-men still loyal to Sindri were few, rendering its high perch, its walls and its keep all but useless. The Lindings were left on their own, forming a council regency of thanes and shamans once the men of Falkreach had gone home, for now satisfied with the killing of Sindri's loyalists, though the bad king himself had disappeared. A grudge declared against Sindri and his line, but œðikollr went unhunted. And with the end of the brief Cainite War, and its resultant disarray, there was no end of work for a hirdman. œðikollr drifted from retinue to retinue, solving disputes in law with word or hammer, slaying monsters, even spirit-walking and spirit-talking in the absence of a shaman proper. He made his living, and earned his scars, and as Ormr was forgotten, œðikollr gained a small fair fame. Few knew the relevant lore outside of Lindlund, and the Lindings were ill inclined to share such with outsiders in their present hardships, but a few truthful rumors did make their way into circulation. And amongst those, many others, substantially more far-fetched. Giving no regard to this talk, œðikollr watched for the signs. Patiently and ever-after.
For fifteen years, œðikollr continued in this path. And for fifteen years, he watched the signs, awaiting their culmination. And after fifteen years, a dread sign appeared. In his dreams, the stars were snuffed out, blacker than the night sky itself. And they had begun to bleed, a tarry darkness consuming all beneath in a torrent of hateful bile. The world devoured. It did not take long for him to understand. In the service of Finnólfr the Watchful, his duty was to serve on the front line in besieging a den of outlaws. Cut-throats, thieves, murderers, kinslayers all, they had established themselves in an old shrine in the mountainside near Boulder Town, in great disrepair, and set to exploiting the local populace. There they made their final stand, cowering behind wall and boarded window, doors barred in delay of the inevitable. A mad rider, one of the outlaw's number, rode on horseback past Finnólfr's lines and over the six-foot wall, a grevious wound sticking in his side and his horse physically malaise-ridden. Nothing was made of this, save the odd joke of rats and their sinking ships. In the hour following, the warrior-band was prepared to scale the squat shrine walls and storm it, but had not the chance, for the outlaws abandoned their fortifications in a final sally. Each one frothing mad, biting his shield and screaming nonsense, bleeding blackblood. The fight was bloody and hard, but œðikollr felled many of their number, and the band of Finnólfr was victorious. The shamans and the god-talkers were wary of whatever had struck these outlaws, and though heeded in their warnings of dread and evil magic at work, spirits went undampened. Only so much of the black-blooded men had traveled south in these weeks.
It was only in the following hour that it became clear that this magic was a contagious affair as a number of the warband's fighting men were driven to the same insanity, crying black, flesh growing sick with pustule and filth, strength to match their rage granted by the sickness. These men, too, were put down, and great care was taken to avoid the evil blood. Unease set in, and a short time of grieving, but this would not be the end of their woes. œðikollr was sure of this. And surely enough, all soon went wrong. Dead-men came, beset the camp and waged war for slaughter's sake alone, all that is human in them long gone. Again the dead-men were beaten back, and a few more men of the band infected. They resolved to throw themselves into the source before their minds were lost, and disappeared into the snow, their names remembered forever after. Refugees were next to come, fleeing from the onset of this plague, telling of death and ruin for any who remain. They were without protection, doomed on the road were they to continue onwards. Finnólfr, a man of the Law to his innermost heart, refused to abandon them, and so molded his band 'round those in retreat. Each infected would take up the doomseeker's vow, and rush headlong northward to delay the infected. Every refugee and every fighting-man whom they came across would join, and travel south. One of the largest exoduses had thus formed, and œðikollr distinguished himself in both the killing of dead-men, and the length of his service, being one of only so many who had survived this retreat from the north, only a short ways ahead of the forward elements of the corpse-eater host at any time.
After a month of furious marching, Finnólfr and his charges reached the town of the Cross Roads, many hoping to escape west, or south. Finnólfr himself resolved to rest a while, then pledge his fighting men- whoever would stay- to any banner whom would take him to fight the black-bloods. œðikollr was not amongst them, for though he bore no infection, he had taken the doomseeker's vow; to go north and kill the plague, or die in the attempt. All asked why; the fighting-men thought him mad, and the common men paid their respects for the dead. Yet he could give no reasons, for he knew them not yet himself. It was mad to think that his father might have survived all these years, and once more through the onset of plague, but the possibility gripped him, tore at him. He needed to be sure. He sat in the shadow of an old runestone in the hills overlooking the city, waiting only a short time before he would set out. Stag-Horns had left him a long time ago, and the barbarian knew not his fate; perhaps he was still alive by his cunning, far in the north, but he could offer no counsel. He waited, once more, for the signs, that he may know the way of things, and he did so alone. For three days and three nights he was still as the stone he sat beneath, eating not of bread and drinking not of horn, living only on the Soma. And finally, his sign came, in the form of a peculiar sorcerer of a southron land...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 【Skills and Abilities】 The foremost skills Ormr possesses lie in war. Strong in arms and will, his hammer fells men and blackbloods alike with shocking ease. Many years wielding said weapon exclusively has left his skill in other weapons rusted, but not dulled; fierceness compensates for the techniques he has unlearned.
His years as a retinue-drifting hirdman, additionally, have left him with an understanding of a fair number of northron dialects and some of the terminology peculiar to them, making him potentially useful in interprative & cultural minutae.
Beside words, he is versed well enough in the correct common courtesies and hospitalities of the more established tribes, and some of the more nomadic, adding to this utility.
He is more than a little taken to use of narcotics for mystical purposes, and would make an able botanical assistant, particularly but not exclusively with fungi.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 【Weapons/Tools and Magic】 Weapons/Tools The weapon of Ormr's heritage and the one which he has come to some level of mastery of is the Wyrmhammer. Supposedly forged from a fallen star and as old as the Lindings, it is an exceedingly heavy, ornate polehammer, nearly as long as a man is tall. One head is blunt-convex and capable of pulping a man or caving a breastplate in a blow, the other an armor-piercing spike, cruel and claw-shaped, dully bladed, such to punch through armor and flesh. Originally an implement meant to ring the colossal Wyrmcall Gong of Castle Linden, it is vexing to those aware of it amongst both musical scholars and smiths, as hammer and gong alike should be too hard to strike without cracking. Yet they have persisted, largely unmarred.
In a pinch, his hereditary armor's fists are more than sufficiently deadly, both thanks to his frame and the sturdy construction & weight of the gauntlets, which break bones, pound flesh and pop eyes with great efficiency.
Wherever Ormr goes, he always has a bag on his belt filled to bursting with fungi. A great number of these are red-capped hallucinogens- used to enter a berserking state- there are also psilocybins for astral projection, and purely culinary varieties.
Magical Spells Ormr, despite his inclinations towards hallucinogenic shaman's craft, knows nothing of magic in the proper sense.
Ey. I've been following this along with Cap'n, haven't had the free moment to post my interest, though. He promised to throw in for Lands of Roa- RIP- and I likewise promised to throw in here. Refurbishing an old northron concept for a big bruiser type. I should have it posted soon for your perusal.
I'm interested to hear the rationale, Kaiser! They seem like, barring certain circumstances, that they'd be pretty emphatically opposed. One preserves Roa, the other is interested in bringing about its transcendence. I imagine you have your reasons for saying so, though. PM me or summat, ay?
"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)
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.
Personality
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.
Powers
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.
Magic Items
The World that Was
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.
Mortality
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 the great god-king of the barbarian hunters Corcanocht 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.
Nechushstan, Land of the Serpent's Fall
Terrain
"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!"
Wildlife
(Combination between core continental African, east Indian and Levantine species, focus on 'exotic' fauna)
Species
(Large serpents slithering, walking or flying; Unconventional or original species should be followed by a description/picture.
Culture
(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)
New iteration of the sheet is done. Sparse time for working has left changes minimal, along with continued talking over how much nature really needs to be changed. Mostly formatting changes; addition of pocket dimension; bullets on the country. Apologies for not posting more often publicly, I just haven't had the chance to do more than pop in and read. Mostly just want to make it readable and fill everything out on a base level before I reengineer things, I feel like any greater level of detail will require modifying the OP template formatting to avoid broadly-defining sections getting too bloated.
-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.
Ophion of the Stars
"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)
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.
Personality
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.
Powers
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.
Magic Items
The World that Was
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.
Mortality
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.
Nechushstan, Land of the Serpent's Fall
Terrain
"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!"
Wildlife
(Combination between core continental African, east Indian and Levantine species, focus on 'exotic' fauna)
Species
(Large serpents slithering, walking or flying; Unconventional or original species should be followed by a description/picture.
Culture
(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)
The liberation shtick comes from Ophion's hodgepodging out of gnostic Lucifer and YHWH. As far as he says, his notion is one of conquest of the malign and necessary benevolent dictatorship, bringing the world out from its ruination and tyranny and the need for such extreme methods, as well as liberation from the present paradigms that plague mortals themselves; ignorance and death and so on, eventually the world itself. Liberation from poor rulership and from what ails you, and the world that binds.
Think akin to Achaemenid Persia and its obsession with decentralized vassal kingdoms and the Zoroastrian scruples against slavery, especially in their assault against Sparta. How much of that is real portfolio material and how much is (not necessarily empty) rhetoric I'm not sure about, though. If it's too fat a set, I might throw the powerset-unimportant items like Liberation, Lordship and maybe Wonders under 'claimed,' similar to how he self-styles himself as Šâhanšâh, yet is not regarded as such. He may proclaim to have such a portfolio, and may act as if he does often, even to the point it appears and/or is effectively legitimate, but does not have the actual domain powers from said items, not being of the stature to have them properly. We'll see!
I think we'll both fit in the south just fine. I can nestle in to your right, and maybe creep a little around the coast to that squared-off portion south of Lum.
The work-in-progress submission. Jackal and I have got a good idea of where things are going. Rhymer, I've a passing reference to a dead servant having been the progenitor of the Widower Vipers that dwell in Indra Indris in reference to a myth-in-progress Cap'n and I are setting up; if that's not cool with you, I'll edit that out. Past and present size of his primary manifestation and power level/scale are subject to change, largely cutting down, and the vague, somewhat chaotic descriptions of personality, demesne, and snippets of interpersonal history will be reorganized and filled out. I'll fiddle with it more in a little bit, after a short break. Hope to have a pleasant time worldbuilding with you all.
For my map location, I'd like the demesne to be southeast of Indra Indris and southwest of Lum. Sort of center-continent, all the better for self-declaration as the axis of the world. Near-east terrain, very fertile lands combined with dryer spans. Think Anatolia, the Levant and the Fertile Crescent before they gave way near totally to desert and waste.
"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)
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.
Personality
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.
Powers
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.
Magic Items
Mortality
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.
Nechushstan, Land of the Serpent's Fall
Terrain
Wildlife
Species
Unconventional or original species should be followed by a description/picture.
Culture
The finer details of the nature of your nations inhabitants.
