By Jonathan Wojcik and Rev Storm

ENTRY 22: MANSERPENTS

We've seen snake-powered mecha and half-snake snails, so of course there are also snake people! Adorably precious snake people, actually looking more like giant skinks - almost precisely like skinks, in fact - with hilariously skinny little arms and legs holding up their fat tsuchinoko-like bodies. You'll likely first encounter them as enemies, of course, but there's more to them than just a race of sapient reptiles. They're found primarily around Volcano Manor, where the surrounding town is slowly sinking into lava.

The toasty city is home to a couple of NPC's, but only mostly human looking; they're weirdly tall and lanky, with jutting necks and strange, hunched posture. There's one girl, Rya, you can get to know through a substantial questline with quite a bit of unique dialog, and it won't be long before she trusts you enough to reveal her true form!

That's right, you get to be friends with a snake person! Rya's true snake people name is Zorayas, and she believes that she was the daughter of a great king. This is, uh, not true, and she's not happy when she finds out she was really the product of a "hideous ritual." Fortunately, nothing bad has to happen and you never have to make any difficult choices and she's fine and is your best happy friend forever and ever.

...Some of the snakeys wear giant snake eggs on their heads!!!

But WHY all this snakiness? What was that "hideous ritual?" According to one short blurb about these reptiloids, an "elder serpent" on the volcanic Mr. Gelmir once "devoured a demigod," and "the bird of the man-serpents followed."

The God-Devouring Serpent is of course very literally real and can be fought as a boss, but it isn't just a super big snake, either: there's a giant, human face fused into it, not even on the actual snake head, as well as a giant pair of humanoid arms and hundreds of littler, ganglier corpse-like limbs erupting from its underbelly. The big dopey face and boglin hands belong to Rykard, a guy who sought to use the serpent's power against the gods still ruling his world. So of course at some point in this he decided he would also be the snake; if your plans revolve entirely around weaponizing some sort of monster and you don't end up sharing any of its biomass you've done it ALL wrong and you ought to start over.

Your problem is that all those skinless little ghoul hands are traces of the countless tarnished (that's what you are) that were also assimilated into Snake-Rykard, what he calls his "family" and demands that you join. PERSONALLY I'm not sure if I would because I think it sounds like a little strange of a thing to do.

Since you presumably don't want to do that either, you end up having to fight him, and it's kind of amazing that a guy fused to a huge tangled-up snake is still also a guy who fights with a sword. A sword around fifteen feet long and covered in squirming snake tongues that he pulls out of his throat, of course. Let's be honest though: his offer would be pretty appealing if he'd just let anyone else take turns driving the snake.

I reviewed these together because I felt like they're even more connected than some of the other monsters with a "common source." The manserpents, it would seem at least, are the direct offspring of this godlike serpent via arcane snake-cult shenanigans. The Abductor Virgins seem more like only "underlings" this being has created, and the serpent snails...I have no idea. I don't know if it's coincidence that there are man serpents and snail serpents or Rykard did something so weird they didn't see fit to even drop any hints.

Finally, shameless plug but I made a goofy little pin of Rya you can get here

NAVIGATION: