Page 55 - Serpent Kingdoms

them could lead to a period of open warfare between the
scaled races.
Description

Sarrukh bodies come in two shapes: bipedal and snakelike. The
latter resemble certain yuan-ti abominations, with snakelike
ne of the fi ve original progenitor races bodies and heads as well as powerful arms that end in vicious
(also called creator races) of Faerûn, the claws. The bipedal sort has a humanoid upper torso, humanoid
Osarrukh built and maintained empires arms and legs, and a snakelike lower body. All sarrukh have
across most of the continent in the distant past. These ancient, distinctive, gleaming red eyes that strike fear into the hearts of
evil creatures are now all but gone, and even the name of their all the scaly races.
race has long been lost to the ages. Most sages who know of their
past glory refer to them simply as the saurians, or the progeni- Racial History
tors of the Scaled Ones.
The sarrukh have, however, left a lasting legacy: the racial The fi rst signifi cant civilizations of Toril were the empires
diversity of Faerûn’s scaled races. It was the sarrukh who took of the sarrukh, which rose and fell between –35,000 DR and
the scaly animals and monsters native to Toril and modifi ed –33,500 DR. This race of intelligent scaled creatures fi rst ap-
them into sentient beings such as yuan-ti, nagas, pterafolk, peared in the area known as Okoth, south of Mulhorand. The
and others. development of the sarrukh was relatively uncontested in their
homeland, and their population quickly surpassed the level sus-
Overview tainable by the local resources. Thus, the sarrukh were forced to
expand. They spread rapidly throughout much of Faerûn, con-
At one time, the sarrukh dominated all of Faerûn. Their mighty quering other lands and sowing the seeds for civilization as they
empires—the fi rst in the world—encompassed the jungles along went. They encountered short-lived and disorganized resistance
the shore of Azulduth, the eastern shore of the Narrow Sea, and from the savages that inhabited the lands, but the fact that the
the Chultan Peninsula. The sarrukh enslaved or sacrifi ced other sarrukh had already learned to smelt iron for steel weapons and
creatures in the name of their god, the World Serpent. armor made them virtually invincible. Within a hundred years,
Eventually, problems of their own making caused the sar- most of Faerûn was theirs.
rukh empires to crumble. In the vacuum created by the fall The Mhairshaulk Empire arose in –34,800 DR on the
of the sarrukh, their created races rose to prominence, estab- Chultan peninsula, and the Isstosseffi fi l Empire followed in
lishing power centers of their own—many of which are still –34,500 DR, based in what is now the Great Desert of Anau-
active today. Amazingly, however, the sarrukh have managed roch. Okoth, the fi rst of the sarrukh empires, still encompassed
to remain relevant even in modern-day Faerûn. Despite their the race’s original homeland. Lesser realms, including the city
small numbers, they can still command the loyalty of the of Ss’thar’tiss’ssun (in what is now the Forest of Wyrms) and
races they once created. But an immense rift has opened up the city of Ilimar (which is split between the Great Swamp of
between the surviving sarrukh clans, and the enmity among Rethild and the Gulthmere Forest) sprang up outside of these

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