Cooperative Snake-Stabbing

Question: Hey, I was wondering - how does Seth manage to keep Ra safe against Apep, when Titan Avatars are meant to be ridiculously powerful? He's been doing it for eons now, so surely there must be some kind of method he uses to keep the sun-god safe from darkness.

Like any good terrifying defender of cosmic order, Set understands the value of cooperation and delegation. He's not much of a team player under normal circumstances, but for the safeguarding of Ra, he makes exceptions.

While Set is the dude we always remember for guarding the solar barque from the depredations of Apep, and indeed he's probably the most important, he's not the only one on the boat helping out. Various texts and myths around Ancient Egypt in both kingdoms give various other deities that ride the boat and aid Ra and Set; Thoth is sometimes said to stand at Ra's side to provide him counsel in times of need, often accompanied by Ma'at and/or Geb, while more physically adept guards and protectors include Horus, Mehen, Maahes, Serket and Neith (basically whomever that part of Egypt thought of as the most powerful protectors or warriors of the time). Wepwawet, the psychopomp son of Anubis, is also in some areas said to ride the boat to aid it in its journeys, and the Egyptian triumvirate of magical gods - Hu, Saa and Heku - attend the sun-god symbolically as well in order to provide him the magical might he needs.

So really, what we have is not so much Set single-handedly defeating a Titan Avatar every night, but rather a crack team of a bunch of gods struggling to defeat a Titan Avatar every night. The reason Set is the linchpin of the whole affair is that it's always Set who is the only one who has the fortitude of body and mind to survive Apep's most powerful assaults; when Apep hypnotizes, poisons or drops impenetrable curtains of darkness over the rest of the defenders, it's always Set who is the only one to be able to stay standing in the face of the onslaught, and Set who is the only one strong enough to wield the great spear and stab Apep in the face enough to let the barque get by. Apep and Set also have a very personal and nasty rivalry going on, and insult one another pretty heatedly while everyone else is just trying to survive.

This is all underlined pretty strongly in the myth in which Set does not accompany the barque one day and, thanks to his absence, Apep is able to swallow it, causing a sudden eclipse, and Set has to go rescue everybody by cutting the snake's belly open to help them escape. Set needs a team of gods behind him to help fend off the great evil, but that team of gods also needs Set in order to be fully effective. Everybody works together to make sure that Ra makes it through the night and the cosmic order is preserved (and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Pesedjet Virtues of Harmony and Order in action right there!).

The giant spear, said to be too heavy for anyone but Set to wield, that is used to stab Apep and ward him off is probably also a powerful relic in the Scion setting; while it's sometimes referred to as a "spear of fire", which might refer to Set's powers over lightning, it's also called "iron", suggesting that it might be a concrete object. It probably gives him insane bonuses to things like Guardian and resistance rolls, and probably packs a hefty wallop with applied to a snakey face.