Café de Nuit

Serpent Kingdoms is a great sourcebook to pillage from even if you're not into FR. There is also a very nice trilogy of novels for it, the House of Serpents trilogy, by Lisa Smedman.

Dungeon #69 has the Slave Vats of the Yuan Ti which iirc is part of the Mere of the Dead Men series.

One also calls to mind the draconians from Dragonlance. I've often wondered if any might have been absorbed into RavenLoft when Thelgaard Keep was created. What kind of relations might the the two races have with one another? Would they be reluctant allies or hated enemies? How might they come together? It was encounters like this that made bridging mechanisms like Ravenloft and Spelljammer so appealing to me to begin with.

Isn't the woman in Carnival with the snake formally the snake familar of a wizard from Sithicus? If so, one could certainly imagine her as being a yuan-ti.

[quote="Manofevil"]One also calls to mind the draconians from Dragonlance. I've often wondered if any might have been absorbed into RavenLoft when Thelgaard Keep was created.

You mean Nedragaard Keep I suppose. Anyway, there is an article about draconians and similar dragon-kin in RL in the last issue of Quoth the Raven.

cure wrote:Isn't the woman in Carnival with the snake formally the snake familar of a wizard from Sithicus? If so, one could certainly imagine her as being a yuan-ti.

Yes, Silessa of the Carnival. She is a snake dread familiar who got somehow polymorphed into an elf woman. I would build her with the Primer on faux henchmen which illustrates and expands the use of the create faux henchman spell from Ravenloft Gazetteer Vol. 1. She's a female elf commoner with the Feral Rearing feat imo. (Also note that her Master took the Vampiric Regeneration feat also from CoD,) Her spitting attack is probably the result of the Carnival's twisting.

Y'know, I'm glad someone's still getting use out of that primer.

I could have sworn that there was a snake-cult element in one of the existing domains - but I'm sure that's an easy mistake to make. Sri Raji seems like an excellent fit, as others mentioned, though there's also Markovia, yes, with the Moreau-transport? Might be an interesting subplot as he works to create more broken ones, vs encroaching snake men?

Rokushyima Tayoo is the four islands with four fighting siblings, yes? Was that ever detailed?

As for the link to the Deep Ones, I've always viewed the Yuan Ti as a bit more developed than the fish- and toad-men. Those always seemed little more than brute-force tools for a higher power, while the Yuan Ti were a bit more... cultured and proactive. I think they might make for an excellent cult in the Amber Wastes - Har'Akir seems a bit too wrapped up in decline, Pharazia... um, I just don't much like, but I think there's some good opportunities to bend them around inside Sebua.

Pale wrote:I could have sworn that there was a snake-cult element in one of the existing domains - but I'm sure that's an easy mistake to make.

Rajian religion is essentially Hinduism, and in that faith there are sacred animals you don't harm under any circumstances (the deadly Cobra being one of them) and there are sects that worship these animals as divine; it's possible and likely there are yuan-ti cults there. And in Har'Akir Set mistakenly get associated with serpents, when in reality he had little to do with snakes. TGF Wikipedia.

AFAIK, Markovia's broken ones and mongrelmen worship Markov as their creator (which he is), and Rokushima Taiyoo never got detailed in 3e so it's possible.

Set is more on the side of the Jackal, isn't he? Apep is more toward the snake side of things, I think. Still, in the sense of a cult, I can see them surfacing in Sebua, but that might just be me.

I'm pretty sure you're right about Markov's mongrelmen and broken ones, I was simply considering his domain for potential hooks. It's tropical, and he seems more fixated on mammalian alterations - how would he react to reptilian/ophidian encroachers? It's been a while since I've reviewed his areas, so my memory might not be the best there.

I agree though - the most likely location is probably going to be in Sri Raji.

Fair enough...Apep would be a better choice from an historical point of view.

If you're like me, and you don't want a whole pantheon of gods that are only worshipped in three, relatively isolated domains, then sticking with Set works fine. He's associated with liars, and liars are often associated with serpents, so it's not as if it's a long stretch or anything.

I can imagine a fairly solid Yuan-Ti article for QtR if one hasn't already been done.

Snakes also like the swamp. If you placed a few in Souragne, they might make for an interesting rival to the zombie lord in a power struggle.

Pale wrote:As for the link to the Deep Ones, I've always viewed the Yuan Ti as a bit more developed than the fish- and toad-men. Those always seemed little more than brute-force tools for a higher power, while the Yuan Ti were a bit more... cultured and proactive.

Well i meant analogous in the sense the they are humans who get transformed into something else slowly by interbreeding with monsters and/or worshiping the wrong god/demon, like Lovecraft's Deep Ones. there's an excellent article on this in the Sea-themed QtR.

This would be my take for a snake-cult devoted the mighty Marilith imprisoned in Lamordia. Maybe the transformations could also be a side effect of her reality wrinkle.

Brandi wrote:Y'know, I'm glad someone's still getting use out of that primer.

It's an excellent piece of work. Is it already hosted on this site?

Mortavius wrote:Fair enough...Apep would be a better choice from an historical point of view.

If you're like me, and you don't want a whole pantheon of gods that are only worshipped in three, relatively isolated domains, then sticking with Set works fine. He's associated with liars, and liars are often associated with serpents, so it's not as if it's a long stretch or anything.

Nope! Not a long stretch at all. Hence a lot of the commingling between Set, Jackals, and Snakes. I see your point about an isolated pantheon, but in this case I don't really mind it - I suppose because the Egyptian theme has had such lasting appeal in our world. It also might be because I like religion-as-motivation, but I'm not a huge fan of divine intervention.