Worm

Worm
Apophis; Elder Elemental Eye; Falak; Nidhogg; Vritra

Symbol: A dark serpent coiled into a knot so that the head is not visible
Home Plane: The Abyss
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Cleric Alignments: Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil
Portfolio: Lies, temptation, corruption, entropy, oblivion
Worshipers: Evil serpentfolk, liars, doppelgangers, spies
Domains: Darkness (Loss), Destruction (Catastrophe), Evil (Fear), Scalykind, Serpent, Void
Favored Weapon: Longbow (each arrow is called a "serpent's bite")

Physical Description:
Worm takes the form of a vast serpent composed of light-devouring darkness so complete and total, no more than the most vague of details can be made out about Worm. When Worm wishes to deal with others, often to seduce and to tempt, Worm will take on a humanoid upper torso, though still with a serpent's visage, and eyes so deep that they mesmerize all who look into them. While Worm is regularly referred to as a male, because of his apparently sexless appearance (a common trait among reptiles), he is actually a hermaphrodite, and is able to use this to his (or her, as the case may be) advantage in seduction, changing his voice and mannerisms appropriately for the victim.

Description of Nature, Personality, and Dogma:
Once Worm was a creature of force passion, with a personality so great that it lured countless souls after him, following his litany of lies and skill of temptation to attempt to take Paradise itself by violent overthrow, and after that failed, the Prime Material Plane. When this failed, Worm turned to more subtle methods, but still retained his seductive nature and talent for lies and corruption.

Do as you will is Worm's law. So is the command to corrupt what you can, consume what you cannot, and grow. Always grow. Lies, secrets, seduction, mystery, conspiracy - these are all the tools of Worm and his followers. Worm 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 the children of his followers. His more devoted worshipers seek to infiltrate every level of society with slow subtlety, while a host of lesser liars, con artists, seducers, politicians, and lawyers provide the deity with power with every lie they tell, a prayer to Worm in their minds as they utter their honeyed words of sweet venom.

Clergy, Places of Worship, Important Rituals, and Servitor Races:
Most of the clergy of Worm are serpentfolk, or are transformed into such after becoming a part of his priesthood. All of Worm's clerics take on slight serpentine traits if they don't have them already, from unblinking eyes to black nails to a slightly scaly texture to the skin. Those who Worm selects as his clergy are the most ruthless and efficient of spies, those willing to sacrifice even their own kin at Worm's will (something that they are indeed sometimes required to do).

All Worm worship takes place out of the light of the sun, preferably below ground or inside an artificial structure while the sun is high in the sky, as an act of defiance against the light. Among other people, Worm's worshipers keep small and unassuming shrines that often look like those of other deities, but with subtly interwoven serpent motifs revealing their true nature. In lands that they control, Worm's worshipers regularly build large pyramids with flat tops, there to defy the sun.

Defying the sun is a common ritual of Worm worshipers, performed once a week by getting to the highest place possible at midday and glaring up at the sun for several minutes without blinking. Another common ritual is the daily eating of an egg, which is swallowed whole, though it may be a small or boiled egg for non-serpentfolk.

All evil serpentfolk and many reptiles in general serve Worm, recognizing a being that matches their own inner hungers. Immense extraplanar purple worms also accompany Worm, seeking to feed on his leavings.

History and Relations:
Fallen Ones are the direct result of those beings who once lived in Paradise, the place where the gods and all life originated, who discovered the Light's end goal, namely of allowing these beings each to have an opportunity to make their own choices, including mistakes, and grow from the experience, who then rejected the Light's plan and fell from Paradise, never to return. The reasons why the Fallen Ones rejected the Light's plans are varied, but the two most common are those philosophies espoused by Worm and the Dark One. The Elder Elemental Eye felt that the strictures of reality were too confining, and wanted to be allowed to act without any fear of consequences, something which not even the gods can do. The Dark One, on the other hand, felt that this method was far too chaotic, and wanted more rigid control to be instated - with the Dark One as chief manager, of course. All of these varied paths were in defiance of all the natural laws that governed the universe, and so the Fallen Ones and their leaders were unable to remain within the boundaries of the universe at that primordial time, and fell away into the Far Plane, beyond all reason and sanity, where their initial deviation from the right paths led them steadily further and further into forbidden paths, until they are now irredeemably vile and corrupted.

Where the Dark One drew closer to the Prime Material Plane and its concerns, the Elder Elemental Eye drew further away from reality and eventually confronted Chaos itself. Chaos overawed the Eye, who immediately became Chaos' high priest, and turned about to wreak havoc on the Prime Material Plane, seeking to directly unmake all that the gods had made, so as to achieve the ultimate return of all things to Chaos, as they once were. The Elder Elemental Eye lost this conflict, and his essence was rent asunder. Most of the Elder Elemental Eye's essence was cast into a dark void, a prison plane consisting solely of itself, forever separated from the rest of reality and unable to act. However, the scant remnants of the Eye's consciousness escaped to the Abyss, there to plot against the gods and slowly regain his lost power. This remnant became known as Worm, the rot that gnaws at the base of reality itself, forever seeking to bring down the whole of reality on the heads of the gods that had bested it, and eventually to reunite with Worm's lost power. Now vastly more subtle than before, Worm deals in temptation and lies, seeking to lure where once he resorted to force.

As an enemy of reality itself, Worm is also an enemy of all the gods, even most of the other Forbidden Gods. Even Sin Eater, who seeks (it is said by some) to redeem Chaos cannot redeem Worm, who has utterly flung himself into the void of madness and evil. Frenzy regards Worm as a rival to her power, and their followers regularly seek to overpower each other. While the Dark One and Worm are opposite sides of the same coin, differing only in their methods of achieving the same ultimate ends, they seldom get along. The Dark One sees the Eye and his followers as occasionally useful pawns, while the Eye sees the Dark One as a source of information, but ultimately weak and unable to comprehend the true horror that is at the bottom of the universe: Chaos.

Favored Offerings and Justifications for Direct Intervention:
Appropriate sacrifices for Worm take the form of innocent living creatures, preferably sentient ones, that are fed while still alive to giant snakes or especially large serpentfolk.

Worm is constantly aware of his followers' actions and needs, and watches them carefully, making sure that they do not stray from his influence and that they always survive. When his worshipers are engaged in especially dangerous tasks of infiltration, Worm is likely to provide a little bit of assistance, giving little moments of insight and strokes of good luck that allow the worshiper to accomplish what might otherwise have been impossible. This sort of aid only happens if the infiltrator already has great skill and simply needs a slight additional boost, and if the actions of the infiltrator are intended to aid in the eventual downfall of a society.