by Ruo Yu Chen
(Kris Spear + Shield, Mak Halberd, Hand Weapons)
The 8 feet-tall Sarpa Warriors are the backbone of the Snake Men armies, a role they have proudly kept since the earliest days. Robust and resourceful, they were created with an innate thirst for combat and bloodletting, and with a resolute sense of loyalty towards their brood and Naga Queens. The most numerous of the Snake Men castes, the Sarpa are robust fighters of cold-blooded practicality. The Sarpa care nothing for honour, they fight viciously to satisfy their own bloodlust and to cruelly dominate their adversaries.
They are the creatures most often found raiding and capturing the younger races to feed the insatiable hunger of their Blood Naga Queens. The Sarpa’s large size betrays their sharp reflexes and startlingly quick speed. Adapted to the harsh environment of Khuresh, they are near immune to disease, possess a resilience to pain and trauma that would kill specimens of the younger races many times over, and are capable of regenerating limb damage after some time. When brought to war the Sarpa prefer to waylay the enemy in ambushes or strike at the flanks of armies, their natural agility allowing them to respond quickly to changing battlefield conditions.
The Sarpa wield undulating blades forged of meteoric iron and strange halberds designed to leave wicked gouging wounds. All of these are ritualistically coated in a brew of lethal toxins derived from their own venom glands. Even a scratch from these weapons causes victims to die in agony, as their flesh swells and hideously bloats with necrosis and their blood clots like spoiled milk or run in rivulets from their orifices. Disarming a Sarpa is futile, for they will simply strike with their dripping fangs that can puncture through light mail and leather armour, injecting their prey with paralyzing venom that peels flesh like shed skin. Even in its death throes the Sarpa can lash out in a final act of spite, dousing their enemy with caustic blood. One brood is known to equip their Sarpa Warriors with an entire arsenal of warpstone weapons.
Over the centuries the Blood Naga Queens have experimented with many iterations of the Sarpa form. Some have rattles on their tails that cause fear in warm-blooded prey when they reverberate. Others possess chameleonic skin or the controllable mandibles of venomous insects grafted on their tails, allowing the Sarpa to strike from unexpected angles. Certain specimens are stricken by unnatural mutations, with jagged bones protruding from their scales and jutting horns on their heads like miniature versions of the Sawanak serpent.
The Sarpa that stalk the halls of sunken Melay have evolved gills and adapted their bodies to the high pressure of the ocean depths. Those who frequently venture into the Dreaming Wood and the wastes of the north and south bear mutations from multiple eyes to serrated pincers and boney blades for hands.
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