The Wrong-Serpent

The Wrong-Serpent
"We do not call upon the Wrong-Serpent, who is the Burning Liberty unmaking all that constrains. Yet it comes, yet it comes."
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; The Deep-Venturer; 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, if you are here looking for anything but what you have found, you have made a terrible mistake.

Description

History

In 960 CE, after the disappearance of the Great Serpent, Nowhere stirred and two Hours returned. The Bright-Delver and the Wrong-Serpent emerged from the roiling paradoxical depths of Nowhere. Making their way to the court of the Great Serpent, the Delver was declared heir to its power, while the Wrong-Serpent proclaimed itself her Prime Minister and regent. The Delver was quickly accepted, but suspicion continued to swirl around the Wrong-Serpent until one day, its sibling, the Anaconda discovered its nature as a Hour of Nowhere and confronted it before the entirety of the court. Although retaining the support of the Delver, the Anaconda managed to force the Tail from the court, first with pressure, then when that failed, with a pitched battle across the court which saw the Hour slain.

And saw it return, quickly later, leading a vast host from Nowhere in an invasion against the Mansus to spread Nowhere's influence.

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.

The Wrong-Serpent is, in a way, the truest god of liberty. What should not be opened and what should not be done, what should not be understood, and what should simply not be are its domain, and it is a domain it delights in and freely shares with others. The world distorts around it, as the walls of reality shake and crumble, then rot and cave in. Yet despite appearances, it is neither madness nor chaos. While fluid and energy flow into paths of least resistance, in the paths of greatest, the Wrong-Serpent can most vividly be found. And thus it is also the patron of ambition, especially ambition denied. In the sage penning words that will inevitably be suppressed, in the politician scheming against her nation's constitution, in the biologist performing secret experiments by moonlight, there is the Wrong-Serpent's smile.

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 Abyssonautical Exploration Club

Professor Lucius Vandemeer wrote about the inscriptions on an old Cahokian mound about a colour beyond the colour beyond the light at the edge of dreams. His writings were confiscated by the Suppression Bureau, but not before reaching a wide audience. Expeditions would later be funded in secret to delve deeper into the mounds by those who dreamed too of a colour beyond the colour beyond the light. The Suppression Bureau was never able to trace the funds.

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 who would not be born for 700 years...

Kaivalya

Under the reign of Emperor Wuzong of Tang, the persecution of Buddhists reached new heights. When his soldiers went to the Great Monastery of the Celestial Wheel of the Kaivalya sect, they expected political resistance; the monks there had been seen consorting with the Emperor's Taoist advisors. Only two returned, gibbering about impossible geometries and inhuman monks. The sect was never suppressed, and their monastery is thought to remain to this day, though nobody has seen it since that day.

Mark

1. Temptation: Liberty: The Bureau closed down my research, but why? There is something here, I am more sure of that now than ever. They shall not stop me. It occurs to me that none might ever stop me again.
2. Dedication: Liberty: In the lights at the halls of power cast flickering shadows. There, they deny me. There, smiles the Wrong-Serpent. I have dedicated myself to unmaking all that binds me - no matter what it is.
3. Ascension: Liberty: I gasp, awake, sweating... a broadsword lodged in my chest. Someone has attempted to prevent my ascension. That someone, a servant of another The Anaconda lies dead, strangled before me, as I had dreamed. My flesh no longer constrains me, and I know this to be the Third Mark.
4. Ascension: Liberty: He stood before me, that half-drowned sea-sworn sailor and held a knife and demanded tribute. I felt no fear as he tried to pull the trigger and I felt no remorse as I forced him to not, then not breathe. I could be perfectly rational, cacophonically mad. The mind does not bind me. Here is the Fourth Mark.
5. Ascension: Liberty: They worked so hard. They knew what I was now, what I was becoming. They hunted for my anathema, looked through my past. Any weakness, any disgruntled follower, any mistake. They had studied their The Vizier well, and they found nothing but a parade of traps and death. My past constrains me not, and I know this is the Fifth Mark.
6. Ascension: Liberty: A whisper campaign, agents of the Bureau, assassins and enemies I never made. And the servants of The Rattlesnake I did. They ambushed me, set me ablaze and melted as I felt nothing and radiated only heat. Natural law does not bind me and this is... what have I done? What am I now? No, I have to reverse this!
7. Master of my Fate: What have I become? What have I become? Once I was human, once I shared company with the world. Now what am I? I reject this! Seawater and fire, light and scales. A rite that shall undo what I have become... And this is the final law to break. The law of the Hours, the law of the Long. A great rupture of what is-not, for it is in me and it is me and I am untrammeled. For a brief time, I am Nowhere. All of it. And then there is an ophidian laugh, and I stand before a court beyond comprehension to clamourous applause. Master of my own fate.

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. Except in another time, another age. 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. And sometimes, all three, all four of him.

'Antoine', An Entirely Legitimate Lawyer

Antoine

Do not sign anything he gives you. In fact, do not read anything he gives you. The Wrong-Serpent does not bargain for souls. For mere souls!

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'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!

The Deep-Venturer

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.

Long

Autarchs

The Autarchs are the Long of the Wrong-Serpent. They sought the Wrong-Serpent to be free, and they are. The Autarchs of the Tail rule themselves; no law confines them but what they choose themselves. Even natural law twists and turns oddly in their presence as they bring down effects disproportionate to the force they apply and gravity wavers and flickers when they challenge it. To the eye, they commonly take the form of dancing shadows, crystalizing here and there at their whims, for the light, the like-Glory, is one of the few things that binds them. Alongside, of course, their patron.

Auzahn, First Autarch of the Riven Skies

"This folly! Oh, I shall set you free from this mad path you have set yourself on. I'm really doing you a favour, you know! It's just... Some liberations are more final than others, eh?" [Auzahn will always attack]

Our Enemy's Identity!

Our enemy is Auzahn, the First Autarch of the Riven Skies. Shadows watch and leer at us. Which ones will contain those burning, infernal eyes? Space sits uneasily here. Our work has drawn the attention of Nowhere.

A Direct Assault!

"Ah, reality. It's been a while. I hate it. Let's get this over with, yes? No, no, you don't need to do anything."

A War of Phantoms!

"Here, let me show you the way home... I promise you, you'll adore it. Fall! Fall Nowhere!"

An Immortal's End

That's all it took. That's all it took. Just one knife. Reality cannot be denied, and here we are her enforcers. That little splutter of blood, a laughing cough, a surprisingly human body, no more words.

The Chantry

Following the dissolution of the Deceiver's cabal, the Chantry of Undimmed Splendours fell under the influence of the Wrong-Serpent. Perhaps the most orderly, least unreal of the Tail's beings, the Chantry wages war with incantations drawing upon the power of other Hours, as they did under the Deceiver. Yet now their incantations twist and corrupt that power, changing it into a brilliant, dark extension of Nowhere. With this stolen power and usurped might they bring about the furthering of the Wrong-Serpent's will, that one day, their power may no longer have to twist...

Emanations

Shapes

Most things are one-thing, and thus the Shapes are not that. Shapes are possibilities, clouds of what could-be waiting for something to shape them. In the hands of an Autarchic, they are wickedly sharp sabres, tomes of ancient lore, relics thrumming with power or even servants, strange, unnatural beings carrying out the will of their Shaper.

Felwyrms

The Wrong-Serpent emphasizes the Wrong, and yet it is a Serpent too. Felwyrms are gargantuan, ferocious creatures, serpents like dark obsidian and veined amethyst. While all the Tail's servants may fight, it is solely the Felwyrms issued to wage war. They are few, as the Wrong-Serpent finds direct large-scale confrontation inefficient, yet the colossal, crushing bulk and space-twisting scales of each Felwyrm, each drip of its disintegrating venom is fit to face an army.

Locations

The Mansus

Usurper's Court

In its aspect as the Usurper, as the pretender to the title of Prime Minister of the Scaled Court, the Wrong-Serpent presides yet in exile. Spilling from a gaping breach in the Mansus to Nowhere, the Wrong-Serpent's court is a ever-changing, kaleidoscopic citadel, a maddening parody of the Scaled Court the Usurper pretends to, a maddening parody of the reality it has turned warped and strange. Through this fell court's corridors twisting and turning in horrible ways, through its cavernous halls of mind-bending dimensions the more esoteric servants of the Wront-Serpent swarm and cluster in all their glory. And yet, for all this roiling terror and madness, for one whose mind is inured against such things, it is among the safest places of the Mansus. The Wrong-Serpent is generous with its power as each expression and acknowledgement and welcoming of it is Nowhere's strength. And thus it is here that many a petitioner begging and seeking for the impossible has shuffled, to the mad glory of the Usurper's Court.

The Interstice

Here was where the Wrong-Serpent first began its invasion, here is a horrible promise of what may be if the Wrong-Serpent triumphs. Near the entre of the House, frighteningly close to the strongholds of the Scaled Court is the Interstice, a vast, roiling gap in the House to Nowhere. It is from here that its horrors, both loyal to the Tail and not, gather. And it is here from which madness spills, warping and changing the House beyond to malleable, lawless demi-reality. Yet the true menace of this horror is not how the wound bleeds, but that it grows green and gangrenous, and expands and gapes yet more...

The Histories

Mount Qingcheng

Once, the Taoist sage Wu Engxiang ventured to the birthplace of his faith to seek the wisdom of an immortal that never existed until his arrival. On a peak shrouded in misty frost distinctly off all permitted paths, it is said that you may trace his steps and find everything that he found. It is also said that the physical challenges will be the least of your problems.

San Asmodai

Some doctrines of the Suppression Bureau, it is said, descends from the Inquisition. The abandoned town of San Asmodai is testament to that. Once, a society of theologians and astronomers and philosophers gathered to discuss the nature of God and argue their sects and heresies. It was decades later that the Inquisition began to investigate the incident. They started at the town of San Asmodai, and whatever they found there was enough to convince them to order it levelled from afar. Yet things of the Mansus are durable; what of things utterly and absolutely alien to the Mansus?

The Great Ziggurat of Tenehuaian

The Aztec Emperor Tenehuaian I defied tradition, defied the sacrifices to the sun to stave of armageddon. Armageddon did not arrive, but something else did. Navigate the ziggurat's twisting chambers, subdue its fell guardians and we may discover what happened by the Emperor's funeral-masked corpse.

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

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