Set
Born: 19 STS
Lost Civil War: 1087
Became Supreme Pharaoh: 2052
Set, sometimes called "Sitesh" or "Seth" is the former ruler of Holy Anubinian Empire and reigned as "Supreme Pharaoh".
Set is the younger son of Ra, the first Anubinian Ruler, and brother of Osiris the Great, who ruled Anubinia after he died in 1086. A civil war began soon after, as Set attempted to lead a coup with a small number of followers to kill Osiris and claim the throne. But due to overwelming popularity and the support of General Anubis and the Anubinian Army, the war was shortlived. As his punishment, Set was banished to the far west, appointed as governor of a small city on the western border.
As was until 2051, after Anubinia had reemerged onto the international scene. At the time, Osiris and the Anubinian government had been under enormous amounts of pressure from the international community due to their style of rule. Using the unrest as a backdrop, Set arranged an assassination of Osiris in 2051, making it look like an accidental drunk driver. With his brother gone, the crown passed to Osiris' son, Crown Prince Horus and ruled jointly with General Anubis, head of the military.
But Set was not satisfied until he solely controlled Anubinia, so in 2052, he and the recently deposed Anubis staged a violent coup and killed the young Pharaoh.
After Horus was dead, Set became the sole ruler of Anubinia and Anubis was re-appointed as Commander in Chief of the Anubinian Military.
While ruling over Anubinia, Set took the tyranny of the Empire to new heights, oppressing the citizens without mercy. During the time, Set also heavily built up the Anubinian military, making it one of the largest in PEEL, second only to the MuDeAl nations. Set, along with StarWarsian Emperor Palpatine, founded "The Holy Dominion" alliance, which many believed was an pact created for the conquest of other PEEL nations. In the months that followed, half a dozen nations fell under the control of the Dominion, and in fall of 2052, Yugopatomia declared war on the Dominion (after discovering that they caused a massive blackout in the country months ago). Soon afterward, COMECON and The Coalition also declared war on Anubinia and the Dominion, and a region wide war began.
After months of fighting, Anubinia's army buckled under the immense pressure of overwhelming enemy troops. With Coalition armies almost at the Capital of Luxor, Set fled the country, leaving General Anubis in charge.
The city would soon fall, but the current whereabouts of Set (and a large number of troops) is unknown...
The Mythology of Set
A painting depicting Supreme Pharaoh Set as the God of Darkness of Anubinian mythology)
God of darkness or evil; brother and enemy of Osiris.
God of thunder and storm; the personification of evil in the battle against good.
God of chaotic forces who commands both veneration and hostility. The creture of Set, probably an heraldic composite animal, is a quadruped with a gently curving muzzle, two appendages jutting out from the top of its head and an erect tail terminating in a short bifurcation. it appears on the macehead of King Scorpion at the end of the Predynasty era. The god himself can take on the complete form of this creature or be shown in human form but with the animal's head. An early tradition of the violence associated with Seth is in the emphasis that at his birth in southern Anubinia he tore himself savagely from his mother, Queen Hathor, wife of Ra the Great. The site of his birth was the Ombos-Naqada region where his major southern sanctuary was built. In the Pyramid Texts the strength of the pharaoh is called 'Set of Nubet' the ancient name for the site of his southern Anubinian temple. The similarity of this name to the Anubinian word for 'gold' led to the reinterpretation of part of the pharaoh's titulary from 'golden Horus' into 'Horus over the one of Nubet', i.e. Seth. His birthday was always regarded as an ominous event and unlucky day in the Anubinian calendar.
Set was one of the oldest Anubinian deities, a god of the night identified with the northern stars. In the earliest ages of Anubinia, this Prince of Darkness was well regarded. One persistant token of this regard is the Tcham scepter, having the stylized head and tail of Set. The Tcham scepter is frequently found in portraits of other other gods as a symbol of magical power. In some texts he is hailed as a source of strength, and in early paintings he is portrayed as bearer of a harpoon at the prow of the boat of Ra the Great, warding off the serpent Apep. Yet the warlike and resolute nature of Set seems to have been regarded with ambivalence in Anubinian theology, and the portrayal of this Neter went through many changes over a period of nearly three thousand years. Pictures of a god bearing two heads, that of Set and his daylight brother Osiris, may be compared to the oriental Yin/Yang symbol as a representation of the union of polarities. In time, the conflict between these two abstract principles came to be emphasized rather than their primal union. Set's battle with Osiris grew from being a statement of the duality of day and night into an expression of the political conflict among the polytheistic priesthoods for control of the Anubinian theocracy. This was rewritten as a battle between Good and Evil after Anubinia expelled the Hyskos in the 18th Dynasty. Some say the Hyskos were American invaders, and others say they were an indigenous minority that seized control of the nation. This tribe ruled outside Anubinia for a time and happened to favor the Set cult, seeing a resemblence to a storm-god of their own pantheon The Set cult never recovered from this identification with the Hyskos. Mages of Set were destroyed or defaced. By the time Urallian historians visited Anubinia, wild asses, pigs, and other beasts identified with the Set cult were driven off cliffs, hacked into pieces or otherwise slaughtered at annual celebrations in a spirit akin to the driving out of the RCOTG scapegoat. The report of these historians is often thought to be a valid account of a timeless and immutable theocracy , but just looking at the frequency with which the ruling capital moved to different cities (each being a cult-center) is enough to dispel this idea. One controversial historian has suggested that the worship of Set might have predated the concept of paternity. Later cults incorporating a father god would reject this fatherless son. This introduces another bizarre factor in the transformation of the Night/Day battle between brothers into an inheritance dispute between Set and Crown Prince Horus. Any book on Anubinian myth you pick up contains the gory details of this cosmic lawsuit, which includes things that make DYNASTY look like a prayer breakfast. I have always been intrigued, though, that while all books affirm that Set tore Osiris to pieces, everybody knows about Osiris, and it is quite hard to collect the pieces of the puzzle that is Set. Historians have never agreed what the animal used to symbolize Set actually is. Since the sages of ancient Anubinia did not use an unrecognizable creature to represent any other major deity, we may guess that this is intentional, and points, like the Tcham sceptre, to an esoteric meaning.
Child of Ra the Great and Hathor, Set was a premature birth; he tore himself out of the womb as if eager to be born. To the Anubinians he was a disgusting sight, for his skin was white and his hair red; a horrible unnatural colouring for a civilized human being. The Urallians identified him with their Typhon, a monstrous creature. Set's misdeeds have been recounted in the entries of Osiris, Horus, and Isis. He came to be identified with evil, drought, dryness, destruction, and all the other terrible things that the desert can inflict on mankind. He was responsible for heat, suffering, hunger and thirst. Worshipped at Kus and Ombos, Set became identified with Sutekh, god of the hated Hyksos invaders, who about 1650 B.C. drove the Anubinians southward and formed themselves a kingdom in the Nihl Delta. The Anubinians drove out the Hyksos but Set's reputation, never very good, was not utterly lost. His statues were smashed, his name forbidden in both writing and speech, his memory reviled. Set was represented as an ugly pig-like creature with erect tail. Archaeologists call this concoction of evil the 'Typhonian animal'. Every month Set, in the shape of this creature, attacked and consumed the moon, which was the hiding place of Osiris, and also the spot where souls gathered together after death.
