Zehir

Zehir, the Cloaked Serpent is an evil god of poisons, assassins, and darkness. He is the creator of snakes and also of yuan-ti. Most of his followers were annihilated during the Calamity, and those who survived are in self-induced stasis or hunted by the followers of the Spider Queen and the Crawling King.

Appearance
Many depictions of him can be found in his long forgotten and abandoned temples. He takes the form of man's body with a half-dozen arms and a gargantuan fanged serpent head, with strands of thick, dark hair sprouting from his scaled body that swirl around to form layers of shadow, obscuring his entire form.

Commandments of the Cloaked Serpent
The tenets of Zehir's religion are largely related to the sowing of chaos.

Places of worship
Many temples were built to Zehir, but were lost to time when his following was largely culled.

The Mordant Isle
Off the coast of the Tooth of Zehir is the Mordant Isle. On the island, the ruins of Sariss, the Jade City, are home to a colony of winged serpentfolk who worship Zehir.

The Vault of Shumas
In the Aggrad Mountains of Marquet, there was a hidden temple guarded by yuan-ti, a manticore, and an undead spirit calling herself "the caregiver". The caregiver watched over the sleeping children of Zehir "until our epoch begins."

Urukayxl
On the island of Urukayxl in the Lucidian Ocean, there is a large five-sided pyramid that serves as a temple to Zehir. The pyramid and its surrounding village were largely populated by yuan-ti.

History
Zehir is one of the Betrayer Gods who, during the Founding, wished to join the Primordials in dashing the mortal races from Exandria and starting fresh elsewhere. The Betrayer Gods were all banished to prison-like planes, though it's unclear to which plane Zehir was banished at that time.

Before the Calamity, Zehir and the other Betrayer Gods each forged one of the Arms of the Betrayers, sentient weapons using the life force of greater fiends. Zehir's weapon was the Lash of Shadows, is a whip with five serpent heads, within which is the life force of a marilith called Sizlifeth.

Just before the Calamity, followers of Zehir slaughtered the people in the Vault of Shumas and locked it off. Similarly, seers of a serpentfolk empire foresaw the Calamity; to survive its dangers, the empire created a magical stasis field under their capital city of Vos'sykriss (now Visa Isle) where its strongest people waited to one day emerge and rebuild their empire; the ancient serpentkin worship Zehir above all others.

During the Calamity, Zehir ambushed and killed many of Melora's followers near one of her shrines in the Lushgut Forest. Melora's anguished scream altered the forest, making it tortuous and thorny.

Relationships
The Cloaked Serpent loathes the Lawbearer and the Wild Mother, as they stand for everything he despises: love, order, and life. His followers try to appease him by using poison and fire to undermine civilization and consume nature.

Uk'otoa
The Cloaked Serpent is the creator of Uk'otoa, the Great Leviathan. After Zehir was banished during the Calamity, Uk'otoa was left to rule the Lucidian Ocean as his proxy. However, Uk'otoa began demanding that people who entered his domain renounce their gods and worship him, which enraged Zehir. To punish Uk'otoa's insolence, in the fifth century PD it was cultists of Zehir who corrupted a series of temples dedicated to Uk'otoa and sealed the leviathan deep beneath the ocean floor.

In one of these temples on Urukayxl, the Mighty Nein saw three murals depicting Uk'otoa, Desirat, and Quajath. The three lesser idols have a pact, if one escapes, it will help the others, so presumably Zehir is an antagonist of Desirat and Quajath as well.

Appearances and mentions

 * Campaign Two

Trivia

 * Matt confirmed in that the three entities pictured in the yuan-ti temple, including Uk'otoa, are all creations of the gods. He said some creations of the gods became "pseudo-gods" after being left behind by their creators.
 * "Zehir" means "venom, poison" in Turkish.