Weresnakes in the World of Darkness

Some violence, and hopefully lots of ideas you may be able to use in your games. Thanks to Athelind simply for being interested :) Any enquiries, please Email me. This was created way before the sourcebook about the Nagah, which at the time of writing hasn't been published yet. I'm looking forward to reading if it ever gets made and shipped to England.

You can use these critters for non-player characters, or player characters if you're willing to flesh them out enough. This work is not complete and the weresnakes have not been balanced against other were-creatures yet (nor have I dipped into any mythical / Latin books to find cool names for their gifts, alternate forms etc). If you are thinking of publishing these details elsewhere, please Email me first (just so I know where they are going, and if you are going to make any changes to them).

Aliss had the great honour of leading her clan into the Black Spiral pit. The gnawing fear of knowing she was certainly going to be the first one to die no longer plagued her as the luscious, foaming rage drove her furry body down the sinuous, twisting corridors. She expected horrible, terrible sights even before the battle started, but what she saw made her skid to a confused halt. The fight was already on, and as she closed with an injured Black Spiral, she saw hers was just one fight amongst many taking place between the denizens of the pit themselves. The aura of pure, pointless fury pervaded the pit as horror took on horror, heedless of the common enemy, Aliss and her packmates screaming into the caverns. The werewolf finished off her opponent, stepped over his steaming body and ran on all fours towards the main cavern, where the leader's smell was strongest. She entered to see a shrunken, shrivelled werewolf, his form ridiculously small for the crinos form he stood in. Next to him, a twelve foot tall, eight foot wide mountain of wiry muscle, easily the biggest Black Spiral Dancer she had ever seen. Near the shrivelled one's feet lay a green, scaly snake-like beast with human-like torso and slender, human-like arms. It's long snouted features were twisted in a fawning, toady-like expression that disgusted Aliss.

Two more werewolves entered the cavern, black spirals. Aliss didn't take in their details but spun round and leapt at the first. That small, reasoning part of her mind that wasn't absorbed in naked anger pondered why the other one ignored her and ran towards the alpha male and his bodyguard.

"Master, we can't contain the fighting," shrieked the creature, a female. "We're killing each other and the Garou are taking apart the survivors!"

"Yes, yes," muttered the wrinkled thing, the alpha male. "But who is leading the mutiny?" The black spiral pointed towards the bodyguard just as a spear-sized steel and silver arrow entered her skull with a whipcrack noise. Before her body hit the floor, the masters' bodyguard discarded the massive crossbow he held moments before, turned on the withered one and locked two claws around his throat. They looked like gauntleted hands wrapping around a twig. The snake hissed with pleasure at him.

"Well done, my new master!" she sibilated. The boss howled with betrayed fury as the revolting, huge beast crushed his windpipe and lifted him two meters into the air, to his eyelevel. Aliss, concentrating on her frenzied fight rather than all this, found her attention switching suddenly within, as she felt the fury and rage inside her suddenly get sucked out, the battery of anger running down until all within her was exhaustion and fear. Under her claws, the monster she was attacking seemed to shiver from the similar affliction, the comforting, dynamic rage leaving a now weary, scared frame. Outside, the fighting calmed, as all the anger poured out of every creature and flowed into one red streak of emotions, which in turn filled up the withered creature being strangled. His desiccated form seemed to inflate, a werewolf already in Crinos form transforming into something even larger. He gripped the traitor's arms and wrenched them away from his throat, as his own limbs swelled like a bloating corpse, muscles erupting out like mushroom caps.

"You told me he was powerless!" yelped the bodyguard at the snake that now coiled around his feet. It smiled even wider, slithered away and said, "You trusted a snake? As I told you, master, he is a traitor. And stupid." Aliss finally killed her distracted opponent, as the leader grew, equalling his bodyguard in size as they fought. Confusion removed her dimished fury as she tried to work out who to fight. The bodyguard slashed and tore at flesh that healed just as quickly, or in some odd way, just grew more flesh and muscle over the top of whatever he shredded. The Alpha male ended the fight by biting his now smaller opponent's head clean off. The leader slid to the floor, a fifteen foot monstrosity with slashed, pulpy skin, and a deranged look in his eyes. He grasped the snake, and held him close.

"Why can't I trust anyone? Please tell me!" he shrieked. The reptile hugged him closely, coiled around him tenderly. Then it thrust it's fangs into his throat. The boss fell back, fury consuming him again, and he slashed insanely at a tail that started to slowly crush him to death. His body swelled quickly, and he hurled the reptile away from him. Aliss saw the creature slap against a wall and flop unconscious to the floor. She looked at the Alpha male, and quickly dashed forwards to fight him, even though he was four times her size. She was sick with fear as the Rage simply didn't manifest within her to chase it away. She would only realise later how much genuine bravery had been exposed that night.

He rounded on her, thrusting claws like sickles on arms with muscles the size of her torso. Her claw slashes were annoyingly insignificant to him, and he continued to grow as he fed on his own rage. And somehow he was fast as well as big; his vast limbs curled around to swat her against his rank body, and she knew she would die soon. Then to her amazement he suddenly connected a vicious slash to his own body! He looked down at his claw with shock and then hatred, as if it was yet another one to betray him, and responded by biting frenziedly at his limb. His other hand stabbed himself in the throat!

Aliss stopped clawing him as she realised he was now ignoring her, concentrating on his main enemy, himself. She stepped away, confused, unsure. She had sometimes witnessed garou enter the Thrall of the Wyrm, where their rage became so virulent that they committed monstrous acts of violence against anyone near them. Her Black Spiral enemies entered this state often, revelling in it. He was now deep in the Thrall, but never had she seen it so utterly self destructive. She felt her fear return at this appalling sight, fought the urge to put her tail between her legs. The leader seemed to suck all the rage from the entire caern of hatred into himself, replacing it with chilled fear. By now he filled the fifty foot tall cavern with his body, smashing into the walls and slowly tearing himself to pieces.

"The Wyrm made him to be unbeatable in combat," said the snake, rising fitfully yet gracefully. "He has lived for four thousand years. The Wyrm created him for the Apocolypse, where he would take on your greatest heroes alone and kill all those too stupid to run away or defeat him using intelligence rather than claws." Aliss rounded on him.

"Why the hell is he attacking himself?"

"My poison. It's the essence of the Wyrm's nature of consuming itself," he continued matter-of-factly. "Actually, he has already overcome my poison, but that doesn't matter anymore..." The female backed away from the beast which had by now painted the walls and ceiling blood red.

"His blessing is to be indestructible and to always be able to kill those he attacks. His curse is he has no choice but to finish any fight he starts. He will kill whoever he fights. So now he fights himself, and is testing his ability to survive against his ability to kill." The reptile wheezed, and stopped trying to rear up. It lay back on the ground as ahead of them the creature started to pull himself to pieces. Aliss couldn't feel the evil in the caern anymore. He had emptied the whole pit of it's power and it's rage. Every creature outside had long fled. She hoped for her clans' honour that they had gone to pursue the fleeing black spirals. Meanwhile the beast flailed and tore and shredded, the power that was reanimating him and fuelling his anger becoming visible and incandescent as it fought to keep him together against the claws of the only thing that could kill it. And finally, suddenly the magic died and his regenerating flesh stopped healing itself. He howled with victory at the destruction of his greatest and final foe, and collapsed. Aliss watched his flesh became mundane, lifeless meat. It looked horrible, as did the whole caern. But she couldn't sense any power here anymore. He had used it up and completely sterilised the place. Aliss rounded on the snake, whose body still mostly lay piled against the wall, twitching.

"I'll permit you some last words before I slit you open."

At her feet, the snake sibilated "Fine. When you tell your story to the other hairy bastards around your campfires, tell them you were the one who spent three years in this hole sucking up to the sad, screwed-up wyrm boss. Tell them you contaminated their food with rage venom from your fangs. Don't forget to tell them you stirred up a mutiny, gave these bloodthirsty idiots a reason to kill each other so that your friends would have a chance to get through their defences. But don't tell them about me. Don't tell them I gave you the victory. Swear that to me or I will curse you." He closed his eyes as Aliss stood there, her claws clenching.

"You might as well try to curse Gaia herself," she replied. "She will protect me from any curse." The snake smiled, an aggravating gesture as it had such a large mouth to smile with.

"She will not protect you. My curses come from Gaia."

"Who's side are you on, thing?" It's smile slowly faded, and it closed it's eyes.

"I've already told you far too much, but I think I can get away with that if you're going to kill me anyway. Goodnight," it said, and closed it's eyes. She stood there, uncertain, surrounded by silence.

"You are scum. You have no honour." she muttered to the snake. She waited for a minute. "You're probably lying," she added. Then she shrugged her shoulders and hauled it's upper body onto her back. The rest of it trailed some distance behind her as she walked out of the vile cavern.

This story is recounted from the Weresnake's point of view.

During the time of the Impergium the vast majority of humans were farmed by the Garou, their numbers kept low by marauding werewolves that hunted only the strong and the intelligent to ensure evolution kept the humans weak and stupid. But there were humans that managed to evade even the animal senses of the Garou, people who desperately used all their intelligence to keep away from the monsters in the night.

There were few hiding places available to them - Werewolves were everywhere. Except underground. So a group of humans hid inside a massive network of caverns. But the caverns were the mating grounds for a huge variety of snakes - over a hundred humans died before the survivors learned how to deal with the reptiles by fooling them into thinking the humans were the same species group. By appearing to be serpents (rarely leaving the ground, using paints to simulate body markings, using the snakes' own smell on their own bodies) they managed to live with the creatures mostly without being harmed. And they were safe from Werewolves, which were hesitant to enter the caves. The poison of a snake seldom killed a Werewolf, but the intense agony of the bite sometimes remained for days and drove the then weak-willed Garou victims into insanity (werewolves during the Impergium were lesser creatures than they are nowadays. Their powers, immunities and superior numbers meant they lacked any serious competition and grew into fat, honour-less idiots).

The reptiles became their lifesavers, creatures somewhere between companions and pets. The bond between the two species attracted the Naga (a powerful entity formed of the thoughts of every serpent and the fears other creatures had of their poisons and strangling coils) to the lair. The humans adopted her immediately as their totem. And then both deity and mortal found out something - She was able to become pregnant from a human male. During the agony of birth she became massive, and her coils thrashed about through the whole cavern complex. All the snakes and all the humans were dashed together into a blood soup, and their remains poured down through the cave tunnels until they coalesced into a river of gore. Naga looked guiltily at the pool, and threw her eggs into it. The hideous mess slowly drew together and split into hundreds of serpent shapes, housing the souls of those she had killed. The humans and snakes were now the same species, one unique to any other.

For generations the Weresnakes remained in the caverns that had birthed them, building up their numbers by transforming or mating with human refugees and snakes alike. But sooner or later the marauding werewolves found out where all the missing humans went, and entered the tunnels to get their farm animals back. During the cave-battles the Weresnakes and Garou died in equal quantities, and the Werewolves knew they would win because there were so many of them. The Weresnakes couldn't go deeper into their tunnels because the Wyrm had established a Pit directly underneath them: a major cavern full of Fomori and worse. Humans had ventured down there before, to find a fate worse than anything the Garou could offer. They prayed to their Totem for help, but the Deity admitted she couldn't help. So it was a Weresnake came up with the simple answer - The humans had hidden with the snakes by fooling them, so the Weresnakes would hide with the Wyrm-spawn by trickery, and be protected. Naga, humbled by the mortal's bravery and protective of her new species, sacrificed her power and mind, giving both to the Weresnakes. Her power would grant them Gifts to aid concealment, while her mind would reinforce the creatures' own minds and make them much harder to corrupt. The serpents slithered into the Fomori caverns, pursued by nearly a thousand Garou. The malfean creatures below looked upon these fine creatures streaming down, their bodies so much like that of their master the Wyrm, and also saw that they were being attacked by the Garou, and came to the obvious conclusion. The Werewolves all died.

Many years later a terrible tragedy occurred in the Malfean caverns as a massive Thunderwyrm went out of control and buried the Pit (on the anniversary of Naga's own thrashes). Not all the Weresnakes survived (some had to die to make it less obvious the Caern's destruction was planned by them. The most notable sacrifice was the heroic Weresnake that had burrowed into the Thunderwyrm and tortured it from the inside to make it run amuck). The Weresnakes repayed their debt to their new companions by killing them and freeing their souls from the Wyrm.

The Weresnakes now knew where they would be safe; in the coils of their greatest enemy. And they were where they could do the most damage.

Emotionally, weresnakes are much less angry than Garou and other shapeshifters. The knowledge that their mother is dying doesn't make them mad, it makes them sneaky, cunning.

In certain ways, Weresnakes are utterly untrustworthy and have no notion of honour. They would sell out anyone or anything to their own ends. However, to the vast majority (like 99 percent) of their species, their own ends are exclusively to serve Gaia. She, above all else, is the only thing they would give up everything for, and this is embedded in their personalities, apparently copied into their genes. Over this utter dedication lies any personality they otherwise have - lover, self-centred coward, firmest, best friend. But they will sell everything - betray any friend, tell any lie, commit any act including murder or suicide - if it would benefit Gaia. Normally however, this driving goal is not apparent. They won’t run headlong into an attack against wyrm spawn, because most are as afraid of death as anyone else, but more importantly they know they can make better sacrifices while alive.

If a weresnake lost his total dedication to the Mother he would have nothing in his life. So those that are corrupted irredeemably are incredibly rare, and easy to detect for their suicidal attitude and chronic insecurity. Such weresnakes often look forward to being hunted down and slain mercilessly and speedily, by their kin, who are afraid of the creature revealing the truth of the actions of their entire race. They do exist from time to time, but only briefly, and the rogue weresnakes paranoid claims about his kin have been always been dismissed as dementia.

Over the millenia, weresnakes have gained a strong reputation of being strongly connected to the Wyrm, indeed just as strong as Black Spirals or Fomori. Most exploit this by infiltrating the pits of Black Spirals, the Labyrinths of Barabbi, and the franchises of Pentex, living in the detestable, depraved surroundings, even committing terrible acts to gain the favour of the leaders. They become skilled with wyrm technology and magic, often becoming better at using it than any other creature there. They gain reputations as reliable and hard workers. And then at precisely the right moment they set loose a chain of meticulously planned events to destroy all around them. Never losing their loyal façade, they cause the organisation they live in to fall apart, and become easy prey to it’s enemies. They are particularly good at turning strengths into weaknesses - in pits dedicated to rage and war, Weresnakes turn the inhabitant's fury against each other. In labyrinths dedicated to vile madness, Weresnakes push the insanity further, causing wyrm spawn to become suicidal. In toxic waste creating refinaries, fomori that should be getting strengthened by the toxins start to die off from it's contamination. In slave-camps, the once helpless workers suddenly rip at their masters with tools and captured torture instruments. From beginning to end, a weresnake will usually never blow his cover. He will be among those that successfully escape while the creature he pins the blame on is oh-so-ironically killed.

Not all weresnakes will infiltrate Wyrm organisations. They will serve Gaia in whatever way they wish, but as a race they excel in this - their serpent appearance and evil reputation makes them trusted by servants of the Wyrm, and they are also very resilient to the temptations offered by the Wyrm.

They hold moots, but the meetings are usually close, claustrophobic affairs in snakepits resembling the Tomb of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. They seem to have no problems with 'personal space' allowing others to crawl over or under them at will. Amongst Wyrm infiltrators these gatherings look like meetings to honour the Wyrm - in ways that satisfy any spies and, in a very subtle way, mock and insult it. Sometimes they take powerful Fomori or Black Spirals and turn them into 'sacrifices to the Wyrm'.

Weresnakes take on all the varieties of species that their mundane counterparts have. But apart from appearance, there is no difference between them. All are poisonous, and have the same capabilities in their various forms. A weresnake can mate and breed with serpents of any other species, as well as with humans or other weresnakes. They do not suffer the Metis deformation, breeding true to their own species. However, the tragedy is the female (whatever form she's in) lays up to fifteen eggs, some of which never hatch. The snakes that do emerge will attempt to eat each other, and it is important to let them do so for the winner's development (otherwise all snakes will probably die from lack of nourishment). This is heartbreaking to a weresnake parent with a human upbringing; her true nature is seldom a barrier to her 'ape' mothering feelings. Nevertheless, only single weresnakes survive in any one clutch, but after birthing they are almost always strong enough to survive anything else childhood throws at them. Due to their rarity, snakes are usually always brought up properly and carefully. But it is still possible for the child to be abandoned, on purpose or through accident. Even Weresnakes brought up away from others of their kind will tend to be very sneaky, subtle and sociable (an interesting comparison to the violent loners abandoned Werewolf children tend to be).

Due to the unique way they were created, Weresnakes are not especially vulnerable to any metal, or indeed any particular material.

Weresnakes are so rare - about one for every other fifty lycanthropes alive - that they don't make any personal distinction between one breed of weresnake or another. And there's not enough of them for separate clans. But there's nothing to stop a WS that looks like a kingsnake from lying to others that he's the Silver Fang of the serpent world.

Strangely, Weresnakes can never be fully human. Weresnakes in human form usually have pale, cool, perfect skin free of scars and other marks. All their forms have a Jacobson's organ (a hatch in the roof of the mouth used to 'taste' scent by drawing their tongue into it), so they are not very eager kissers.

Three times a year, a Weresnake will cancel all appointments and stay at home. They go into hiding with a haggard and rough complexion, and emerge after a day with new and young looking skin, free of scars, imperfections, even cosmetic surgery. Guess why. The process of shedding takes nearly an hour, and makes the creature nearly helpless as he gets tangled in his own skin. Some take their old selves out with the trash, though if desperate to hide the evidence they can eat their shed skin. Some especially cocky types make jackets out of them. It is believed that there is an ancient garou gift that forces them to shed their skin at any time, making identification of a weresnake much easier (just cast it into a room of people and see if any fall to the floor and try to exit their own skin).

Female suspects are worse off still. They tend have sudden quiet times every month or so, usually blaming this on heavy PMS. Indeed, it is very heavy - they lay a clutch of ten to fifteen unfertilised eggs, each the size of a tennis ball. These are used in certain rites, one of which has the power to increase their species, transforming humans or snakes into their kind (used with the Kiss of Life gift).

Glabro form weresnakes are tall and gangly, but bulging with muscles, the spitting image of professional basketballers. They are very flexible, and have no hair on their bodies except atop their heads. Their voice becomes reedy and a little sibilant, but still sounds human. Attribute changes: +1 Str, +2 Dex, +1 Stamina, -1 appearance (to anyone who don't have a thing for Magic Johnson types)

Crinos weresnake's legs fuse together into a twenty foot long tail. Their whole bodies are covered in scales and become incredibly flexible and quick. While their length skyrockets, their width remains fairly much the same, but becomes solid with muscle. Apart from having fairly humanlike arms, torso and shoulders, they are totally snakelike. Speaking becomes very difficult, as difficult as it is for werewolves in Crinos form.

Weresnakes incite only mild Delirium (victims usually are left thinking they were attacked by mundane but huge snake, and never forget the experience). Luckily, it's hard to get them mad, so they don't get incited to change in public often.

Attribute changes: +2 Str, +4 Dex, +2 Sta, 0 Appearance, -2 manipulation. Dex bonus is not added to running speed checks.

Hispo form snakes are the same size as their Crinos form, with the same statistics and speaking ability. But they lose all human features and become a boa-constrictor-like snake. They are half the width of their human selves, and are around thirty foot long. If the Weresnake started off as a boa-constrictor or python, they would look perfectly normal in this form even to herpetologists. If they are a naturally small species, experts that saw this snake would consider it an amazing freak of nature.

Hey whadyaknow, they look like a normal snake, one of the smaller varieties around four foot long and about two inches wide at their thickest point. Even 'lupus' type snakes may speak about as well as in Crinos form. Python sized snakes that adopt 'lupus' form simply resemble babies of their species.

-2 Str, +4 Dex, -2 Sta, 0 appearance, -3 Manipulation. Dex bonus is not added to running speed checks.

Weresnakes are very fast. When they enter into a form which grants them a Dex of 6 or more, their impressive speed grants them an extra action each turn. Treat it with the same rules as rage granted actions. Weresnakes with a Dex of 9 get two extra actions each turn. This is good because Weresnakes don’t have Rage Points, being cool headed in combat. Also, while this increase speeds up their strikes, it cannot increase the speed they run / slither. The snake can only move part of his body at that speed, not the whole thing.

Like most people with their backs against the wall and no honour or pride, they will use whatever weapons or defences are most effective. Guns, stolen klaives, explosives, poison gas, wyrm tainted items or toxic waste will be used quite eagerly against enemies. Of course, they would only use stuff like the latter four if the enemy's death is worth the devastation to the environment such weapons would cause.

Duels between Werewolves and Weresnakes usually end in 'draws' - Weresnakes can kill Garou with one successful strike, biting and poisoning them. But to do so they must close within melee distance, where they are ripped to shreds as Werewolves excel in fighting up close. Then the wolf dies later as the poison finishes him off.

WS squeezing and poisoning abilities: (squeezing rules not yet made up). The weresnake must successfully bite the opponent to poison them properly. After a successful bite he must spend the next turn with his jaws locked around the victim (during which he obviously cannot move his head away from counterattacks) and inject his poison, upon which he can retreat and let it get to work. The poison disintegrates muscles very painfully, and contaminates the blood with a wide variety of toxins. A normal bite from a weresnake will drain a monster of 1 wound level per 2 turns, soakable but cumulative (each turn the wound injury is doubled. Ignore soaking for the effects of doubling, but an attempt can be made to soak damage inflicted each turn). Keep doubling the damage for ten turns then halve the injuries every 2 turns until no more is caused (in other words, the damage per two turns are as follows: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1). These wounds are treated as aggravated, and will obviously quite easily kill a werewolf. The poison can be lessened with appropriate healing magic (magics which are described as completely and immediately healing poisoning will instead just halve the damage done from that point on each turn, unless the storyteller decides the magic is particularly powerful). The poison can only get to work if gets into a wound, is injected or swallowed (if not directly injected, halve the damage it causes).

1: Taste Wyrm: A definite necessity. This gift boosts the users scent-tasting facility so he can tell who is 'of the wyrm' by flicking his tongue into the air. Works up to four meters away, depending on the wind and how smelly or wyrm-ridden the individual is.

1: Creeping Thoughts: A crappier version of Slithering Thoughts below. Mindreading attempts of any sort are at +2 to difficulty.

2: Bane-Scales: The Weresnake infuses his skin and scales with the essence of shredded bane spirits. Until he sheds his skin (with great relief) he will seem to be 'of the wyrm' to any detection methods, even those that use magic to see if he is 'evil' to the core. However, actually opening up the weresnake and then casting the detection spell will reveal the Wyrm is only skin deep (so while a magical 'x-ray' would be fooled by this spell, using wyrm-detecting spells or senses on open wounds would not). Naturally, this is a necessity for successful spying.

3: Kiss of Life: The snake can bite an injured victim, but the bite damage restores as many points of damage as it would normally remove. However, if the person bitten is loved by the lycanthrope (as a lover, close friend, relation, whatever), the victim must roll stamina against a difficulty of the number of points restored. On a failure or botch, the wounds healed are covered with scales! Or amputated bits are replaced with snake equivalents (eg. a severed tongue grows back black and forked). This transformation is only temporary if the victim is a reptilian shapeshifter, and otherwise may be removed by magic/magick powers or surgery. Especially weak victims (eg. mortal sleepers) sometimes slowly transform into mundane snakes or weresnakes (storytellers' call).

3: Slithering Thoughts: Weresnakes can't stand people using mind powers to find out for certain what side they are on. This gift clouds the creatures' thoughts into a sliding, slithering jumble of good and evil emotions. Those who peer into the mind of a reptile with this gift normally come away with nothing but the sudden urge to swat the hallucinatory snakes off their body and take a long, cold shower. Whatever mind or aura-reading power is used, the difficulty required to actually pierce this spell and read the WS' thoughts properly is increased by 4.

3: Crimson vengeance: When the snake is injured by being cut, blood from his wounds form into wriggling lines which eventually become wriggling, red serpents with barbed, sharp scales. Two serpents per point of damage are created. The injured Weresnake can hurl all the blood beasts at his opponents (Difficulty 6, roll Dex + Brawl. Each success point causes one snake to hit the victim). Each one starts to burrow into the foe, causing one point of non-soakable aggravated damage per round (as long as the opponent is organic). This damage can be stopped by pulling snakes off (one extra point damage) or prevented by wearing totally sealed armour with a bonus of at least 3.

3: Lose Everything Except: A weresnake facing eternal, utter corruption (eg. captured by mind-bending torturers or thrown into the Black Spiral Labyrinth of Malfeas) may swallow his own tail, and eat himself into oblivion in seconds, leaving nothing behind. His soul will escape any bonds, any soul magick or spiritual grasp to be recycled and reincarneted. But such souls are utterly sterile and clean. No corruption remains, but neither do any memories of any past lives or power survive. The spirit of the departed is also completely untracable. This is a terrifying spell, and naturally won't be cast frivolously.

4: Stareyeyes: A mind altering gift. The minus to manipulation with Crinos, Hispo and 'Lupus' form snakes becomes a plus, as the reptile stares into a victim's eyes. The victim knows they are looking at a snake, but it's gaze is terrifying and fascinating to them, and the victim will find themselves carrying out requests almost without conscious thought. It also allows primitive communication, as victims get a strange, voiceless hint of what the creature wants from them.

4: Silver Skin: Allows Weresnakes to enter the Umbra using their own bodies, literally swallowing themselves up! And of course it's a handy way to hurt werewolves even more with constriction attacks (treat the snake as a silver weapon, appropriately).

5: Rope-immunity: The Weresnake cannot be injured by cutting attacks of even aggravated level. If a snake is beheaded or sliced in half, the two (or more) pieces becomes separate snakes almost immediately, and can attack back! The snakes remain as different entities until the largest one eats the others whole. Until then, split the original's attributes and health levels among the pieces. The creature cannot be killed no matter how many pieces he is cut into.

5: Poison transforming - Weaver: The effect transforms the weresnake's poison as it lays in it's sac. Upon injection (this Gift only works once), it knits a solid crystal lattice in the victim's bloodstream, which slowly consumes and takes over the rest of his body until he becomes like a wax statue, alive looking but very, very dead. It's effective against any creature that isn't either solid already (like this world's equivalent of Golems) or non-corporeal (like spirits). As the poison spreads it causes paralysis, plus the damage inflicted will never heal by itself, even with werewolf regeneration.

5: Poison transforming - Wyld: Causes rupturing and horrible random body mutations in anything bitten. The poison is effective against even non-organic foes like Wraiths and spirits, and even machines like HIT-Marks. Damage caused is the same, unless against creatures that regularly shapechange, in which case it is doubled.

5: Poison transforming - Wyrm: Takes a victim into very self-hazardous Rage Thralls as per the intro story. They will attack anyone within their range, including themselves, randomly. Naturally, if no-one is in range they will attack the only creature left. Attacks against ones-self cannot be dodged or blocked (but can be soaked). Creatures already of the Wyrm and always in deep rage don't get to save against the effects of this poison!

Weresnakes are incredibly rare. There is only one of them for every 50 other lycanthropes in the world. This helps keep their ulterior motives secret, and ensures even supernatural creatures have little knowledge of their existence. The Weresnakes ensure their race is kept in very low numbers.

Weresnakes are very social creatures. Individuals have close relations with humans, kinfolk and other supernatural creatures. They even have genuine friendships with Wyrm-corrupted creatures. Needless to say they can, will and have casually destroyed friendships and friends alike when Gaia's future depended on it. They are well known as creatures of the Wyrm, so those creatures that actually believe in it will treat weresnakes in the same way they would treat any other of it's disciples.

"Our enemies, of course. They started off evil from birth, being snakes. You'll never see them at the front line of a battle, always in the back room. If you see one wriggling away you'll know you've penetrated right to the heart of the caern, and the battle's nearly won. Somehow they always seem to take down one Garou before they die. Still, there ain't many better ways to go than while eating snake."

"Weresnakes are usually fawning, soft cowards. But their cowardice makes them reliable and pliable, and their talent for manufacturing Wyrm fetishes and related toys make them a handy creature to own."

"Weresnakes are an asset to the firm they work for. They tend to be obsessed with their work and obviously take pleasure in it. They do not revel in their animal sides and are very rational employees. When not working for us you will find them in Black Spiral caerns. They are useful there also, as they are often the only sane creatures in the place, and therefore make good primary contacts. Their caution also makes them re-useable, as they always are able to escape from any situation, and survive any crisis."

All members of the technocracy are referred to the following records.

Rationality Database: Non-existent : 'Living' Entities: reptilian : Snake : Variation of All Mundane Species : Weresnake. This is confirmation that the entity 'Weresnake', with all similar names and descriptions, does not exist.

Rationality Database : Global Notice. This database is CORRECT. If you find an error, it lies with REALITY. It is your responsibility to correct any faults you find, and ensure reality is kept up to date with these records.