Father Set

Set
Set, in its seven-headed form
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	In print: The Phoenix on the Sword, Weird Tales, (December, 1932); In comics: Sub-Mariner #9 (January, 1969).
Created by	Robert E. Howard; Roy Thomas
In-story information
Species	Demon
Abilities	Vast mystical Powers

Set was the chief deity, a serpent-god, or “arch-demon”, of the Stygian people in Robert E. Howard’s stories of Conan the Barbarian in the Hyborian Age.

He is apparently an amalgam of the name of the Egyptian god Set and the appearance and characteristics of the Egyptian monster Apep and the Greek mythological figure the Lernaean Hydra.

Set first appeared in Robert E. Howard's first Conan short story The Phoenix on the Sword, (first published in Weird Tales, December 1932); this story introduces Thoth-Amon, a follower of "the serpent god Set".

Symbols of Set:

Set was regularly offered human sacrifice by the Stygians:

... chained captives had knelt by the hundreds during festivals to have their heads hacked off by the priest-king in honor of Set, the Serpent-god of Stygia...

In addition, giant snakes, kept in the temples, are regularly set loose in the streets of Stygian cities, to kill and devour humans. That, too, is considered a sacrifice to Set. Stygians are expected to accept this fate with equanimity, anyone daring to resist the snakes likely to be lynched as a blasphemer (which nearly happened to Conan when he defended himself and killed a snake).

In the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian, the villainous Thulsa Doom leads the "Cult of the Serpent God Set".

The god was later extensively used in Marvel Comics' various Conan series starting in the 1970s. Of those series, the issue which contains the first mention of "Set" is Conan the Barbarian, Vol.1 #7 (July 1971).