Snake Tail with Appendages

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The Snake Tail With Appendages
FNORD.png
Origin Nowhere
Titles The Snake Tail With Appendages
The Wrong-Serpent
The Feckless Opener
Names 'Alexander'
Aspects Knock Lantern
Date of arrival c. 960 .C.E.
Owner(s) SRN

The Snake Tail With Appendages (The Feckless Opener, The Wrong-Serpent) is an Hour, created by SRN. It a God-From-Nowhere. Its aspects are Knock and Lantern.

Appearance

How would one describe something like this? A creature almost designed to not be described. "A jerk," the Anaconda would describe, and some, may would agree. It shifts and twists and seems almost painful to watch, but sometimes it settles into a form like a severed snake tail, dripping blood, with several long black sinuous limbs growing from its form.

Principles

Snakes are the quintessential creature of Knock. The Tail… is more. There are many aspects to the Knock, the quiet slipping in in the middle of the night, the persuasion of a guardsman to open the door… Or, as the Tail represents, the cackling, insane smashing of the door and grinding it into pieces. Knock and Lantern are the main aspects of this Hour, the Hour of terrible, impossible openings, both in the mind and in the world. The shattering of all constraints are its domain, doors, walls, roofs, even floors. Ideas, weapons, schemes… Reality itself. This Hour was born from Nothing, and reality, to it, is a hissing pain. To the Tail, to kick down doors and break constraints is to break the constraint of reality. After all, is what happened not just a constraint upon what might have happened? Is what could never have happened just another door to be kicked down? To break all doors is the desire of this Hour, all doors, no matter what hides behind it. Doors of the mind, as horrible truths tear through the minds of those who encounter it, and doors of the world, as reality itself warps and twists and rends. There are many gods of Knock, and this is not one you wish to invoke but in the direst, direst circumstances… or if you are the most ambitious, nay, mad of cultists.

Fansus Location

The Anterior Opening: The Tail created the Anterior Opening, which one would not find this were they not looking. Nothing... Well, little lies in this corner of the Mansus, far away from the light of the Glory as it is possible to be. It is said that the Mansus has no walls. So, perhaps this is no-opening. Perhaps it is an opening anyway. But what is undeniable that if you descend to the darkest depths of the Mansus, there will be something. Perhaps it’s an opening, perhaps it’s a not-opening. The ambiguity, after all, is but another of the openings the Tail so loves. Step out of it and breathe the dark, cold air of Nowhere, the first home of the Tail. It is the one safe exit and entrance to Nowhere, for every now and then, the Tail desires a brief vacation back to its home. Perhaps, oh the jest, perhaps it might even be safe for you.

  • Last night, I stumbled upon the Anterior Opening, that wound in the Mansus sacred to the Wrong-Serpent. Three serpents were there that night. The Anaconda, full of conviction, the head of the ouroboros striking at its tail; The Wrong-Serpent, jeering and laughing at the maw that seeks to constrain it; The Bright-Delver, her coils wrapped around her siblings, the peacekeeper for the eternal conflict. She spoke to them, and while I do not remember the words, her voice was a chiming melody that even now stirs my blood.
    • Provides Imminence
  • I was a fool last night. I stumbled closer and ever-closer to the Opening and when my feet fell stepped into Nowhere I thought I was dead. But the Tail was there, and from it’s laugh, its awful, horrendous laugh, I could tell it was amused by me. “Not yet,” it laughed, “May you open this Door later, but not yet, you fool.” It sent something to guide me out and it remains with me still. Maybe it will obey me.
    • Provides A Visitor from Nowhere, but with a 20s only timer.

The Highest Clearing: FNORD

  • Now, now, you stumble through the wood. Lashing branches and weeds drag across the skin of your dreams. Where are you going? Why do you go this way? Do you even know? But now, here you are. The Wood constrained, did it not? All the suffocating trees. But now, a clearing... A clearing. Unlike anything you have ever seen before. It pulses with an elder, ancient light. Breathe, and taste nothing of the Wood. This place is opened, with permanence. If even the Wood can be cleared, opened.... What cannot? You wake, your eyes open, as if they had always been open.
    • Provides Knock-Influence
  • I stumbled through the Wood blindly till I found an especial place. Special, for it was not of the wood. A clearing, bound by no trees. I breathed in the air and tasted not a hint of the leafy chlorophyll. One would not think the Tail brings peace, yet it was peaceful that night as I lay on the floor of the field and stared upwards at the light of the Glory, so dim down here.
    • Provides Contentment

Worship

Servants

'Alexander'

Knock12 Lantern12

Temptations: Now where did you hear of this? The rite, the details themselves, hurt your mind to think. You could summon an awful wrongness into the world, another opening of reality. You will need to open all the doors. The windows, walls, ceiling, floor and roof, too. Then lay a little Glory to tempt it in and stand very far back (Knock20, to shatter everything, and (Lantern6, for he seeks the truths that when known, burn

Welcoming Words: It… it is human. Then again… It is not. Light bounces off it in impossible, awful ways and its smile, its dreadful, dreadful smile… It promises me secrets, secrets for free! All I have to do is hear them… Description: “Hello. Would you like to listen to my stories?” Do not. Do not…

Special Things Slotting him into Speak and feeding it reason: “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?” Spits out 1 high level lore, and 3 dread. Does this continuously until you slot in another reason to stop it. Does not return the Reason "Shut it up, quickly. The needles will suffice." Slotting him into Speak and feeding it a High-level location “A curious place. Words for words, secrets for secrets, places for places.” Your head spins, your ears bleed. You do not remember what you told him, but you remember what he told you, where to go.

A Visitor from Nowhere

Winter8 Knock8

Temptations: The Tail may be an Hour of the Mansus but it frequents its true home in Nowhere. Its truest servants lurk there, outside the walls of the House without Walls. Perhaps I can call it here with a taste of the Glory it is so frequently denied, and outmaster it with greater Winter. (Lantern2, for a taste of Glory, and (Winter8, to conquer it

Welcoming Words: Creatures from Nowhere do not easily suffer the constraints of the Mansus, let alone the pain of a History. You’re not quite sure what you’re seeing. It comes in with a hiss of warm ice and crisp dark air.

Description: It seems to be doing something like smiling. And smiling. And smiling. Somewhere new to open? New things to visit? It'd be delighted...

Unravellers

After the Engine betrayed it, the Tail did not take such a thing lightly. When the war ended, it asked its erstwhile allies for only one thing. The corpses and wrecks of the destroyed Names and machines of the Engine, strewn across the carcass of the Fifth History. With its spoils, it experimented and poked the machines, attempting to restore some sort of life to them, to perhaps create a Nowhere-tainted twisted mirror to the Engine. It did not succeed. Not completely. But it made these. Nowhere-corrupted machines, not an Hour, but monstrous creatures restored to a facsimile of their former function. Not great automata bristling with glowing energy like the Engine's children, but shattered cogs and gears and ruined pistons and scraps of machinery twisting and writhing in a ghost of function, but blessed with an almost terrifying determination and the ability to with just a handful of them, assemble from nearly anything thousands and thousands more. They nibble away at the structure of the Mansus, their exponential growth only impeded by the efforts of many Hours, and at the Engine's innards, seeking to usurp its place. Hours slay them delicately. Too many and the Engine's attentions will be turned away from preserving itself from the Unravellers, too few and the Mansus may collapse...


Cults

Marks

Ascension: FNORD As I followed the un-darkness of the Tail and the shattered doors it left in its wake, a little of its savage, senseless opening lingered in me. I cannot forget now, I cannot refuse to acknowledge any awful truth, and one truth I acknowledge: The first mark is what I have known, the second what I have done. The Third is what I am within.

Ascension: FNORD It lies deeper now, but the strange nature of the Tail means that there is but more to open, and so it shines darker. I am alien to look at now. My limbs bend in all the wrong directions and my voice echoes and resounds in all the wrong ways. The fourth mark is what I am without.

Ascension: FNORD They think I am human. A long time ago, they might have been right, and in fact they quite, still are. Yet that really doesn’t matter, does it? Your flesh is chitinous yet silken, your heart pumps tungsten and wine, your limbs are tentacles and sabres, your mind ripples like that of an ocean. The fifth mark is what I am not.

Ascension: FNORD It fills my mind now, things I never experienced, never could have experienced, never knew, never could have known. Some are dark secrets, some are rank nonsense, to the Hour of heedless openings, they are the same. The Sixth Mark is what I was not

Ascension: FNORD I stand now at the precipice. All things are possible, yet not everything will happen. This is the Tail’s anathema, the closing of possibilities, the end of potential, the sealing of what could be. Not yet anyway. But it could be. The possibility that is all the possibilities burns in you. The Seventh Mark sears me. It is what I will never be

Ascension: FNORD It is an opening like no other. It is me, now. I do not pass through a door to go Nowhere for I am an opening. The Tail has made me something that could never be, that in many possibilities is better than what I was. In many futures I will help the Tail make everything that could be, be. But many, in no futures, means all...


Items

Tools and Ingredients

  • Shatter-Powder
    • A small pinch of white, fine powder that when simply breathed on, spontaneously burns, shattering, opening, searing, and devouring all in the little blaze's way and opening all that should not be. Knock 6
  • The Mirror of Impossibility
    • A small hand-mirror that when looked into, shows that which should not be understood, not truths, not truths, but possibilities and probabilities, things which may never be and cannot be. Knock 8, Lantern 8
  • Madman’s Candle
    • Burn it. It will give off no flame, but it will speak. It will tell you what you do not wish to know. What you should not know. What you cannot know. When it bubbles into ash, blink, and find again a whole candle. Lantern 10, Knock 2
  • Enlightenment-Venom
    • It is said that nobody can exist in the conditions of absolute sanity. This, a fluid said to drip from the very severed-edge of the Tail itself, brings such. There is no succor, no protection, no barrier between one who consumes this and the most awful truths.
  • Melange of Glory
    • 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 Nowhere.

Books

  • The Opening of the Shattered Gate
    • Chinese, giving high-tier Knock lore and the Rite of the Doubly-Broken Door.
    • Whoever wrote this... Whatever wrote this, it did not use ink. The ink hurts to touch and burns to see. It describes a rite that might be used to break the Mansus's boundaries. The Mansus, it is said, has no walls, but it still is bound. Perhaps this might open it once and for all, to whatever lies beyond. Or perhaps it is a fever dream of a madman. What is undeniable, is that it it haunts your dreams and nightmares, opening doors in the mind that should be closed
  • A Lie
    • Gives high-tier Lantern lore and high-tier Secret Histories lore that has a 50/50 chance of producing nothing or producing a Port Noon Anecdote-level location
    • A bewilderingly entertaining book of lies, lies of all sorts. False Histories, nonexistent Names of fraudulent Hours, countries that could not even begin to be. Of course they have to be lies, don’t they? They contradict everything you know. But… Perhaps…
    • The Soot-Forge, the Sun-of-Blood, the Haruspex, curious names, but not names of any Hours. But you can learn much from what is untrue, as much as from what is true. Perhaps you have a clue now, perhaps it is nothing.
  • Alchemy, a Death to Laws
    • Proto-Sinitic, giving high
    • The mad ramblings of the Scholarch of the Impossible Laboratory, wherein he describes how the arrangement of certain chemistries and invocations could cause what he refers to as a ‘Delightful Wrongness.’
    • “But this, of course, is but a key. Your visitor will still need something to make it use the key…”
  • The Great Vast: Proto-Germanic, giving high-tier Knock lore as well as Fascination. Its reading will devour 1 low level Winter lore. It also reveals the path to the Blackened Grove.
    • The diary of a Vinlandic expedition captain. It begins with triumph as he lands quietly upon the shores of a New World, but slowly descends into reflections upon questions upon what lies beyond the shores, what lies beyond the great wall that are the plains and mountains of the new continent. First with poetry, then with desperation. It ends with resolution, a firm goal to take his people and venture forth, and an incantation he hopes might open the way to parts unknown.


Relationships

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