------------- The Iron Coil – Snake in Shepherd’s Clothing

In the history of the Holy Symballan Church, it can be truly said that only one God has garnered the ire and hatred of all the others of the Iniad; the Destroyer, the Nightbringer, the Devourer of Worlds, Apep. In His position of opposition to Ra, even the evil and twisted followers of Sett will shun Apep’s poisonous bile. It is accepted that the Children of Apep, the Serpent Folk, would be His only devoted followers. None other would be so corrupt, so unholy as to accept His teachings. If that were only true.

Though there are extremely few who accept Apep as their lord and master, those who do are despicable beyond description. Most are assassins, murders of the desert wastes, killers who come in the night and leave their master’s calling card, a tent filled with asps within which the victim’s body, wracked by supernatural poison, rots. Even rarer are the hideous few who might consider serving Apep in a more spiritual way, as one of His priests. Those extremely rare few souls must be truly black and their hearts withered with venom. One such person, a human follower of the Church of the Poisoned Soul, found the only safe place for her to be was in a band of serpent adventurers, the Iron Coil.

What terrors or tragedies had befallen Ione al’Akma beni’Jhousef as a child that would drive her to such depths, none may ever know. What is known is that her priestly magics and skills have allowed her to pass unnoticed amongst the other sects of the Symballan Church, spreading her evil and helping her band of snakes to hatch vile plot after vile plot. Only rarely does she don the black robes of her order and prepare her unholy spiked mace to smite the righteous, but when she does, she is rarely defeated, even by warriors of superior skill.

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