Sobki, God of Crocodiles
God of Crocodiles
Divine Domains
Icon of rivers, fishermen, motherhood, protection of children and the vulnerable, ferocity, stealth, and brutality.
Divine Symbols & Sigils
Sobki favors symbols of her home in Egypt and the culture surrounding it, such as offerings of fish native to the Nile, gold, frankincense, and Sobki is particularly fond of locally made silks and weavings, her cult controlling the export of them to her shrines and temples around the world. The lotus flower is another prominent symbol of her, with it often being used to ornament offerings of food or drink. Crisp white linen and silks are also another symbol associated with her.
Symbolic worship of one's own body through bathing, the use of cosmetics such as makeup and hair treatments, and adorning jewelry is a prominent way to worship Sobki and heavily encouraged by her cult, the act of doing so considered an offering in of itself.
Holidays
Mother's Day is a prominent holiday for Sobki's cult, differing from that of Olrath's celebrations of it by focusing more on mothers with young children than infants. In particular, Sobki's celebration of the holiday allows for all mothers in her following to leave their children in her care in order to take extravagant days of rest at her temples and to enjoy the spas and luxury cosmetics they offer.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Sobki is a massive nile crocodile with a deep brown coloration on her back and pale cream on her belly and jaws. Her divine form greatly outsizes all non-divine crocodiles, being longer than many commercial busses. The midpoint of her tail is missing scales from her past battles with a fallen hippo god, and the injury has never fully healed, presenting as a slight dip.
She rarely uses her mortal form, but when she does, presents as a heavier set woman in her 40s or 50s with a confident stride, many adornments of jewelry and makeup, and her head clean shaven.
Physical quirks
Her tail is missing some section of scale tips, a result of a battle with the god of hippos.
Apparel & Accessories
Sobki is often adorned with soft silks with jewels and gold and known for having an affinity for rings, generally worn on her teeth.
Mental characteristics
Accomplishments & Achievements
Sobki's most notable act was in a war between herself and a past god of hippos, in the War of the Nile. The War of the Nile was a conflict over which of the many gods in Egypt could claim the river as their symbol, fought between Sobki, the Hippo, the Vulture, the Viper, and the Lion. During this ancient conflict, she mainly stayed out of the land based conflicts, only attacking those that treaded too closely to the water's edge, remarking that all the pantheon could squabble for the shores all they liked, but that in the end, the waters were hers and hers alone. Angered by this, the hippo attacked her cult, her ships, and her children, and threatened to block the Nile itself and turn the land into rich shallow marshland, fit for his kind and too shallow for the crocodile.
Sobki challenged the hippo to battle over the river, and it is claimed that many thousands came to the banks to watch, including the other warring Egyptian gods, exhausted from their own battles and able to safely drink while Sobki and the Hippo were distracted. Many accounts of the battle claim that the battle at first was a great spectacle, with crocodiles and hippos rushing to defend their patrons from one another, the force of the battle causing the river to flood its banks, but soon went quiet, with the warring gods unseen under the water's surface until the dawn of the following day. As the sun broke, the waters became black with the thick river mud and seemed to boil as the victor rose to the surface- Sobki, clutching in her jaws the severed head of the hippo, that she consumed. Her body was blackened with the river mud, hiding her grievous wounds from sight, giving her the appearance of not being wounded at all, and thus earning her the title of the Great Ironscale.
Personality Characteristics
Hygiene
Sobki is impeccably clean and spends almost all of her time in divine form. When not performing her duties as a god, she is often resting in her primary temple in a large pool fed by the river itself being bathed by her most devout priests. She gets her claws trimmed daily, scales scrubbed and polished, and adorned with luxurious silks and jewelry along with scented oils. Her divine paint is applied during this time as well, made from crushed lapis lazuli. She encourages this same level of cleanliness in all of her followers and children, who often take turns joining her in her pampered bathing routines while in crocodile form.
Social
Family Ties
The crocodile god has many children who often follow at her side, the smallest and youngest of such often carried on her back or in her jaws for protection. Sobki is incredibly defensive of them, protecting them at all costs. Such behavior earned her the title 'The Great Ironscale' for shrugging off even the most brutal attacks when protecting her offspring.
Social Aptitude
Sobki is known for having an incredible amount of patience and holding few grudges, being one of the much more easy going gods. She is incredibly strong willed and has little fear of anyone or anything, shrugging off threats from even the most aggressive gods with ease. She moves for no one but herself, stalwart in a fierce determination that she cannot be shoved aside once she sets her mind to something. That being said, she is also incredibly defensive of her cult and her children, quickly striking into action when any of them are threatened and ensuring those who pose any danger to them are quickly and brutally destroyed.
Her enemies are few, not for her lack of making them, but that Sobki ensures they do not survive an encounter with her.
She is known to have several conflicts with the god of hippos, due to both sharing heavy association with rivers being their primary domains.
Relationships
Relationship Reasoning
Olrath and Sobki are both gods of motherhood, embodying very different aspects of it from one another and as such, their respective cults work quite closely in tandem with one another. Olrath, for most mortals, embodies motherhood of infants, while Sobki that of children, and many of their followers will shift from one cult to another over the course of their lifetimes. They share in being leaders of Mother's Day celebrations, purposefully taking on different aspects of the holiday from one another to prevent competition. This also occurs in their day to day outside of the festivities and the aspect of motherhood, as outside of that, Sobki is often regarded as a war god, and Olrath a god of the home.
Relationship Reasoning
Like Olrath to Ferventi, Sobki is also an ally of the wolf due to their aspects surrounding parenthood and as protectors of children. Unlike Olrath, however, the pair are much more distant and have a great many of differing ideals, and as such, do not coordinate together very often.
Divine Classification
Minor God
Religions
Species
Church/Cult
Honorary & Occupational Titles
God of Crocodiles, Lord of Rivers, The Great Ironscale
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Gender
female
Eyes
Copper
Hair
Bald
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Ruled Locations
Comments