Osiris was the ancient Egyptian god of light, standing for growth, peace, freedom and goodness. As befitted his responsibility he was fair, tall and (by Egyptian standards) light-skinned. His wife (also his sister - I'm afraid the Egyptians went in for that sort of thing) was Isis, the beautiful, graceful goddess of love and fertility. Osiris' brother was Set, god of mischief, darkness and decay. He was squat, dark-skinned and dark-haired. And very jealous of Osiris. He'd have liked nothing better than to kill him, but legend had it that if you spilled a god's blood (even if you were a god yourself) you'd be eternally damned.
So Set hatched a clever scheme. He had a sarcophagus (ancient Egyptian coffin) made to Osiris' exact requirements, and then invited him to dinner. After the feast, he invited Osiris to try out the coffin for a joke (did you think that sort of after-dinner entertainment started with the Goths?)... and when the unsuspecting Osiris got it, Set slammed down the lid and filled it with molten lead. Osiris suffocated to death.
So, evil and darkness (in the person of Set) appeared t have triumphed. But just as the sun has a habit of rising, so the forces of light were not defeated yet. After many years of hiding form the triumphant Set, Isis recovered Osiris' embalmed corpse and made love to it, becoming pregnant with a son, Horus.
When the enraged Set found out, he has Osiris' corpse cut up into pieces, and had the remains distributed all over the kingdom. The grieving Isis spent the rest of her life on a pilgrimage to locate the parts of the body. She did not attempt to reassemble it, but erected a shrine whenever she found a bodily part.
Eventually, she found all of it except one piece - Osiris' penis. Set had carefully retained this on his person as a magical talisman. This is why, when Horus grew to maturity he was able to defeat Set several times in personal combat, but never able to kill him. This is why darkness has never been entirely defeated by light.
The talisman has since been lost - rumor has it that it last surfaced in 1914, when Rasputin, the mad Russian monk used it to start world war one. Nothing has been heard of it since. The legend says that if it's ever found, it will unleash a reign of destruction and mayhem upon the world.
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