Anubis

### Aliases

Foremost of the Westerners, Son of the King, Lord of the Sacred Land, Decay, The Carrion Eater, The Dog Who Swallows Millions, Master of Secrets, He Who Is Upon His Mountain, Protector of the Tomb

### Affiliation

Old Gods

Anubis is the only son of Aser and Aset. His home is in the Duat, and he is the god of the dead, judgment, embalming, and the truth.

His main symbol is a jackal or stray dog, but can also be represented by a human heart, a feather, and a set of scales.

He takes the form of a jackal-headed man, but, like Bast, can also take the form of a jackal or dog.

Born of Aser and Aset in their underworld realm of the Duat, Anubis quickly rose to power and became the right hand of his father, responsible for the weighing of the souls of mortals in the Hall of Judgement. He guards the Feather of Truth, which is weighed against the soul, and the holy scales on which they are placed. His beloved monster, Ammit, is a predator abomination which sits at his side and eats the souls of those who have been evil in life. Anubis guides the souls of the dead through the Duat, and, alongside Djehuty, protects the sacred knowledge of mummification which allows the preservation of the body in the afterlife. For millennia, Anubis was one of the most loved and feared gods in the mortal plane. His priests wore sacred death masks in the shape of a jackal head, and were highly revered as the only mortals to whom the sacred practices of embalming were revealed.

When Baal usurped the throne of the gods, he killed Aser and forced Anubis from the Hall of Judgment, leaving the Duat unattended and in chaos. In secret, Anubis spent years creating a new race, the Khenra, from the souls of those of his priests who had already died. He fused their holy masks to their faces and resurrected them in new form as his own personal crusading holy warriors, keeping them hidden in a dark corner of the Duat where Baal could not discover them. When the time was right, the Khenra were unleashed on the corrupted elves who had taken control of Abydos, brutally killing them en masse, and successfully overthrowing their reign. Anubis himself turned towards Bast, imprisoned in the Duat, and freed her from her cage using powerful magic. Alongside Khonsu and Bast, he defeated Baal and helped to restore Horakhty to his throne, before returning to his place in the underworld and bringing order to the plane, taking the place of his father, who was alive but whose body remained incomplete as Aset continued to search for the last of his limbs in the mortal realm. Anubis also brought his Khenra back to the Duat, keeping them hidden in its depths in case of future need for them, but using some of them to better guard the gates of the Hall of Judgement.

When Horakhty came to him, insane and begging for the soul of his son to be released from the Duat, Anubis refused, knowing what he was attempting to do. However, the Father God overpowered him and ripped Abraham from his rightful place. When the Destroyer was resurrected and took his vengeance on the mortal plane, Anubis released his Khenra in an attempt to stop the violence. It did not take long, however, for the New Gods to arise, and, after locking Bast in the Twelve Caves, allowing the Serpent to devour the Eye, they turned to Anubis. Abraham killed the guardians of the Duat and stormed the Hall of Judgement. He broke the holy scales and destroyed the glorious hall, and in response Anubis attacked Abraham with the souls of all of the dead in the Duat. However Abraham, being of the flesh of Horakhty, was too powerful, and Anubis fled to the depths of the underworld, taking sanctuary in Djehuty’s hidden library. Here he stayed as his Khenra warriors were brutally massacred, and the rest of the gods were forced into the Duat, with the gates locked and guarded.

Imprisoned in this plane, Anubis began to lose his mind. The New Gods destroyed all records of an afterlife on the mortal plane, attempting to wipe his very existence from mortal memories, although souls still travel there after death. With the scales broken, souls sent to the Duat are judged not in the golden Hall of Judgment, but in the blackened ruins of the great room. Here, the now-feral jackal god sits atop a makeshift throne of human bones, with Ammit at his side. He judges the dead by his own rules, choosing whether they shall go on to the afterlife or not based solely on the memories he has of what justice used to mean, and letting Ammit feast not only on the souls but the bodies of those he deems unworthy. He sits in the depths of the Duat scheming and attempts in any way he can to restore his realm to its former glory and release the Old Gods from their imprisonment. While his magic was weakened, he rebuilt some of his old power, and resurrected several Aasimar warriors for Horakhty, as well as one of his Khenra. This beast he sent to the mortal plane to carry out a vicious one-man crusade against the New Gods, with the promise of eternal life and power, and a seat at his right hand in the Hall of Judgment. His aim is to drag the New Gods from their seats on high into the depths of the underworld, where he will feed their souls to Ammit and send their desiccated bodies into the depths of the Duat to be devoured by the souls of those they slaughtered.