Glass serpent

Glass serpent

(Creature)

Type

Magical beast

CR

5

Environment

Any (Eox)

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Images of glass serpents

Source: Alien Archive 2, pg(s). 64

Glass serpents are a species of gigantic, transparent snakes from Eox.

Appearance

The body of a glass serpent is long, undulating, and regularly bulges or narrows. Their head consists of an armoured crest, a row of eyes and long feeding tentacles tipped with a tooth each. Their crystalline scales can distort light around them, turning them invisible, but this ability's energy consumption forces the glass serpent to reserve using it only when hunting; otherwise, the glass serpent appears partially translucent and shimmering with rainbows. A glass serpent can grow up to 60 feet long and 5000 pounds.

Ecology

Glass serpents are hermaphroditic. When a glass serpent seeks to mate, it will find another similarly-sized glass serpent and ritually challenge it. Over the next six weeks, the two are rivals, travelling and hunting together but preventing the other from eating a share of prey. At the end of this period, they seek out the largest glass serpent that they can find and impress it with displays of prowess and regurgitated food. If the third glass serpent accepts, it will become the mother to the offspring of the larger member of the rival pair. After they mate, the father leaves, and the other member of the rival pair provides food and protects the mother until the young reach the age of a month and become capable of hunting, at which point all members separate.

Glass serpents are cunning, opportunistic, curious and adaptable. They know that even when their body is invisible, their glowing crystalline teeth are not, so despite their ability to turn off the glow they can sometimes deliberately keep it on to lure prey. They also know that non-native prey often require protection in Eox's toxic atmosphere, and specifically target such protections when hunting one.

Society

In traditional elebrian culture, glass serpents serve the role of noble predator like dragons on other planets. Eoxian nobles and organised criminals prefer glass serpents as hunting beasts, frequently feature them in their sigils, and sometimes use them to execute criminals. Their scales can be used in optical technology and illusion magic, or to augment armour and the skin of other creatures when properly harvested, so glass serpents have been exported out of Eox, though they are difficult to confine, and wild glass serpents have spread to numerous worlds. They are especially dangerous in the River Between in the Diaspora: the sarcesians regularly hire adventurers to cull them, though their population isn't exactly shrinking.