Ouroboros

Ouroboros, God of the Eternal Cycle, egg-eater

Ouroboros was the God of the Eternal Cycle, the snake that wove through Kryllos holding it together. By swallowing its own tail, it sealed the world within its coils and locked out the outside. The peristalsis of its slow digestion reverberated through everything its coils touched, creating the ebb and flow of existence and the binary oppositions - light/dark, hot/cold, wet/dry, and so on, combining to take a multitude of forms.

Before mortal eyes, Oroboros took the form of an endless serpent, the entirety of its body impossible to see at once. Its scales shimmered with the reflections of unseen fire and acidic venom dripped from its fangs, dissolving whatever it touched. Oroboros' blood was like lava, hotter than a thousand forges. All caught in its gaze were riveted in place; they would be forever haunted afterward, awakening from dreams of being a mouse swallowed whole by a great snake.

Its eggs hatched new ideas, put new thoughts into mortal minds, and provoked their imaginations. Couples who sought to conceive would place a snake's egg under their marriage bed's mattress, and if they could sow their oats without cracking it, the wife's womb would hold new life.

Kryllos is said to be Ouroboros' original egg: its shell the vault of the sky, its albumen the seas, its yolk the lands.

Animals that hybernate were sacred to Ouroboros, when, during their winter trances they were believed to serve the snake god in the invisible worlds beyond. As Ouroboros' body slithered beneath the earth, its passing would melt stone, creating the warren of tunnels and caves that miner prized and through which they traveled to reach veins of precious ore. Blacksmiths also honored Ouroboros, praying to him to keep their fires hot and steady. The first swords were said to be forged in imitation of Oroboros' fangs.

Petitions to Oroboros were whispered. Sacrifices were made in the form of burnt offerings, most often items of deeply personal value. In bad times, humans were sacrificed in great, egg-shaped kilns - chiefly the very young and old, the newly born and the long-lived. If no such sacrifices were available, strangers to the community would be captured and entombed in a wooden pyre which was then lit.

Source: Blackbirds RPG
AI Art by Midjourney

"Today: angry.
Tomorrow: sad.
The next day: joyful.
Bereft the next.
To and fro, left and right, and ever forward.
Such are the undulations of the snake. Such are our lives."