The Wrong-Serpent

The Wrong-Serpent
Origin	Nowhere
Titles	The Snake Tail With Appendages The Breaking-Key Usurper
Names	'Alexander', an Arc of Possibility; 'Al-Avaz', Obviously Glory Personified; 'Calliope', Which is not her Name; 'de Gomara', a Voyager-Twice; an Abyssonaut, who Ventured too Deep; Ioannes, an unfortunate librarian
Aspects
Date of arrival	c. 960 .C.E.
Owner(s)	SRN

Here is the Wrong-Serpent. It is an Hour by SRN. It is the Hour of doors that should not be opened, things that should not be known, and horrors that should never have been. If you are here looking for truth or power or sensation, you have made a terrible mistake.

Description

History

FNORD

Appearance

How would one describe this? To take a single form is anathema to it, for it is what it should do. It is all shifting darkness that you can smell, fangs that sing and drip, scales that ripple like silk. Sometimes, however, it settles into the form that sings the worst implications; a great, iridescent Taipan all impossible limbs and smiling fangs and worst - a Tail that appears awfully like that of a serpent that long-ago, left the House.

Principles

Snakes are the quintessential creature of Knock. The Wrong-Serpent is more. There are many aspects to the Knock. There is the sly thief quietly slipping in in the middle of the night. There is the charlatan persuading of a guardsman to open the door. And there is the madman, cackling as he smashes wards and gates to gaze upon a library full of horrors that should never be known. In every unsubtle breaking of a door, in every precept of law violated, in every sentry felled there lies the Wrong-Serpent. There lies the Breaking Key.

Worship

Cult

There are many gods of Knock; the Wrong-Serpent is not one anyone but the most insane... or ambitious would ever worship. Yet here and there, those madmen and princes gather; never in great numbers, never in hierarchical, properly organized society to plot the shattering of every door to dominion.

The Society of the Saint of Cupertino

Among certain reclusive monastic sects, the Society of the Saint of Cupertino flourished. Focused on the translation and interpretation of ancient texts, they were declared heretical by the Papacy after credible reports of strange supernatural occurrences surrounding them and thought suppressed with, oddly, the assistance of societies of pagans and assassins. It was only in the 1900's that historians began to wonder how a medieval sect sprung up around a saint that would not be born for 700 years...

Mark

1. Temptation: Liberty: The Bureau closed down my research. They shall not stop me. I must know, and they shall forbid me nothing. That strange colour in my dreams, something is promising there.
2. Dedication: Liberty: FNORD
3. Ascension: Liberty: FNORD
4. Ascension: Liberty?: FNORD
5. Ascension: ASCENSION: FNORD
6. Ascension: ASCENSION: FNORD
7. Ending: FNORD

Servants

Names

'de Gomara', a Voyager-Twice

The Twice-Voyager

Once he was the most loyal servant of a golden king who conquered an empire, once he betrayed that king. None of that, of course, ever happened, but it happened in a different somewhen.

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Once upon a time, an explorer set forth with Cortez to conquer a distant land. He made a deal with a terror in his dreams and helped his leader to victory. But on the precipice of a fell ascension, Cortez hesitated, and the explorer betrayed him. He walked Nowhere, into the embrace of the Wrong-Serpent, and the he who did not do that did it too. None of this happened, of course. But the one calling himself the Twice-Voyager skips through time as a small child does through space, and he is there and was there and will be there. Both of him.

'Calliope', Which is not her Name

Calliope, Nameless

Who is this person? Why is she in your home? And yet you have already forgotten her and that massive golden greatsword. Forgotten who?

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They say that there was a Name of the Great Serpent who made many enemies; an assassin or warrior of the Snake. When her master disappeared, they say that those enemies took their opportunity and hunted her, but she evaded them all one by one. Still they persevered and still they continued. Until one day, as she burned down a workshop of the Maker she had been hiding in to cover her tracks, she met a different master, but the same master. That being told her that it could help her. It could make it so that she could never be properly remembered, except by it and its associates. Her enemies would forget what she truly was. Their minds would fill with misinformation and misconceptions, and she could wreak her horrible, horrible vengeance. All it desired was her services. Gleefully, she accepted, and so Calliope, the Nameless, was born.

But that of course, is just a possible tale. Probably, it is a lie. Probably, Calliope is not even really her name. She cannot be recorded; words viscerally refused to describe her, and she cannot be remembered; memories rearrange and reshape themselves if they relate to her. Only the Tail knows now. She slays as she did as a Name of the Great Serpent, simply with rapier and poison. Probably. But what is almost certain is that many enemies of the Tail have been slain in broad daylight, butchered horribly, while bystanders squabble and dispute over what happened with almost no agreement...

'Al-Avaz', Obviously Glory Personified

'Al-Avaz'

The light is wrong. The light is wrong. The facsimile of an elderly man the light is coming from looks at you impatiently.Heart gives you no comfort.

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Law and Glory is poison to the Wrong-Serpent, and it is wise enough to practice Mithridatism, at least in one of its servants. Al-Avaz was once a scholar in Baghdad's golden age who dreamed of the Glory, and dreamed too hard. He did not ascend in service of an Hour, but to the Glory, and immediately regretted that as the law seared him and tore him apart. But the Tail took notice, and sacrificed a hundred Visitors to reach into the heart of the Glory, the heart of Anathema and drag him out. With Nowhere, it rebuilt the scholar's form, Glory and Nowhere intermixed within itself. When he returned to consciousness, he was different. Both law and unlaw lived and churned within him, and expressed itself in him.

Now, Al-Avaz is one of the least strange Names of the Tail. He too is a being of Law, but of a different Law. This law permits no opposition against the Tail. He can nullify and deaden aspects, invocations become nothing than hollow words when said against the Tail's interests, artifacts nothing more than their physical force. Though Tail despises any law, it somewhat happily tolerates this, one of its most interesting powers, but uses him sparingly. His manifestation represents the utmost interest of the Wrong-Serpent

'Alexander', an Arc of Possibility

'Alexander'

He invites you to listen to his stories! He asks how he can help, and if there is any way, it is already done! He is all the places he could be but should not be.

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Enact a Half-Remembered Rite to Something Possible

Now, where did you hear about this? It is very much possible that you could have, but where? You could summon an aweful wrongness into the world. Open everything, every door and every gate within and without. Drop a little scrap of glorious light to tempt it. Then wait, and stand far away...

He could have been here and thus he always was! He smiles a smile that is all wrong and stretches with limbs that are just slightly wrong. "Hello! I am Alexander! I am a human." The thing pauses briefly as the sound like knives ripples through the air and light bounces off that dreadful, awful smile wrong. And it is elsewhere and behind you and it always could have been. "Would you like to hear my stories?"

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Talk to Alexander

“Good, good, now… Listen closely…” His voice is sharp like knives and bright as silver and already your mind burns. What have you done, what have you done!?

And he speaks of a world inhabited by giants and a great Red Bird and he speaks of a Forge of Days and he speaks of everything and all the awful thing and shut it up shut it up where are the needles!

A Venturer, Deep

The Deep-Venturer

Space is broken around it. It is a place and a person and all the places.

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The Deep-Venturer was probably once a human, and that is a lie, but it was not. Once a human delved to deep, too hungrily, and was erased in the past and in the future and a scrap of Nowhere returned. The Deep-Venturer is space, broken. It is a place, and it could be any place and he steps forth, envelops, and consumes someone as it is suddenly the heart of the sun.

Locations

The Mansus

Not a Gate

FNORD

The Histories

Mount Qingcheng

FNORD

Items

Tools

• A Skeleton Key
  • Aspects: 15
  • Description: This is a key like a knife is medicine, like acid is paint.

• Kaleidoscopic Spyglass
  • Aspects: 10
  • Description: Look. You will see what you want to find. You will have to pick it out from the everything.

Ingredients

• Enlightenment-Venom
  • Aspects: 15
  • Description: It is said that nobody can exist in the conditions of absolute sanity. This, a fluid said to drip from the very fangs of the Tail itself, brings such. There is no succor, no protection, no barrier between one who consumes this and the most awful truths.
• A Melange of Glory
  • Aspects: 1010
  • Description: A mix of the light of the Glory with something from Nowhere. It has curdled mysterious and sour but no less bright, no less merciless. Don’t look at it for too long. It’s a question whether you will first go blind from the light or mad from the abyss.

Influences

• A Place in the Sun
  • Aspect: 10
  • Description: A light like something you should never be able to survive. That you do is a sacrament of some sort.

• Deliverance
  • Aspect: 10
  • Nothing can constrain you, nothing can be denied you, you are not a snake and yet!

Books

• Crumbling-Dawn Tantra
  • Description: The wry pseudonymous monk Punarmrityu weaves a chant equating the sun to a door with some treasure behind.
  • Start Text: Behind the sun is Samsara, behind the sun is ascension. But the sun is a door and the door has fangs.
  • End Text: And the sun shall crumble and the new age rise! And we shall be liberated from the mortality and achieve Nirvana, greeted by the reborn true dawn!
  • Gives: Knock lore

Rites

• What-Shouldn't
  • Description: This rite won't work. I'll lose this for Nothing! Nothing could possibly come from it!
  • Requires: Any tool, Knock influence, Lantern ingredient.
  • Gives: A Shape

Relationships

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