Elder Evils

Illus. by M. Coimbra
112
oday, few question the fact that a priest need not
worship a god to work divine magic—he needs
only faith in an idea. Yet what of the source of this
discovery? Who was the first to draw upon divinity
without the guidance of a god? Who knows the truth
of the first heretic, and of the serpent who exposed a secret
no god wished revealed?”
—From the Demonomicon of Iggwilv
Members of the Vanguard of Sertrous hold that their
demonic patron is the true father of the yuan-ti, yet
this ancient and exiled—and deceased—demon lord
is far more than that. If the dead demon rises, he
intends to retake his throne in the Abyss and spread
his heretical words across the planes.
BACKGROUND
The gods would have mortals believe that in the
beginning, they created the world. That they helped
shape the world is not in dispute, but they were far
from the first to cast their influence across the Material
Plane. The aboleths lived in the primeval depths
before the first deity wrought life from primal clay.
The elemental races established vast multiplanar
empires long before the first priest offered prayers
from a crude stone altar. And in the roiling deep of
the Abyss, demons had already conquered entire
planes before the advent of intelligent life on the Material
Plane. Most powerful among these ancient demons were
the obyrith lords.
Led by the Queen of Chaos, the obyriths waged murder
against the elemental Wind Dukes of Aaqa. Those who
refused to join the Queen were punished and imprisoned.
Obox-ob, then the Prince of Demons, withstood her call. In
a great war, the Queen defeated Obox-ob and crowned her
consort, Miska the Wolf Spider, the new Prince of Demons.
Yet when the Queen’s legions were defeated on the Fields of
Pesh, it was ironically the obyrith lords she had cast out or
imprisoned who survived. (Knowledge [history] or [the
planes] DC 30)
One such obyrith lord was Sertrous, a minor demon lord
associated at the time with parasites and crawling things.
Ever rebellious, Sertrous slew every demon that came to
his Abyssal lair to recruit him to the Queen’s cause. He
had little defense against the Queen herself, who quickly
grew tired of his insubordination, destroyed his body,
and cast his essence into the gulf between planes as one
might cast aside a carcass. Yet this did not spell Sertrous’s
doom. As his essence passed through the Material Plane,
Sertrous made a desperate grab at an anchor to prevent
his passage into the void beyond. All he found was a
lowly serpent, wallowing in the mire of a primeval fen.
(DC 35)
For untold centuries, Sertrous lived as a serpent. At
first, he was confined to that serpent’s body. As he healed,