Naga King

Red Sky • Mythos • Ebét

Legendary hero of the Ebéteen wandering from the Eclipsed Lands, who accepted the ancestors’ gift-curse and became a mile-long snake to protect his people on their journey through the seas of ashes and reeds. Since then, the snake has been the Ebéteen symbol of justice and protection.

Where is the Naga King Now?

  1. The snake is still there, in the seas of ashes and reeds.
  2. There is no actual Naga King. It were a metaphor for the long wandering of the Ebéteen, the winding search for a home.
  3. It lives within the breast of every disciple of the Living God. A tiny flesh snake, a particle of the God itself, guides them on their winding road through life.
  4. In the course of aeons, grey seawater flooded the seas of ashes and reeds, creating the sour marshes. The Naga King lay and slowly turned to salt and stone, becoming the fabled snake road through those marshes.
  5. After his people left him, the Naga King tried to end himself. He smote off his head, but as it fell, it became a hill, while two new heads grew from the stump. Six times he tried to kill himself, each time becoming less hero, more monster. At last, six grotesque hills stood where his dead heads had fallen, and his mind was shattered into seven pieces—the seven humours of man. The after-hero turned monster itself, crawled into the dark places of acidic water and glowing rock beneath those hills.
  6. When the Living God journeyed into the Eclipsed Lands, it/she/he ate the snake, mile by mile, until it/she/he had absorbed all the wisdom of that ancient king.
  7. It was never a snake, but a great catfish, and it grew to become an island in the Lake of Refuge. Upon its back, the Proto-Ebéteen rode out the years of ash and vinegar. Some, who accepted their role in the disaster of that eclipsed time, live there still.
  8. The snake king was reborn as a woman in the tribe of the Vulture Pustari. They are reborn there still, a zeitgeist tethered to their bloodline, doomed to watch the strange stasis of their far-wandered descendants from the dust and the scrub.
The Naga King also rises.
The snake opened like a flower.

There is a journey in its mouth.
Do not embark.
•

The snake is not a pomegranate.