The Dark Serpent, Consumer of Light, Nightsnake
Symbol: A dark serpent coiled into a knot, so that the head is not visible
Home Plane: Hades
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Portfolio: Desire, Lies, Seduction, Snakes, Temptation, Yuan-ti
Worshipers: Yuan-ti and their followers; spies; seducers; those who make use of lies and cunning to make a living.
Cleric Alignments: LE, NE, CE
Domains: Darkness, Evil, Scalykind, Slime, Gluttony
Favored Weapon: Longbow (the arrows called "fangs of Apophis" by worshipers)
Clergy:The clergy of Apophis are known as the Immortal Coil.
Favored Offering: Apohis' favored offering is a living creature cast into sacred vessel filled with a dozen serpents.
Apophis, also called Apeps, is the serpent god of the yuan-ti, a massive entity of the outer planes in the form of a great coiled serpent made of pure darkness. More than that, however, Apophis is also the god of dark seduction, of poison and venom and lies. This deity is one of the only ones to deal with the Dark One on a regular basis, as the two have similar motives in the end: they both desire to engulf the world, though in the case of Apophis, this is a quite literal desire.
Dogma:
Corrupt what you can, consume what you cannot, and grow. Always grow. This is the basic liturgy of the clerics of Apophis. Lies, secrets, seduction, mystery, conspiracy - these are all the tools of Apophis and his followers. Apophis teaches that to be honest is to be exposed, and to be exposed is to be vulnerable, and so his truest followers regularly couch their expressions so that their meaning is hard to discern, and half-truths and full lies are considered a game among yuan-ti children. The yuan-ti have designs on the rest of the world, and are constantly making efforts to infiltrate every level of society, all the better to further the designs of their god. However, despite the danger of the yuan-ti, Apophis also attracts a fair number of con-artists, politicians, seducers, and others who rely on his methods to get by. These lesser worshipers, while not devoted to the schemes of the yuan-ti, still provide the deity with power with every lie they tell, a prayer to Apophis in their minds as they utter their honeyed words of sweet venom.
Clergy:
The clergy of Apophis are almost always yuan-ti. If they are not before they become clerics of Apophis, they usually are transformed into yuan-ti after they are accepted by their deity. All rituals of Apophis are held out of the light of the sun, and preferably in rituals where the identities of those performing them are kept secret through masks. A common ritual performed by those who follow Apophis is to swallow an egg whole every morning (this may be a small or boiled egg for non-yuan-ti). Almost all important rituals of the worship of Apophis involve eating, and sacrifices generally involve throwing live prey to serpents of various sizes, though the largest possible prey and the largest possible serpents (or yuan-ti of appropriate size) is preferred.
