Rāpulis
The Everworm, That Which Crawls
Reports on the origins of Rāpulis are scant and often quite contradictory. Mortal records tell tales of terrifying insects plaguing the world dating back millennia, but even the gods themselves can’t seem to verify which of these are natural occurrences and which are the result of the Everworm’s ire. The disgusting being has never been particularly keen on interacting with its peers even in modern times, and it’s reasonable to assume that it might have spent many of its formative centuries in hiding from the rest of the pantheon as both it and the mortal world developed. It is only in modern times, as technology has made incredible leaps forward and mortals expand at a terrifying rate, that Rāpulis has seen fit to speak its mind more openly on the matter and demand some sort of hold be put on their unbalancing of the natural order before it is too late and the god is forced to do something drastic.
Tenets of Faith
Rāpulis has no religion to call its own, and it has no real desire for one, but this has done little to dissuade mortals from forming cults around it regardless. Collectives of environmentalists, terrorists, or sociopaths flock frequently around the Everworm’s vaunted hatred of mortal expansionism. That’s not to say that all of these cults directly oppose mortal advancement - a scant few merely seek a life where mortal-kind can co-habitate more freely with nature, rather than carving a path to what they believe to be ill-conceived ‘progress’ - but nevertheless, all look upon the modern way in which most mortals go about it with anger and disdain.
The most visible of these mortal cults function more like political parties or special interest groups than religious organizations, holding rallies or meetings with scientists and statesmen in an attempt to appease their vile god through peaceful means. The rest act more as extensions of Rāpulis’ will. Often rallying behind powerful Fragments, they strike out at the most egregious examples of mortal-kind’s disregard for the natural world - factories, farmlands, urban areas - and spread their Lord’s word not through example of words, but through the utter destruction of these symbols of mortal audacity. Rāpulis itself finds great joy in watching these attacks unfold. In many cases, the unhinged cultists are cut down or forced to flee, but in very rare cases they succeed in ‘freeing’ a district, temporarily at least. And even if they don’t, well… At least it gives the little ones more corpses to feed on.
Divine Goals & Aspirations
According to the accounts of many of the other gods in the world, Rāpulis is nearly impossible to deal with on a personal level. It has an endless supply of mindless hatred for the world-rending, expansionist tendencies of mortal-kind, but is forced to leave them be (most of the time, in any case) due to being vastly outnumbered by the gods who originated from them. This leaves the bestial deity in a state of perpetual frustration, rage, and disgust as it ruminates on the various methods it might use to rid the world of the mortal races in a way that would not utterly unbalance the ecosystem.
Being one of the rare gods who was not a mortal of some description before its existence as a god, Rāpulis lacks the mindset shared by much of the rest of the pantheon, many of whom have a vested interest in the advancement of mortal-kind due to their origins. Rāpulis, instead, sees itself as a force of nature, with no stake in the petty political squabbles of its peers or concern for such abstract constructs as ownership or property. Rāpulis goes where it pleases, filling a role which currently has no competition or resistance, and were competition to arise in the future, it would almost certainly seek to devour it immediately.
Physical Description
Body Features
Rāpulis is simple enough to describe: it is a gargantuan worm formed from a writhing mass of millions upon millions of other worms - not to mention the odd beetle or spider that found their way into the mix - which have come together to create the singular, hive-mind entity that is the god of creepy crawlies and the process of decay. As it moves, this conglomerate being is constantly sloughing off bits of itself. This is largely for visual effect, as most of the critters dispensed in this way eventually find their way back into the main mass once more, but legends claim that some of them - termed Fragments by mortal theologists - are granted lives of their own on the mortal plane, where they might develop into frightful monsters that seek to cull the ‘infestation’ of mortal influence upon the world.
Rāpulis never personally manifests itself in the mortal plane. Doing so would almost certainly inflict irreparable damage upon the planet given its massive size - something which goes against its core beliefs of leaving the planet and its ecosystem to its own devices - and it otherwise outright refuses to disguise itself as any single living thing, least of all one of the mortal races of the world. Because of this, what few instances of contact the mortal world has had with Rāpulis come from holy visions sent to rather unfortunate individuals and direct confrontations with the more powerful and elevated examples of its discarded Fragments.
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