Lines in the Sand

Question: In the constant war for succession between Horus and Set, which Egyptian gods do you think are on Set's side in the conflict?

It's difficult to say, really! There are a lot of factors in play, plus political situations that might change at the drop of a hat, and on top of all that Isis and Horus are both in there with their Ultimate Manipulation chicanery. But we have a few suggestions.

The most obvious ones are Set's wife and sons; they're likely to be on his side simply through family loyalty, if nothing else. They have a vested interest in his triumph, which puts all of them in a better position, and of course they may be kind of pissed off at cousin Horus for taking the throne if they believe Set's claim is better. On the other hand, they're also all at least slightly on the fence; Sobek tends to help Horus out when asked and isn't particularly hostile to anyone (but then again, do you really expect the crocodile to be much of a politician?), Nephthys was in some variant traditions (which, depending on the interpretation you like, might be true facts or later retcons by priests attempting to make Osiris look better and Set and his family look worse) infatuated with Osiris, not to mention very close to her sister Isis, both of which might be factors that sway her more than Set might like. Certainly Nephthys aided Isis in her burial and mourning for Osiris after Set killed him, which might just be sisterly solidarity but might also indicate that she isn't taking a firm side in all this. Anubis is suspect for the same reasons, thanks to the fact that those same diverging myths disagree on whether he's actually Set's son or Osiris', and he doesn't involve himself in the doings of folks above ground very much anyway.

However, Set is the grand defender of the pantheon and indeed the whole world from the depredations of Apep, so those who are likewise involved in that endeavor with him might view him as a comrade in arms as well as knowing firsthand how much he cares about his people. Ra, who is personally guarded and rescued by Set every single night, is almost certainly firmly in his came, and it doesn't hurt that Isis screwed him over with her tricksy magic spells a while ago and probably ensured that he'll never like her again. Various warlike gods who ride the boat and fight with Set, which depending on the version might include Maahes, Monthu, Khonsu, Serket and others, may also be more inclined to support him as a powerful and capable leader, especially if they were there that day he didn't go on the boat in order to go attend Anubis' birth and the Horus-led defense team got their asses handed to them.

And where Ra goes, the Eye of Ra is likely to go, so those goddesses who are or have been the Eye - Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Tefnut and so on - may also rally behind Set as a result of Ra's influence. How much influence Ra still has after Isis' meddling is up to individual Storytellers to decide, though.

Oddly enough, those paragraphs look backwards: unrelated people Set hangs out with at work are the most likely to be gung-ho about getting him into power, while his own immediate family is kind of unsure and possibly working for the other side. It's a great example of a different set of Virtues at work: when you have Order, Piety, Harmony and Conviction, you're likely to believe in someone you respect with a whole and unflagging heart, but that's more important than pesky things like filial loyalty that other pantheons might hold in higher esteem.

And, of course, there are at least as many gods arrayed on Horus' side in this very, very old argument. Gods probably can and do change sides all the time, based on who they think is winning, new information they learn about one or the other being a douchebag or the manipulative meddling of the social powerhouses among them. It's a Game-of-Thrones-esque labyrinth of byzantine intrigue, where everything might change at a moment's notice and the only surety is that you don't want to end up on the losing side at the wrong moment.

Lord of the Uttermost Limit

Question: Who is Neb-er-tcher?

Nebertcher is a title borne by a few different gods in the ancient Egyptian religion; it means "lord of the furthest place" or "lord of the uttermost limit", meaning that its bearer is the owner or creator of all of creation. It's been used variously for different gods depending on their functions, and some scholars are still trying to figure out if it was originally a completely separate god of its own or was always just an epithet used for others.

The god most frequently referred to as Nebertcher is Ra (or Amun-Ra, or Atum-Ra, any of the many combinations of Ra). In the Book of Overthrowing Apep, the creation of the world is recounted as being performed by Nebertcher, who also displays many familiar signs of the myths of Ra - being self-created and henceforth creating humanity out of loneliness, creating Shu and Tefnut, being related to Khepri as an alternate form of himself, creating the Eye that shed light but was then lost to him when it wandered off, and so forth. Scholars have occasionally also posited that this might be referring to Ptah as creator god, since the creation is accomplished via the sacred words of Nebertcher just as Ptah's sacred words were considered the force of creating in his cults, rather than the more popular image of Ra masturbating the world into existence.

At other times, however, it's clear that Nebertcher is being used to refer to Osiris; because he had died but was reborn and was believed to do so in concert with the cycles of fertility around the Nile, he was strongly associated with the title as the god who caused the life-giving plants to grow and allowed humanity to live - literally, a creator of life. As Nebertcher, Osiris was worshiped as a fertility god whose sacrifice and return granted the world the ability to bear life again. His attachment to the title is a slightly later one, beginning around the fifth dynasty in the Old Kingdom, but he was still probably given the name fairly popularly.

And, of course, because Nebertcher is a title that implies dominion over all of creation, it was used by Egyptian Christians starting in the first century AD to refer to their one mighty monotheistic god, which may have further muddied the waters. Most references to Nebertcher are from Coptic religious materials and are actually talking about the Christian god, with comparatively few (but strong!) ones dating back to the Egyptian polytheism that preceded them.

It's also entirely possible (as it's always possible with Egyptian myth, in which no one can make up their minds and maybe everybody is actually somebody else) that Nebertcher might have originally been a separate god entirely who only later was strongly absorbed into the myths of Ra and Osiris. We don't have any attestations of Nebertcher in which he isn't obviously aligned with one of the gods above, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have happened; it's possible that the original figure of Nebertcher was some primordial creation Titan who only later was syncretized with Ra and Osiris and began to fade from the memory of humanity.

As far as using him in a Scion game, we'd recommend just considering Nebertcher to be an epithet of Ra (later occasionally borrowed by his homeboy Osiris) - or, if you really want to run with the Coptic connection, that it's either an epithet for the Christian god or perhaps Aten mucking around in Egyptian monotheism again. Nothing Nebertcher actually does in myth isn't covered by that, so unless you have a really amazing idea for a plot in which he's a separate figure, it's probably easiest not to overcomplicate this one.

Seriously, Egyptian myth already gives you way plenty of opportunities to complicate things as it is.