Minna Harper, VULPE Wiz/Alc, Lv. 36

The surface reading of this ritual is simple: snakes eat eggs. The reading slightly below the surface is that eggs are fragile and helpless – a better choice of prey than waiting for it to hatch and grow into something that can fight back – and that breaking one of them lets the Serpent Queen verify that she's not being cheated.

The mystery cult symbolic parallel construction underlying all this is that the ritual establishes an expectation of the supplicant's complicity. Even though it would take a rare and odd Namer to consider "breaking the fertilized egg of a beast" to be a sin, one still can't get away with just leaving the eggs out and telling one's self "whatever happens, happens;" one must break the offering by one's own hand. ("You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. If you can't stomach that much, why are you even here?") Once in place, this expectation can be leveraged as a control technique when later initiations inevitably raise the stakes.

When she was young, there came a day when she was given permission to make the offering herself. On that occasion, her parents candled the eggs and selected ones with a well-developed embryo; seeing a tiny bird's freshly bloodied carcass pour into the bowl – where, before, she had only seen white and yolk – she predictably recoiled in shock, and was reprimanded for her irresoluteness by being made to repeat the offering until she didn't flinch at doing it.