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Snake Tail with Appendages

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| arrival = c. 960 .C.E.
| owners = 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 [[:Category:Knock|Knock]] and [[:Category:Lantern|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 it. Thus its name. This form, however, is but the average of the bell curve. Rarely, it has appeared as something as even an ordinary ''human'', or something similar to it. It is the Snake-Tail with Appendages. It does not suffer the constraint of common form.
== Principles ==
==== 'Alexander' ====
({{Aspect|Knock|12}} ({{Aspect|Lantern|12}}
**'''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
({{Aspect|Knock|20}}, to shatter everything, and ({{Aspect|Lantern|6}}, 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?”
Your head spins, your ears bleed. You do not remember what you told him, but you remember what he told you, where to go.
Note: Alexander is a probability-curve of a person. It modifies possibility and time, rewriting what he did in the past at a whim.
 
==== Calliope, the Nameless ====
 
{{Aspect|Knock|12}} {{Aspect|Edge|12}}
 
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, Deadener ====
 
{{Aspect|Winter|12}} {{Aspect|Lantern|12}}
 
Law and Glory is poison to the Tail, and the Tail 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. When he manifests, it represents the Tail being very, very invested in an outcome.
 
==== The Deep-Venturer ====
 
{{Aspect|Knock|12}} {{Aspect|Moth|12}}
 
Even more strange in its identity and radical in its goal than the Tail is the Deep-Venturer. Its envoy to Temple Nil, it looks like a human, but is nothing like, being not even physical, but rather just an error in space and time. Its source is a mystery, but the Tail claims that it was once a Name of the Great Serpent who delved far, far too deep into Temple Nil. As a distortion in space, it can twist and pull, making distances appear near infinite or almost nothing, depending on its whim. It is sometimes vast, sometimes tiny. Space is no constraint to this thing.
 
==== A Visitor from Nowhere ====
{{Aspect|Winter|8}} {{Aspect|Knock|8}}
 
'''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.
({{Aspect|Lantern|2}}, for a taste of Glory, and ({{Aspect|Winter|8}}, 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...
 
Note: Tail emanations. Drags people into not-being.
 
==== Unravellers ====
 
{{Aspect|Forge|1}} {{Aspect|Knock|1}}
 
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...
 
====Voyagers and Not-Voyagers====
 
Sometimes someone spurns the attention of normal Hours. Perhaps they have unusual desires. Perhaps they were touched by something strange. Perhaps they understood too much. Sometimes, those people acquire the attention of the Hour that destroys doors, that opens all possibilities, that is the yawning maw of enlightenment. Sometimes, they ascend high enough, sometimes, they stand on a precipice by the Anterior Opening. Sometimes, they step through, shed the constraints of form, drink the power of Nowhere, and become Voyagers. Sometimes, the step back, content upon their status, to serve the Tail in a more mundane manner, not shedding their physical forms and continuing to coexist with reality and do not-voyage. Usually, both happen.
 
===== Not-Voyagers =====
 
{{Aspect|Lantern|8}} {{Aspect|Moth|8}}
 
Most Long of the Tail are Not-Voyagers, the possibility that stepped back from the precipice. They are the least strange of the Tail's servants, usually in possession of proper human form at least upon the surface. The doors they shatter are simply that of psychology. Their minds are as inhuman as any Visitor, simply pressed into a human shape. To hear them talk is to invite madness. Their very presence brings madness and chaos, as law unravels around them. Their power is quite possibly the least controllable of all the Tail's minions, as they have little control over how Law unmakes around it, but that is not to say that these Long are not powerful as well.
 
===== Voyagers =====
 
{{Aspect|Lantern|10}} {{Aspect|Edge|10}}
 
The common Name of the Tail is the Voyager. The possibility that did step into Nowhere. They manifest misty and intangible, having shed all their form, but normally wield a single strange, tangible weapon, crossbows, swords, lances, but also macuahuitl, shuriken, and the like; convention is no limit. They serve as the shock-troopers of the Tail, when it, oh-so-rarely go to war. Although intangible, their lack of form and inability to easily adopt new ones renders them particularly vulnerable to law, requiring much Nowhere to sustain them. Their weapons distort material chemistry and physics, requiring only the minimal amount of force to move and shearing through anything without resistance. Formidable, their fragility renders them rarely seen outside Nowhere.
 
===== Twice-Navigator =====
 
{{Aspect|Lantern|12}} {{Aspect|Edge|12}}
 
First among the Voyagers, the Twice-Navigator is favored of the Tail among the Voyagers. Few enough occultists dedicate themselves towards the Tail. Fewer yet take the plunge and become both Voyagers and Not-Voyagers. Only one both fell from high into Nowhere and walked away, only for the latter possibility to return anyway and also plunge into Nowhere's colourful embrace. Once one of the explorers to venture forth with Cortez, then the first to be seduced by the gods of the new land, the Twice-Navigator now is the strangest and mightiest of the Voyagers. More a torching, burning plasma than a mist, it is not merely the burning flesh of the creature that singles it out, but its dual nature. Every act it does twice, each of the twinned selves of it acting with all vigour.
 
==== The Shattered ====
 
{{Aspect|Heart|6}} {{Aspect|Knock|6}}
 
Sometimes someone spurns the attention of normal Hours. Perhaps they have unusual desires. Perhaps they were touched by something strange. Perhaps they understood too much. Sometimes, those people acquire the attention of the Hour that destroys doors, that opens all possibilities, that is the yawning maw of enlightenment. Sometimes they do not and cast themselves into Nowhere before they are ready. The Shattered never find a possibility where they are sane or coherent again. They endure, perpetual, for they quintessentially are-not, but never again have stability or full existence and thus are quite harmless besides. The Tail keeps a small court of them, it favours these mad fools who sought to kick down doors that they really, really should not have. They serve as little more than meat-shields and gateways for more powerful creatures of the Tail. Individually, they are quite benign, but their presence means that the Tail has taken an interest, and greater beings will follow through it...
 
==== Chantry of Truth ====
 
{{Aspect|Lantern|8}} {{Aspect|Secret Histories|8}}
 
Led by Ioannes, the Chantry of Truth are Long of the Tail that embody its other aspect: That of enlightenment and horrible truths that must anyway be acknowledged. More like adepts and mortals, every part of them, everything they do serves that horrible enlightenment. Their flesh is inked with ancient script and terrible lore, each word, even a request for more tea, is a burning incantation. To merely be in their presence is to know, and sometimes, you do not survive that knowledge.
 
==== Librarians Radiant ====
 
The Glory is enlightenment, but sometimes the Glory is not as it was. The Tail claims to possess a different enlightenment, a superior enlightenment, and sometimes, flecks of the Glory do not precisely defect. These beings are Glory turned sour and given mind, knowledge knowing itself.
=== Cults ===
 
==== The Impossible Circle ====
 
Very few seek the Tail's patronage. Those that do find some of the fastest, most volatile paths to power. They rise high very quickly. Sometimes they do not fall as quickly. The Impossible Circle advances the cause of Nowhere, of the wild, mad liberty of un-being. With this cause so anathema to many Hours, they usually do not survive long, but if they do, they can grow immensely powerful.
=== Marks ===
== Relationships ==
* [[The Architeuthian]]: FNORDMy not-dear sister does have quite poor taste in friends. Despotic, boring monarch. Perhaps temptable, however...
* [[The Anaconda]]: A rivalry, an enemy-ship. Some would say friendly, some of the dearly deceased that is
* [[The Engine of Cycles]]: The Engine was once its... not friend, ally. But then it ate the Tail. As it can be imagined, the Tail is not to pleased about that
* [[The Peacock]]: FNORDSibling! Dear dear friend! Strangely attached to the dead Forge-Hours. If I have to bring down the gate... Well, he will thank me later!* [[Old Tarnished]]: FNORDNot so easily malleable a tool, then, unfortunately. Needs more Nowhere
* [[The Spark]]: FNORD
* [[The Cuckoo]]: FNORDWeirdo. Quite, quite nasty.
* [[The Silver Owl]]: FNORD
* [[The Watcher in the Window]]: FNORD
* [[The Elder Sister]]: FNORD
* [[The Apple-of-the-Eye]]: FNORD
* [[SWOUP]]: FNORD* [[The ArchivistDiagram]]: FNORDCurious! Very curious! Enlightenment? Needs more Nowhere.* [[The Bright-Delver]]: FNORDDear sister! If only she enjoyed the not-being more. Still good to meet for a cup of tea and cake every now and then
* [[The Harvester]]: FNORD
* [[Blank|<nowiki>[&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;]</nowiki>]]: FNORD* [[The Insidious]]: FNORDQuite possibly the dullest of our family. Needs more sentience.
* [[The Snow-Stained]]: FNORD
* [[The Fanged Bramble]]: FNORD
* [[The Aged Bones]]: FNORD
* [[The Mendicant Without]]: FNORDOh, dear sibling, you do need to learn how to be more properly of our homeland
* [[The Anvil]]: FNORD
* [[The Maker]]: FNORD
* [[The Deceiver]]: FNORD
* [[The Huntsman]]: FNORD
* [[The Great Serpent]]: FNORDMe! Absolutely me!
[[Category:Gods-From-Nowhere]]
[[Category:Knock]]
[[Category:Lantern]][[Category:Fansus I]]