Sekhmet
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
((Sekhmet does not have a theme song. Her emotion is best conveyed by an instrument, the Armenian duduk, one of the most ancient instruments on Earth. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NnvZ7Yb5OE&t=1503s&ab_channel=EdmondDant%C3%A8s ))
Quote: "We are all dead. Life is the intermission."
Five-thousand or so years ago, the name 'Sekhmet' was quite common; it was often given to young girls who were thought to be meek. The reasoning was that the lion-headed goddess of bloodshed would impart her blessing of courage upon the child. Sekhmet as we know her today was once a meek child. She was sold to an undead sorcerer, the Ancient Sumerian, Ober-Nu, and sired into vampirism.
Over the course of centuries, she came to hate him, and fled from him during the chaos of Alexandria's fall. Now, thousands of years later, she has become an elder in her own right.
Her tenuous alliance with Arachnos recently ended in betrayal. That betrayal drove her further into the arms of her long-time fascination: Lilith, the One Betrayed by God.
Now, Sekhmet is a master of dark geomancy. Fueled by blood and the primordial flesh of the Dark Mother, she commands storm and earth as a dutiful disciple of She.
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Appearance
Sekhmet's appearance is transmutable. Her truest form is a torrent of living blood studded by shifting eyes.
If she chooses to appear as she did in life, has the striking, aquiline profile of the old Egyptian bloodlines; though she cannot seem to even come close to mimicking the blush of life. Her age has rendered her skin a sickly grey pallor, her lips and eyes are sunken and dark, and her hair is lank.
Sekhmet's flesh is dense and moist. It is, in fact, a primordial clay composed of the 'flesh of Lilith', which is a mix of cursed earth and elder blood. Because of this gift, her form is liquid and resilient, and she is able to resist fire.
She may also walk under the sun during dawn and twilight hours, only being forced into shade or rest when the sun is at its highest and hottest.
Powers
Whereas once Sekhmet was primarily fueled by elder vampirism and lost sorcery, she has recently entered into a covenant with the Dark Mother: Lilith. Lilith is thought to be a dead god, possibly related to the Sumerian 'mother of monsters', Tiamat. According to legend, her body was mutilated by Malak, the sky father; her flesh blood were then used as the canvas for creating earth's land and oceans, respectively.
How Sekhmet has communicated with the tortured consciousness of our slain earth-mother is unknown. But the power she wields is clear: microbial hulks of rotted stone rise from the earth at her command. Storms of blood and ice rain from the sky. Even lightning, once thought to be the sole domain of patriarchs, bends to her will.
This 'dark geomancy' is highly unusual and thought to have roots in the sorcerous traditions of ancient Egypt and the Carpathians, two places Sekhmet has been known to nest throughout history.
Even more disturbing, Banished Pantheon and Devouring Earth have been seen under her command. Whether this is an act of domination or symbiosis is unclear.
Personality
Rumors
Even through vast contacts on the Rogue Isles, it's still difficult to say just how evil or not evil Sekhmet is. She clearly has no qualms in making "difficult" decisions, but they are always to benefit the whole of the population.However, she does seem to view human life she is not directly in personal contact with as a kind of currency she must spend or save depending on context.
It's rumored she has allowed atrocities to happen because they affected a small group of inconsequential people that she did not have the immediate power or presence to intervene on the behalf of. When it is convenient and safe for her to do so, she will be almost heroic to the oppressed. When it is not, she simply recedes. Her love for humanity is, perhaps, very superficial.
But, on the positive side, she has been a force for stability in some of the more destitute areas of the Isles, by driving out malevolent and chaotic entities or villains she has the power to deal with.Those she cannot destroy, she bribes or bargains with. Sometimes she even allies with absolute monsters, when she is confident she can control them.
Modern Times
Quote: "I am aware of the droves of hot-blooded, young vampires plaguing that place, and the streets of the Isles and Paragon. They still think they are quite human; the phantoms of mortal desire haunt them. In time they will realize that they have but one impetus: the thirst for blood."
Sekhmet's endeavors in the modern era are defined by the principles of the Sekhem-Sa, a shadowy, powerful organization of supernatural beings that seek to "integrate" themselves successfully into the future of humanity in a peaceful fashion. She claims that the end of days is approaching, and that she intends to not only survive it, but to ensure at least a large portion of humanity survives it as well.
Recently, her torpor was interrupted by Arachnos, and the Sekhem-Sa devastated as a result. Since the loss of her home, Sekhmet has been bitter and unpleasant to deal with. Her roaming causes chaos throughout Paragon and the Rogue Isles; she is especially fond of devouring psions and has been single-handedly tormenting the ranks of the Carnival of Shadows for the past year.
Ancient Times
Sekhmet was born into a family of date farmers. Her mother was a potter and herbalist who made medicines in bulk to trade. As the youngest of seven children, Sekhmet was her mother's favorite and coddled far more than the others. A stunted and sickly child, she was prone to illness and melancholy from an early age.
Sekhmet's father was not fond of her. He was a superstitious man and believed she was an ill omen, given how close his wife came to death to birth the girl. He was all too happy to sell Sekhmet to a traveling gentleman for a bag of sapphires. This was done under the cover of night.
Sekhmet was lifted from her bed the same night, placed under torpor by a dark power, and spirited away to the catacombs of Râ-Kedet (what would one day be Alexandria). Once there, she was a young blood doll feeding the coterie of one of the darkest powers of Mesopotamia: Ober-Nu, of Sumer.
Said to have been sired by Lilith herself, Ober-Nu was a pitiless, mysterious entity whose command of forgotten Sumerian sorcery gave him absolute control over language and the wills of others. Sekhmet was one of dozens of fixtures in his macabre court, and for years was little more than a toy to be bent, broken, drained, and forgotten about for months at a time before being picked back up again out of the dark.
It was not until the priests came and gave drove Ober-Nu's brood from the catacombs that everything changed. With his brood decimated, the ancient vampire saw Sekhmet's unlikely survival a sign. He sired her into vampirism and trained her both in his dark arts and the arts of subterfuge and infiltration. This new step into tentative independence seemed like a gift to her at the time, and she embraced the role with enthusiasm.
She would be a knife in the dark, even through the conquest of Alexander, and more and more she gained autonomy from her master as she brought him the prizes he sought; heads, hands, reagents, stolen books from the great library, and whatever else he fancied.
But it was not to last. The Priests of Apollo made their move a few centuries before the birth of Christ, and with the power of the sun god, reduced a primordial terror to ash.
Sekhmet was away from the catacombs at the time. When she sensed his death, she fled immediately out the gates of the city and followed the ocean north. She learned she could always bury herself in the muck of the sea to rest during the day and in this fashion she wandered through the holy land, grazing on villages and taking offerings, as a dark spirit of the night.
Eventually, she found the Carpathians, and there, new breeds of her own kind.
