[quote=HeySeuss]Requested Role:
Dihira, the Dark Librarian, the Serpent of Knowledge, Mistress of the House of Books, Mother of Serpents. A daughter of Svanus and heir to his knowledge.[/quote]

[quote=Dihira][i]~Conspiracy is such a...treacherous notion. What did you expect would happen?~[/i][/quote]

[hider=Dihira, Dark Librarian][hider=Divine Portfolio][b]Mistress of the House of Books:[/b] As keeper and Librarian of the House of Books, Dihira possesses an intrinsic knowledge of exactly where in the library a tome is located, how to find it, and how to read it. Due to the internal workings of the domain (see the section on The House of Books), this power is in and of itself, invaluable.

[b]Wellsprung Knowledge:[/b] While Dihira is not all-knowing, she nonetheless has unrestricted access to all knowledge. Anything she does not know, she can learn in short order, including incredibly specific and arbitrary things such as 'What were they thinking on Thursday?' If one had a plan they do not wish for her to know of, the only way to prevent her learning of it is to ensure she has no suspicion of a plan even existing. Any mention of a plan to her, with sufficient pertinent details (whose plan it is, for example), would enable her to uncover a complete discourse on the plan with a preamble by some venerable scholar and an accompanying critique by a wise philosopher, along with illustrations and illuminations on the more picturesque moments and even with accompanying iconography. Thankfully, she is not often known for intruding in the affairs of others and possesses no powers of divination or mental persuasion save for those used to govern the House of Books. This was the primary reason why her inclusion in the plot of the Downfall of Aroesus was pivotal - to risk leaving her out of the plan would have risked all the gods learning of it.

[b]Serpentine:[/b] Dihira is the Mother of all Serpents. This does not allude to mere Snakes and Reptiles in the Mortal Realm, as these are but pale reflections of the creatures known as Serpents. Dihira is the Mother of Alluring Temptation, Mother of Dragons and Wyverns, Mother of Stone-Eyed Basilisks, and paradoxically and retroactively Mother of the Eternal Serpent Ouroboros (who was technically created by Svanus). Her Servitors are the Feathered Serpents, Snakelike creatures with stunning arrays of plummage, as well as numerous hands and feet. They are most well known for patrolling the House of Books and for acting as Muses in the mortal world, moving unseen in the midst of the world with their Epiphianic Bows, inspiring great wisdom and great insanity in the minds of men.[/hider][hider=The House of Books]Dihira is the ruler of the dominion of the House of Books, an endless, sprawling labyrinthine library filled with every form of knowledge. Everything that is, was, will be, is not, cannot, was not, possible, impossible, dreamt, glimpsed, forgotten, seen, unseen, learnt, thought...

All and more reside within the shelves of the House of Books, whose rows and paths are infinite, twisting in upon themselves in great roiling coils, which form the body of the Eternal Serpent, Ouroboros, whose body the House is built within. Dihira retains dominion over the House and Ouroboros by right of Providence; she inherited control directly from her father Svanus upon birth as goddess of Knowledge. Its rule is tied intrinsically to her being and thus, short of destroying Ouroboros, cannot be undone.

Dihira is not intrinsically possessing of the infinitely infinitely infinite knowledge held within her own library, as she is foremost a Librarian, the aspect of the knowledge itself foreign to her being until she has consumed it directly. However, as the Librarian, Dihira knows precisely where every book is in the Library, and how to reach it, and how to read it - vital necessities, as it is possible to become lost for all eternity just by hanging around in the foyer for too long, and not all of the tomes are tomes in the normal sense of the word. To enter the Library and find a specific piece of knowledge without her aid is impossible, as mortal wanderers and gods alike who enter seeking something specific will be eternally cursed to anecdotal discoveries. Only by entreating Dihira, or else by offering the Serpent Ouroboros a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king_(folklore)]Rat King[/url] to eat, may an individual find what they are looking for.

To offer a Rat King to Ouroboros is in itself no simple thing, but to peruse the Library without Dihira's knowing of it is a risky proposition at best. The library's rows and reaches are infinitely infinitely infinite in their depths, and the long corridors are as much passageways into other universes and planes as they are repositories of knowledge. Dark, twisted, coiling eldritch forms that unravel form like errant smoke await the unwary, as well as expelling paths that shunt the victim into alien worlds, never to return, and always the fabled Feathered servitors of the Mistress herself constantly patrol. If Dihira were to become aware of the presence of an intruder, she could command Ouroboros to swallow them whole.

For gods, such obstacles are merely difficult to overcome. For mortals, they are nigh-insurmountable. There are many tales of fabled Heroic mortals who were forced to enter the Library at great personal peril in search of forbidden knowledge. In one fable, the Heroine Ariadne bested Dihira in a game of riddles, gaining her permission to browse freely. The Hero Fulmen permitted himself to be pierced through the neck by an Arrow of Empyrean Light shot from the legendary Veracious Bow, and thus carried directly through the library to the specific tome he sought. Dihira was so impressed by his sheer gall that she healed his injury and permitted him to leave unmolested.

Because 'unmolested' is far and away apart from the meaning of 'unaffected,' this still resulted in Fulmen wandering the library for decades trying to find his way back out, and there exists a chronicle of his travels in the House of Books in the form of a Poetic Eda which, rather than being conceived of by any mortal, was paradoxically retrieved from the Library itself by Fulmen just before he left for good.

There are many entrances and pathways that lead into the House of Books. The traditional entrance is to pass through the maw of the Eternal Serpent Ouroboros, whose head is lain at the summit of the realm of gods as a final obstacle to Mortals who would attempt to attain Apotheosis. The serpent itself is tasked to attempt to lure the unwary within using only verbally spoken words (the Feathered Servitors with the Spoken Swords were by admission, a bit much). However, any library in the mortal realm may possess, by chance or grace, a row that connects with one found within the depths of the House itself. In addition, any mortal who becomes truly, hopelessly lost may perform the Serpentine ritual; with success twisting the surrounding environs into a pathway into the Library, and failure resulting in the mortal being transformed into a Feathered Servitor.[/hider][Hider=Role in the Downfall of Aroesus]Dihira provided the insidious toxin that was used to taint the body of Lyrikes and ultimately weaken Aroesus sufficiently for the other gods to upbraid him. The poison was drawn from the Fractal Fangs of the Serpent Ouroboros in the House of Books, and weakened Aroesus by inducing a form of existential anguish known as Motem, amplifying the self-annihilating facets of Aroesus' psyche and forcing his very essence to erode under its own power.[/hider][hider=Description]Dihira's predominant drive is the maintenance of her library - as she was born a Librarian. She has little ambition beyond eternally tending to her own domain within the House of Books, and so is not a serious contender for the throne of Aroesus. However, she also believes in a rather embarrassingly extreme level of freedom of information. For every single sordid tale of some god bestowing cruel and unusual curses upon mortals or else cheating on their mate or that one time their testicles created the foam in the sea (long story), half of them were 'leaked' into the mortal world by way of mythological accounts 'inspired' in Mortal scholars through Dihira's Feathered Servitors. Dihira is relentless and mericless in her pursuit of creating accurate historical accounts of Divine politics and then disseminating them throughout the mortal world, which often has profound consequences. In the immediate wake of Aroesus' death, she immediately moved to inscribe the event in Human mythos, and thus every mortal worshiper became aware of the exact roles and places of every god involved during the event. She has no problems even with hanging her own dirty laundry out for everyone to see (she was the on-and-off lover of Fulmen during the many decades he spent lost in the House of Books, and made no effort to hide the fact that she provided the poison used to weaken Aroesus in her various anthologies). The worst of this is seen when she uncovers hidden knowledge of affairs which have been kept secret, which she will then abruptly expose to essentially every living entity in the world, as well as all the gods.

Dihira can also be just as cruel and haughty as the other gods when it comes to governing her domain and Portfolio. She has little tolerance for the destruction of knowledge of profaning repositories for it, and has cursed many mortals for banning, censoring, or burning books, as well as authors she deemed insufficiently productive and terrible poets. Many a conqueror has razed a city to the ground, only to go to great care to leave the central library untouched for fear of invoking her wrath. As a librarian, she is a stickler for proper decorum - hushed voices, or forever you will be forced to hiss with a snake's tongue. No fire, least you be burned by the knowledge kindled. No dirtying or damaging the pages or covers of books, least you would have gossip and rumors spread of you.

Bad poets are SHOT with BURNING, POISONED ARROWS (and she seems rather quick to judge based on whether your iambic pentameter is structured correctly).

She is also rather personally petty - although she does not mind when scholars write of her various misdeeds and failings, she is quick to chastise them if they dare actually criticize her actions or judge her.[/hider][hider=Fatal Flaws][b]Presumption of Genius:[/b] Dihira has consumed so much knowledge over the ages that she always asserts herself as the smartest and wisest Deity in the Heavens, and it goes without saying that Mortals are beneath even her contempt. She is so utterly convinced of her infallibility, that the notion has suffused with her psyche. Proving her wrong, even in a trivial matter or affair, would literally shatter every fiber of her being and fling each piece into the deepest recesses of the Library from the sheer blow to her ego - this would not be fatal, but it would preoccupy her with reassembling her broken form for quite some time.

[b]Purple Prose Prone:[/b] Dihira has a great weakness for literary theory, historical monograms, and philosophical texts. Many times, she has been distracted by a wise mortal speaking with her at length of such things while their adventurous companion would sneak into the stacks in search of arcane texts and lore. It hardly even matters how pretentious or ephemeral the subject in question is, so long as Dihira can be successfully engaged in conversation. Dihira can become so caught-up in such discussions that she can even become sexually infatuated with her conversation partner, if they are successful enough, which can lead to prolonged periods of absence in her oversight of the House of Books.

[b]No Sense of Propriety:[/b] Dihira does not care how sensitive or damaging a particular account of Divine actions might be - she /will/ see it produced in the mortal realm, even if doing so is incredibly inadvisable, for herself and others. The best she can be convinced to restrain herself is to momentarily withhold her accounts until a specific moment of time (the downfall of Aroesus for example), but more often she is the epitome of the Divine rumor mill.

[b]Ingeniously Untalented:[/b] Despite having access to limitless knowledge, Dihira is terrible at practicing any arts she may learn of. She might know every theory and nuance of blacksmithing, but were she actually to take to the hammer and anvil, she would be lucky if she could even produce a bent nail. The same is true of other disciplines, and thus, she often requires assistance from other gods in order to act on any of her knowledge.[/hider][/hider]