Page 26 - Serpent Kingdoms

NAGAS

GUARDIAN NAGA NAGAHYDRA
A guardian naga looks like a snake with a beautiful human face. A nagahydra is a monstrous, snakelike creature with multiple
Its body is covered with green-gold scales that exude a sweet, humanlike heads. Its scales are multihued and arranged in a
fl oral scent. A gold frill extends from the top of its head to the tip reticulated pattern, and a thicket of fi ery red and orange spines
of its tail. See page 192 of the Monster Manual for full details. juts from its body along each of its backbones. Their statistics
appear on page 77.
IRIDESCENT NAGA
This gentle creature gets its name from the fi ne, mirrorlike Racial History
scales that cover its body, radiating a scintillating array of colors
whenever it moves. Its head is only vaguely human, and it has Nagas were created by the sarrukh in the early days of Mhair-
colorful feathers in lieu of hair. A frill of silver feathers extends shaulk. Like the yuan-ti, the nagas were the products of magical
from its neck down to its tail. Iridescent naga statistics are given interbreeding that combined the bodies of powerful serpents
on page 76. with the natural intelligence and inquisitiveness of the human
mind. The fi rst nagas produced were water nagas, bred spe-
SPIRIT NAGA cifi cally to explore Abeir-Toril for their increasingly withdrawn
Cloaked in the cloying stink of carrion, this creature looks as masters. Only beings such as these could explore both on land
foul as it smells. The black body of a spirit naga is banded in and below the sea.
swaths of bright crimson, and stringy hair hangs limply from Approximately –33,500 DR, while sarrukh-ruled Mhair-
its vaguely human head. The Monster Manual describes them shaulk slowly declined, the heart of the empire increasingly
on page 192. became the preserve of the yuan-ti. The unexplored territories
beyond its periphery, however, attracted the nagas, who made
WATER NAGA longer and longer forays into the wilderness. By –24,000 DR,
The water naga is covered with emerald-green scales in reticu- when yuan-ti-ruled Mhairshaulk fell, the nagas had almost
lated patterns that run the length of its body. Fiery red and wholly withdrawn from their ancient homeland and scattered
orange spines jut out along its spine from the base of its vaguely across all of Faerûn.
human head to the tip of its tail. Their statistics can be found In the millennia that followed, many nagas became indi-
on page 192 of the Monster Manual. vidually powerful in Faerûn, but they never came together
to forge a great civilization of their own. Najara, centered
on the Serpent Hills and the Forest of Wyrms, is the closest
Minor Naga Subraces thing to a powerful naga empire that has ever existed on Toril.
Nagas have always ruled the Kingdom of Snakes, the bulk of
The minor subraces of nagakind are even more bizarre in its populace consists of ophidians, and most of the day-to-day
appearance than the major ones. governance is conceded to the yuan-ti of the Hss’tafi tribe.
Indeed, only the subtle infl uence of these yuan-ti has enabled
BANELAR NAGA Najara to survive as long as it has. The Nagalands, south of the
This foul creature has a dark purple-green, snakelike body that Vilhon Reach, constitute a more typical example of the kind
ends in a dull brown tail. A ring of tiny tentacles surrounds its of anarchical, individual-focused society that nagas naturally
mouth, and a pair of green-white, glistening eyes is set deep into form on their own.
its oversized humanoid head. See page 72 for their statistics. After the fall of yuan-ti-ruled Mhairshaulk, different naga
bloodlines began to favor certain inherent traits more than
BONE NAGA others, and in time fi ve major naga subraces evolved: dark
Once a naga of a different kind, this undead horror has been nagas, guardian nagas, iridescent nagas, spirit nagas, and water
reduced to a serpentine skeleton with a bone tail stinger. Its skull nagas. Some dark and spirit nagas sought out ancient rituals of
is humanlike except for its long fangs and the cold, cruel light the sarrukh and transformed themselves into beings of immense
that burns within its empty eye sockets. The tempate appears power known as ha-nagas. A few water nagas sought to reverse
on page 75. the racial fragmentation, but the result was the creation of the
creatures now called nagahydras. The minor subraces known as
FAERÛNIAN HA-NAGA banelar nagas and bone nagas both appeared within the past
This creature’s scales have no set color; rather, they take on hues two millennia. The former resulted from a magical ritual that
to match their environment. A ha-naga’s head is that of a clas- the followers of Bane employed on water nagas, and the latter
sically beautiful human man or woman. For more information, were the products of dark naga experimentation in the ebon arts
see page 75. of necromancy.

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