Horakhty

Created as the first god, Horakhty is the earthly avatar of the Eye. He is the father god, deity of the sun, light, power, and the earthly kings.

His primary symbols are the eye and the round sun disk, though he can also be found in the luminous scarab beetle.

He takes the form of a human man, but after millennia of existence and the pain of his imprisonment, he appears withered and old, and was blinded when the Eye was devoured by the serpent.

The first and oldest of the gods, Horakhty is the physical manifestation of the Eye, created as a vessel to fulfill its need to create on the earthly plane. He is the father of the Old Gods and of all life on earth. He created first plants, animals, and humans to inhabit it, and then deities to govern these creations.

In the Second Kingdom, Horakhty was rendered mortal when the Eye was swallowed whole by the Serpent. He became a human man, and his body aged rapidly. He regained his powers when Baal was defeated, but the vessel remained withered from its former glory. After returning to his throne, he created the Realm of the Twelve Caves, a deep, spiraling plane composed of twelve pits, each worse than the last, and each full of devilish Cavern Fiends that tortured the souls of those Horakhty viewed as enemies. In the deepest cave he placed his son Baal, condemning him to the worst forms of torture imaginable. He placed Aasimar warriors at the gates of this realm, to prevent the fiends and the souls inside from escaping.

After this, the weary Horakhty abdicated his role temporarily, placing his daughter Bast in his place. He took human form and went to the mortal realm. There he met a woman, Ahura, with whom he had two twin sons, Abraham and Apa. Abraham was the stronger of the two brothers, and Horahkty saw Apa as a worthless second. He raised Abraham to be the new king of Abydos, training him in the magical arts from a young age, while he neglected Apa. When Abraham was old enough, Horakhty revealed to his son that he was of divine lineage, and sent him to the court of the Abydosian kings to prove himself as the new leader of the mortal realm.

With Abraham on the throne, and Apa alone in his isolated smithy, Horakhty left Ahura and ascended back to his place in the godly plane, where he surveyed the mortal realm and watched the good deeds of his son. Abraham ruled well, and for a period Horakhty finally felt at peace. However, the chaos of the Serpent was ever-growing, and soon some of the dwarves fell to its corruption. While leading an army into battle against this invading force, Abraham was killed and dismembered by the enemy. With his son dead and his world once again threatened, Horakhty was driven mad with grief. In a frenzy, he flayed Apa and used his skin to patch together the body of Abraham. He flung the skinless-but-still-alive body of Apa into The Twelve Caves, and, against the wishes of Anubis, ripped his favorite son’s soul from the Duat. Abraham was resurrected in a horrific new form intent on violence and revenge. Horakhty sent this killing machine to the earthly plane, where he wreaked havoc on the mortal beings. But when his anger turned from the Dwarves to the other creations, and as the streets ran red with the blood of thousands, Horakhty realized he had made a mistake. He smote Abraham, but was unable to kill him. This angered the abomination and led to his creation of the New Gods and the subsequent imprisonment of the Old Gods.

With the New Gods in power, Bast imprisoned in the Twelve Caves, and the Eye devoured and destroyed by the Serpent, Horakhty now sits locked in the Duat with the rest of the Old Gods, blinded and driven mad. While he, like the other gods, still has his powers and influence on the mortal plane, it is limited to his loyal followers, who practice in secretive underground cults and who often never experience the powers of the Father God. His primary power takes the form of several of his Aasimar warriors, some of whom Anubis has succeeded in resurrecting. These beings carry a fraction of Horakhty’s power, and are lone crusaders searching for heretics whose souls they will bring to their mad god for judgment.