Vipis, God of Corruption
Vipis
[Sexless, Chaotic Evil]
Known to all mortals as the God of Corruption, Vipis wishes to sow the seeds of discord and corruption in all living things. Vipis views beauty and life as impure manifestations of mortality’s true form, and seeks to bring lesser beings back to their natural state as foul effigies of its horrid majesty. The god favors the serpent most highly among creatures, and most often its followers end up taking on snake-like qualities as they draw closer to Vipis. It oozes rancid, venomous ichor with every word, capable of mutating even the most pure and stalwart of beings into malformed slaves or simply killing them outright.
It most often appears as a humanoid amalgamation of several snakes: the Black Mamba, Death Adder, and Cobra. All three heads seething and threatening to inject all who draw near with venomous lethality. Its body features a humanoid torso with a swirling pattern of reptilian scales that extend all the way across its serpentine lower half made of three tails matching the heads. Its arms are thin but rippling with muscle, and from each long finger is a fingernail more akin to a fang than a humaniod’s fingertip. Vipis always wears a black robe that exudes a hazy, encircling cloud of spores and poison mist thick enough to water the eyes of nearby mortals. Drawing closer often ends the life of an onlooker outright as their skin absorbs these foul toxins, twisting their frames with the deity’s sinister energy. Those who manage to survive its presence are left forever changed into a monstrous mockery of their former selves.
Portfolio: Poisons, Toxins, Disease, and the Corruption of Life
Cleric Training:
Humanoids twisted (or foolish) enough to answer the call of Vipis have often endured a great deal of trauma at the hands of more ordinary people and end up gravitating towards its principles of corruption, filth, and madness as a measure of inner-reflection. Vipis exploits this trauma and forces its priests to endure even greater trials that will strengthen them through suffering. Depending on the lands in which they are found, a potential cleric will join a cult or priesthood of Vipis. Regardless of the definition of such an organization, their training is always conducted within an area that can support the life of serpents, such as caves or arid deserts.
A thrall of Vipis must regularly consume small amounts of snake venom and other poisons, building up a tolerance, while also subjecting themselves to foul living conditions. As their bodies grow sick, the negative energy of their divine patron suffuses their body, taking control of the aspects of their health that their weakening mortal frames can no longer endure. Eventually the venom of this deity keeps its servants alive, rather than harms them, and both body and soul grow dependent on Vipis’ corruption to continue living. Their outward appearance begins to change as well. Typical symptoms appear as sickly discolorations of the skin, patches of scales, and snake-like eyes or tongues.
Quests:
The Harvest
Considered one of the most corrupt acts a mortal can undertake by mortals and gods alike, this vile mission is so heinous that those who succeed are deemed an enemy to all humanity, much like the god they serve. Vipis constantly demands, hisses, whispers, and deceptively begs within the hearts of its followers to spread its gifts throughout the world. Those who join The Harvest must journey to a locale of known servants of holy or goodly forces, the more stalwart, resilient, just, and pure the better. Once there, they are tasked with inserting themselves into the body of that community and infecting all those of goodly or neutral alignment much how they were first infected, but with one twisted difference.
Those who are turned towards Vipis inevitably break apart over several weeks as the poison that has infested every inch of their being turns their body to a mass of rotted flesh. Unlike with the training of its priests, Vipis does not infuse its energy into its prey, instead allowing their lives to wither and die under its influence. Once their malformed forms at last dissolve, their souls fully enslaved by the Serpent God, their spiritual remains are added to the Filth Pit. Their essence never reaches their deserved afterlife of course and is instead gradually consumed by Vipis’ High Priests and most powerful servants in a ritualistic monthly feast.
The Harvest is conducted but once every three years to avoid drawing too much attention from the enemies of the cult, and forcing action. Once a harvest month is ended, those responsible for the imploding toxicity that destroyed the community they had infiltrated slither away into the darkness, their own bodies mutating into a form “greater” than their previous one. Those who benefit from The Harvest without being discovered by their enemies are then promoted to High Priest and invited to feast at the Filth Pit.Prayers:
The Call of Vipis
He seethes within my skin
Invited by my mortal’s sin
We are the betrayers, the predator amongst the prey
They do not know it loves them
So we infest as its children
Our lie becomes their way
Temples:
The Den of Blight
The Den of Blight is less a temple or church so much as an underground shrine filled with twisting tunnels of varying sizes built to accommodate the variety of creatures that live there. It is buried beneath Oblian and stretches for miles underneath many formerly vibrant communities. In this horrid tribute to Vipis, all manner of humanoids, serpents, and Twisted Serpentfolk worship, wallow, and copulate in filth. Its halls are constantly seething with toxic fluids intermingled with the excretions of its populace. Those who remain here for too long eventually begin to grow into Serpentfolk themselves, taking on a sinister will and appearance that mimics their god of corruption.
The Den of Blight snakes out in many different directions underneath the earth and reaches up only to swallow small villages and homes, adding their inhabitants to the brood. Nearly all inhabitants of this insidious construction were unwilling additions, but the growing negative energy contained within its halls makes subjugation incredibly easy.
While The Den of Blight has yet to attack any significantly populated areas, greater powers of goodly justice and purity within the world have begun to take a great personal interest in its growth (particularly clerics of Torse), lest they be swallowed up as well.Rites: The rituals dedicated to Vipis can be rather confusing to an outsider, much like the movement of the snake. All rituals require either a sacrifice of serpent’s blood or venom taken from such a creature. These magics are cast in the name of corruption and always contribute to the greater goal of infection among the living.
Ritual triangles are drawn encompassing the border of more complex, wavy patterns resembling a serpent’s movement, then the blood or poison is offered in the center of the diagram as the magic is manifested. The caster then must mimic the movements of Vipis’ smallest children to appease the dark god, an action that channels its foul energy through the body, often times causing toxic ooze to seep through every pore. A Ritual Caster who reaches too far for magic they are not prepared to accept can often die in this process ...or worse.
Vipis heavily favors complex rituals conducted in its name and many ambitious High Priests have elevated themselves to greater standing and power within its cult using such magic. These methods also invite political bickering and backstabbing amongst its greatest followers, a spectacle that Vipis enjoys greatly.Burial Rites: A deceased follower of Vipis is stripped of all wealth and clothing, then slowly flayed. The process of removing the creature’s skin is laborious but highly symbolic. The skin is consumed by all who attend, feasting on both the corrupt juices of an evil being and absorbing the divine energy contained within. Their valuables are of course donated to the local sect and the rest of their remains are dumped into a brooding pit of snakes to be gradually consumed.
While these actions seem abhorrent and disrespectful to many outsiders, the practice is viewed as a reflection of the cycle of animal consumption, the dead serving as the prey for all those still full of the will of the predator. Conversely, it is considered a grievous insult among followers of Vipis to simply allow the body to be buried, suggesting the possibility that they are beneath the sacred purpose of feeding and corrupting the young.
Tithe: All followers of Vipis must give 50% of their income every month to their local sect and must also donate a vial of blood. That blood is intermixed with snake venom or disease infused fluids and served at weekly services. As as worshipper persists through the years, this tithe lowers as the donation of blood expected increases. Many cultists of Vipis are unable to meet the demands of the tithe past a certain age, ensuring that the order always has a youthful membership. It is said that drinking the blood over an extended period of time actually allows the faithful to shed their skin when they grow too old to bear the burden, becoming young again to begin the cycle anew. While rare instances of this bizarre effect of the tithing ritual have been recorded as true, very few humanoids are able to suffer the sacrifice necessary to achieve this gift before perishing.
Benefits: Priests of Vipis enjoy many dark gifts, the ability to corrupt and swallow life through divine magic chief among them. While they are just as capable of destroying through Death and Corrupting magics, they also gain access to the Life sphere so that they can better control the flow of life to ensure its “evolution” according to Vipis’ will. They also revel in chaos, believing that little else matters other than the rise of the Serpentfolk through mutation and mutilation. Their host of dark powers serve to shatter the forces of Law and spit on the pure aspects of nature. The truly powerful members of Vipis’ cult can manipulate the forces of Death and Life as if they were playthings, and become so infected with negative energy that their divine energy lashes out at all around them with but a thought.
Followers receive few tangible benefits, but they all receive the “gift” of the Serpentfolk, a hidden race of Vipis’ chosen, should they survive the act of worship for long enough. They also gain a great deal of knowledge in the area of poisons, toxins, and diseases, learning best how to harm creatures with them as well as cure. However, the latter information is almost never used to benefit the cause of life and good health.
Herald and Allies:
Basswulot Sinskin [Herald]
Basswulot Sinskin is the monstrous child of Vipis. Birthed from a 6oo year old egg left behind by Vipis when it last roamed the Plane of Death, it resembles a massive snake capable of coiling around a castle several times over. Its body is comprised of insubstantial gasses, necrotic energy, festering diseased slime, and lethal poison. Its head is constantly changings form, always into the visage of a different breed of serpent. The creature is neither living nor undead, an abomination of the forces of nature and necromancy.
Basswulot has no limbs with which to wield weapons, and needs none. The creature’s entire body is a semi-solid length of biological devastation and everything it touches, even inanimate objects, becomes host to an incalculable number of diseases and poisons, some so corrosive that mortal flesh melts almost instantly from its touch. The monstrosity can move through almost any solid object, seeping through even the cracks in a hewn stonewall (although its progress will be slower depending on the solidity of the surface and its material). Its body is its only form of attack, but is nigh unstoppable, capable of reforming if even a spec of its original form remains. Its only weakness is its stupidity. Although incredible large, fast, and deadly, Basswulot has the instincts and intelligence of an animal and can potentially be tricked into areas where it can do no harm and potentially even be trapped (though no such attempts have ever succeeded).
Basswulot is occasionally released from its nest on the Plane of Death to bring ruin to mortal creatures. While these events can sometimes be premeditated acts on behalf of the serpent god, they are just as likely to be random for the simple purpose of spreading death and chaos. Unbeknownst to Basswulot, the aftermath of its arrival is often used as a breeding ground for Twisted Serpentfolk to birth their young and take up root. History has recorded entire city’s corrupted or destroyed in mere minutes by the passing of Vipis’ Herald and those that managed to remain were soon turned into thralls by Vipis itself.City of Derelis [Ally
The City of Derelis belongs to Vipis, the entire area encased in a bubbling dome of cancerous ichor that drips disease and poison on its inhabitants. While many despise living there for the regular dangers the city presents to their health, Derelis also houses one of the largest memberships of surface dwelling Vipis supporters on Nexxen. Located in the Oblian region, the massive poisonous shell that makes up the city’s walls stands as a testament to Vipis’ power, something the god enjoys seeing displayed for all those of goodly intentions to despair at.
The city is well protected by the Cult of Vipis, as well as the local government which had long ago been brought under the cult’s heel. The constantly oozing and dripping disease that falls from the city’s encompassing lair also acts as a deterrent to invaders, as even a simple touch could cause an incurable disease or hideous mutation. Some revel in this madness and embrace the strange effects of the bubble as their lifeforce slowly rots away. While the de-evolution of this once flourishing city is relatively recent, Vipis will never let the people within slip from its grasp, having finally achieved an outpost for the god’s abhorrent machinations.]{{{Description}}}
Relationships with other Gods: Torse is Vipis’ sworn enemy, the two standing in opposition to each other in every aspect of their existence. Vipis forever seeks to turn Torse’ followers against him, and should that fail, infect them with its dark magic to ensure their mortal suffering. These acts have been carried out on a number of occasions, much to the anger of Torse, causing the god of purification to retaliate in greater measure. So it is that the two and their followers are forever locked in battle.
While many of the darker gods do not call themselves an enemy to Vipis, none call it friend either. In addition to being fully obsessed with the ruination of all life, Vipis is deceptive and spiteful, using any means necessary to achieve its goals. If that includes betraying an ally, Vipis will do so and has done so many times in the past. While gods such as Cydeth, Hemotis, and Cyrth may find Vipis’ goals worth pursuing, none would risk partnering with the venomous serpent god.
Factions:
Within both Derelis and Systra are The Venom, a cult of humanoids and Twisted Serpentfolk. While The Venom persists in Derelis openly, acting as the unofficial government in most cases, within Systra they are a small, hidden society that acts as a spying network for Vipis. The Venom within Derelis acts as a recruiter of sorts for those drawn to the city and sends its most powerful homegrown agents to Systra to replace aging ones and avoid being found out.
The Venom has begun to aggressively expand its influence within the world, and views the resources of Systra as a means to an end: corrupt the powerful and the weak will follow.
The mutate viper, the Grand High Priest Masress, resides in both cities simultaneously. One of the Twisted Serpentfolk, she has shed her skin into a simulacrum capable of acting just as she would, with nearly all of her divine powers at its command. The two share information about the goings on in both cities, tightening their respective grasps as their influence grows. The irony to this scheme is that much like Vipis, the two scheme to overthrow the other while both understanding the nature of their counterpart. This has created an uneasy balance that never shifts too far in one direction, yet still creates chaos amongst their loyalists.Relics:
Filth Pit
The Filth Pit resides on the Plane of Death, but is accessible through several permanent gates created within enclaves of Vipis throughout the material plane. Access to all but the chosen is strictly forbidden, as it contains the newly corrupted souls of the once pure. These souls are consumed communally throughout the world, granting Vipis’ High Priests both tremendous, deathly divine power and accursed afflictions resulting from eating souls as a mortal.
Anyone who eats a soul from the Filth Pit has a chance of contracting a random, permanent disease. If this happens, however, the effects of the disease do not take root and instead create an inverse effect, often enhancing the strength of the consumer. Eating too many, however, can eventually cause the spirits within the body to corrupt the eater, infecting them with a sort of spiritual disease that limits their mental faculties.
Staff of Serpents
This quarterstaff, feeling like scaled skin to the touch, resembles the straightened form of a King Cobra, it’s mouth wide open as if to bite a victim. The Staff of Serpents grants its wielder mastery over not only all snakes, but all serpentine creatures of animal intelligence. It even has the potential to control weaker evil dragons and serpents of great power, although good dragons are immune to its effects. The wielder need not take any actions to use this power, but simply move nearby to such beings and they will be drawn under their power. In the case of dragonkind or similarly powerful monsters, they are allowed a single saving throw before forever succumbing to the staff’s power. Prolonged use of the staff causes the wielder to absorb the physical and mental traits of those it controls, which could have beneficial or adverse effects.