As I journeyed out of the deserts of the Anuaroch and later sailed on a modest merchant caravel to the islands of the Moonshaes, I just happened to have the misfortune to encounter not one but two giant spitting snakes; the first of them was a dark scaled horror that took out one of our mules as we stopped during the heat of mid-day by a stand of palm trees, we had no idea it was there thanks to the thing almost merging with the rough trunks of the Palm trees, it ignored me and the Bedine traders I was traveling with, we just saw a flash of movement, a quick jet of venom lanced out and hit the mule right in the face and the moment it stumbled, it was all over, the snake was latched on and hauled it into the palms so fast, there was nothing we could do but try to calm the horses we were on and then gather up what bags and gear had flown free of the poor mule in its sudden and violent demise.
If you have ever read Elminster's Ecologies, he describes a very important point about the diversity of life in the forgotten realms, and I quote..
"A rabbit isn't always a rabbit. A rabbit from one region doesn't necessarily behave like a rabbit from another, even though they may look alike. I discovered a rabbit in the Hullack Forest that sleeps on its back, its feet straight in the air. A species from Harrowdale can rotate its eyes in opposite directions. I have heard of a rabbit from Brynwood that not only whistles like a canary, but can be taught an impressive repertoire of tunes. A hippogriff from the Dragonspire Mountains may be docile, even passive, while his cousin from Ring's Reach may quickly take offense. It is often impossible to make these distinctions from casual observations. As in the case of the excitable hippogriff, experience can be a cruel teacher. The physical form of an animal can also vary dramatically from region to region. The pseudodragon presents a striking example; they always tend to have the same mannerisms and attitudes, but their appearance differs from region to region."
Giant snakes in the realms are apex predators but not always interested in eating humanoids, or, as is the case of the rough scaled Boa of the Stonelands, they have a very specific diet for Goblins. Still, snakes are true carnivores, if need be, they will eat any meat they can get, and they are very good at getting it.
On Earth, the closest thing there has ever been to the giant snakes of planet Toril are the Titanoboas; like most giant snakes (aside from the Giant Coral Snakes of the Forgotten Realms), they have the same number of vertebrae as their much smaller cousins so fossil samples of the huge vertebra can tell a lot about the true size of the creatures when they were alive, so, ading in some details from the few skulls found in South America, we know the Titanoboas reached up to 47 feet or 14.3 meters long with a body just over 4 feet wide and weighed in excess of 1700 pounds or 770 kilograms and the fact that a number of these fossils were of a similar size means that its highly likely this was a regular size for the species, and some no doubt were freakishly large in that population, I would wager good gold coin on it. As for the giant snakes of the Forgotten Realms, this is also a fairly standard size; as I mentioned, some, like the Giant Coral Snake, can be even longer, leading to them often being mistaken for Sea Serpents, which are quite a different species altogether.
Within the large variety of Giant snakes to be found, they can be broadly divided into the Giant Constrictor snakes, the poisonous snakes, the Sea snakes, the Spitting snakes and the Amphisbaena, which is unique to Toril with nothing like it ever existing on Earth, more on them in a moment.
Giant snakes differ from the largest of their smaller cousins, the Boa Constrictors in that they have a larger number of fangs in their mouths and they are not as firmly connected to the Jawbone, also, they are not nearly as reliant on the ambient temperature being as tropical as that found during the middle and late Paleocene or in South American jungles and such, an average temperature of 32–33 °C (90–91 °F) and plenty of rainfall is mainly what allows them to grow to such a large size, with all the snakes getting smaller and smaller as the temperature decreases further from the tropics. Giant snakes of Toril don't have that same limitation; you can find 40-foot-long poisonous snakes hunting mountain goats even in high alpine zones of many mountain ranges across Faerun and Kara-tur.
If the size of the giant snakes is not scary enough, they can hunt and eat prey between 14% and 50% of their own mass. However, they can go weeks and sometimes a couple of months without food after such a large meal. Their metabolism is much faster than that of their smaller cousins, who can last longer between feasts.
Reproduction varies, even within the same species; giant snakes are almost always solitary until the hottest months of the year, during which times the females will lay down pheromone trails for males to follow, though often a female will pick a good spot where the wind can carry her pheromones for many miles and wait there, with males moving in on her location, this is often how unexpected encounters happen, males on the move outside of their usual hunting territory and looking for an opportunistic meal of whatever game they happen to find in their path, and all too often, that prey is humanoid.
The absolute experts on Giant Snake ecology are the Yuan-ti, as you might expect, and I have read some rather eye opening details about how many males may arrive at the female's location at the same time, where they all swarm into a huge mating ball of coiled snakes of enormous size, up to 12 males have been observed coiling around one female, each individual 30 to 40 feet long and as thick as an oak tree trunk, solid muscle the lot of them, the heat from this mating swarm can be felt from a distance and can be lethal to some of the snakes involved as they can remain in this breeding ball for up to two to four weeks, a disturbing scratching sound is caused by the male's breeding spurs which they try to dig into the female while aggressively pressing their cloacal regions hard against her body.
I won't go into further detail, but trust me when I say, the Yuan-ti most certainly do, at length, with a great number of illustrations, most of which are both outrageously fanciful and completely depraved. I will spare you the memories I am now haunted by.
Females are usually larger and stronger than males, probably for this very reason, and they most certainly choose the mate they consider the largest and strongest of the males; selecting for size is the reason their species maintains such huge proportions, even in environments that don't otherwise have the right conditions where this adaptation occurs spontaneously. Once mating is done, the female gestates for around eight months before giving birth to live young; they do not lay eggs. Litters consist of ten to twenty offspring, sometimes less, sometimes more, and the whole process is quite taxing on the female, who loses a significant amount of body weight.
The newly birthed snakes are called Neonates and are born ready to hunt and kill. They need no parental care, and some of their first meals are likely to be among their siblings. They grow quickly to around ten feet long and reach sexual maturity well before they reach their full adult size, and it takes several years for them to get to over thirty feet long; the aquatic Giant Coral snakes are the fastest growing, while those that inhabit alpine regions are quite slow by comparison, due to the metabolic cost of maintaining their body heat in such cold environments. The black crested mountain viper of Ulgarth are spectacular looking, extremely dangerous mountain apex predators with a mane of lustrous, black feathers that grow from a cobra-like hood, this layer of feathers helps keep them warm of course, it also makes their head a very valuable and rare trophy that is highly prized by Cloud Giants. There is also a few of them all the way into the great Yehimal Mountains where they are, perhaps not feared, but certainly given a lot of respect by the equally dangerous Yak Folk.
To give you some idea of how dangerous they truly are, one of their primary prey species are Griffons. Enough said.
Giant spitting snakes are found in land-based and aquatic species, they have a poisonous bite and are all capable of projecting their spittle at creatures up to 30 feet or just over 9 meters from them with a high degree of speed and accuracy, this venom will both poison and blind a victim, making them easy for the snake to maim further and then consume without a lot of risk to itself. The venom of the Giant Coral Snakes is a bit more fearsome, their bite is +5 to hit and inflicts 4 to 11 points of piercing damage and the target must contend with a massive injection of venom with a saving throw difficulty of 12 against their Constitution, failing to withstand the effect will result in the target becoming instantly stunned until their next turn, then the secondary effect of the venom kicks in and the target begins to hallucinate, the nature of which depends very much on the mind of the victim, but it has an effect similar to short-term madness and will last up to ten minutes, which would be harrowing enough even without the fact a giant snake is also about to eat you.
Above all else, Giant snakes are efficient killers; they are very stealthy and patient but also relentless and completely merciless predators with just enough intelligence to serve their needs.
All giant snakes have a highly acute sense of taste, which doubles as a sense of smell, granting them a scent-based blind sense with a range of ten feet. Many of them can see body heat thanks to sensitive pits on their head and while the constrictor snakes may not have a poisonous bite, they still inflict 6 to 16 points of piercing damage with their fangs; how they kill is with their densely muscled body though, constricting is +6 to hit, inflicts 6 to 20 points of bludgeoning damage, and the target is grappled, of course, with an escape difficulty of 16. Until this grapple is broken, the victim is restrained and very likely to get crushed to death quite quickly without help from an ally. The constrictors are some of the most long-lived of the giant snakes, with some reaching 60 years, while most other species rarely live past 40 years, and some only live for 10, often dying during mating or fighting among rivals, both males and females will fight to the death during mating season, but otherwise, Giant snakes stay well clear of each other.
Giant Sea Snakes have a membrane that seals their nostrils tightly, allowing them to dive to great depths and they can remain underwater for hours, they are one of the only Giant snake breeds to have both a poisonous bite and the ability to crush victims and small boats using a constriction attack. Technically though, they are the same general type as the snakes known as Vipers.
We encountered a variety of giant spitting snakes near the Moonshae islands. This one was not interested in eating any mules, that's for sure. We managed to deter it using fire, a risky venture on a wooden caravel, but it saved the lives of the captain and all but one of the crew.
Now, finally, the truly exotic Amphisbaena is a species of double-headed Giant snake. Still, they have a head at either end of their body and a unique method of grabbing one head with the other and rolling their body like a hoop, which sounds silly but doubles their speed to 60 feet per round. In combat, amphisbaenae could use both heads to snap at opponents simultaneously. This enabled the monster to attack and defend at the same time.
Now, one can't talk about snakes without talking about the different types of venom, it is essentially a highly toxic saliva containing zootoxins.. Venom or Zootoxin is delivered into the body actively via a bite, sting, or similar action, while Poison is passively delivered by being eaten, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin, and Toxugens are actively transferred to the external surface of another animal via some delivery mechanism... So, a cobra that bites you will deliver venom with the bite, but if it spits it, we call it poison. I know it's pedantic, but it is also precise terminology.
Venoms are often complex mixtures of toxins such as Necrotoxins, common among Vipers, these work mostly by proteass that rip apart the peptide bonds of amino acids, so, they dissolve tissue basically, causing mass cell death, a bit like being injected with acid. Neurotoxins are less common in Giant snakes, but they primarily affect the nervous system of animals; Dendrotoxins are a class of presynaptic neurotoxins produced by mamba snakes that block particular subtypes of voltage-gated potassium channels in neurons causing convulsions or very painful tension paralysis which can cause muscles to tear free from the bone and lungs and heart to shut down, causing death. Myotoxins are found in Rattlesnake venom and a few lizard venoms that can cause severe muscle necrosis; they are very fast acting, often causing instant paralysis and death through the victim being unable to breathe by themselves as their muscles just won't cause their lungs to take in air. Finally, the Giant snakes you will find in Grasslands and Savannahs, such as the gold-headed Giant snakes of the Shaar, which are known to be particularly violent and loud, when disturbed they let off one hell of an ear-piercing hiss that shrieks like a lantanese steam golem, their powerful bite inflicts both deep piercing wounds and secondary bludgeoning damage from the sheer force of it, the venom contains Cytoxins, which cause severe hemorrhages, profuse bleeding and swelling, its some of the most lethal venom to humanoids, very painful, causing limbs to become stiff and extended, unable to be relaxed and bent because of the internal bleeding and coagulation in joints and muscles. If not treated carefully and quickly, necrosis is widespread, very gross and quite lethal, I would say this is the most fearsome venom, hands down, its a horrible way to die.
Aside from being captured and transported to exotic markets, many humanoid societies make use of Giant Snakes, the Priests of Sseth were known to construct special shields by treating the shed skin of giant snakes and wrapping them around a core of ironwood. The meat of many giant snakes makes pretty good spiced jerky that you sometimes find in salt packed barrels of strange, oily green wood in the ports along the Dragon coast and Vilhon reach, I was shocked when I found out these are produced by rural marsh villages in Halrua, but, sure enough, they are.
I think that just about covers the subject of Giant Snakes of Faerun at least, I'm no expert on if the creatures can be trained or any way domesticated, but I certainly know there is a good trade in live specimens among the churchs of Malar and that's usually where the kind of people who put them in dungeons to act as lethal deterants get them from.
My name is AJ Pickett, thanks for listening and as always, I will be back with more for you, very soon.
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