Generic Space Opera Bestiary: Space Snek!

 

“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” – Indiana Jones

Alright, let’s do something a little bit different. See, I love snakes. I think they’re great enemies to throw at people and rich with mythological symbolism. I also think they drive a lot of core fears of the wilderness, because one fears being bitten by a snake.

But I don’t just want to explore vipers. Constrictors also deeply interest me, mostly because I imagine Ranathim dancing with them. The hint of peril by having the sinuous coils of a serpent slither around the dancer offers intriguing imagery that a viper can’t quite match (though, it should be noted that vipers have traditionally found a place in religious gatherings as well). GURPS seems to agree, as we have both the viper and the anaconda as potential DF allies.

So this entry will be about that which slithers for the most part, as it turns out that there are quite a few critters that do so. It’ll also be directly pertinent to me, as I’ve been trying to figure out how to make a constrictor for the umbral rim that isn’t, you know, directly a boa or a python, though as far as I can tell, snakes are extremely well-evolved and I’m not sure you can create a more plausible snake. But let’s find out!

 

Space Snakes in GURPS Space

Our defining feature is a creature that slithers. Thus, if we look at the Primary Locomotion table, we see it’s possible for any terrestrial environment (except for arctic), though typically “equally unlikely,” but it’s most common in swamps, then rivers and streams, lagoons and lake/salt-water. This implies a certain amphibiousness, which we’ll come back to. When it comes to Trophic Level, we’re probably looking at pouncing predators. Snakes are, for whatever reason, obligate carnivores. They seem to hunt mostly by hiding and then surprising their prey.

When it comes to Size, we get some weird results, because snake SM is measured by length, which means they often have wide disparity between mass and size modifier, which causes other knock on effects such as having gigantic mouths (which they actually happen to have, but that’s largely a coincidence). Space suggests that slitherers tend to be small, because slithering has limited efficiency at higher masses. Thus, we would expect a slitherer to be small, and they do get quite small: thread snakes are snakes the size of worms. Pizard suggests that a “medium” snake is about 1 lb (ST 2) but are SM -4 rather than -5. On the extreme end, the Anaconda, Pizard clocks them all the way up to a max of ~400 lbs and SM +1, but I think we’ll limit them to about 200 lbs (or about ST 12). This technically puts both at human scale, but I think it’s fair to call most snakes “small.”

When it comes to their Body Plan, once again, we have bilateral, limbless (by definition) creatures with no manipulators, tails (maybe? Depending on definitions?) and an internal skeleton. Weirdly, though, a small, slithering animal would average an external skeleton more often than an internal one, according to Space, and could easily slide into a hydrostatic skeleton.

For Skin, man, scales have a lot of advantages for snakes. The speculative biology wiki gets into a lot of variations on limbless locomotion, but all of them involve a great deal of contact with the ground, and often varying between using the edges scales or scutes to “grip” something, and the flats to speed up the process of movement. Most animals have specialized equipment for contact with the ground at the end of their limbs, but slithering creatures contact the ground with their entire body, which would really shape what sort of skin they would have. We do see “skin” slitherers: snails have soft skin with a pretty heavy mucus layer. Caecilians are an amphibian shaped like a snake that has skin… but under that skin, it has “calcite scales,” according to wikipedia, but it seems to contradict that later (only “some” species have scales). Worms also have “soft skin,” but have bristles that help to “grip” as they slither. There are no examples of furred or feathered slitherers. Fur seems like it would be terrible for slithering with it contacting the ground all the time, but there are some pretty low-to-the-ground mammals (like rats) that likely pick up a lot of detritus. We might expect a fur-snake to clean themselves often, or to operate in an aquatic environment, like a seal-snake. A feathered snake might be similar, more similar to a duck than to an eagle; the feathers would naturally evolve to facilitate the slithering motion, but I don’t know what that would look like. Finally, the exoskeleton is, somewhat surprisingly, the most likely, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a terrible idea: it would take the hydropstatic nature of a slug and surround it with a shell that it could use as support, but also to “grip and slide” like scales do. I suspect to get the flexibility we’re looking for, we’re probably looking at ring segments, similar to a worm or a caecilian, or a centipede (which, stripped of legs, is probably close to what we’re looking for).

Whew! We’re still on Skin. When it comes to Breathing, these are often amphibious creatures. There are quite a few slitherers (like eels and my beloved hagfish) that are exclusively aquatic, but many gilled eels will slither up on land for limited times to forage (I suspect this is closer to us diving under water than to a truly amphibious eel). Most of your true amphibious slitherers are going to use Oxygen Absorption, but I suspect snakes will just use Oxygen Storage. For temperature, I believe all slitherers are cold-blooded, at least to some extent. This makes sense, given their small size, their association with water, and their aversion for arctic environments.

Snakes have two sexes, as do snails and caecilians, but I think you can find simple slitherers with other strategies. They seem to be mostly egg-layers, though spawning is possible for more amphibious slitherers. I think most snakes are going to be Strong-R strategy.

So, then we come to Senses. Snakes seem to actually have Bad Sight, but perhaps not Colorblindness. They seem to typically have Peripheral Vision and they often have Infravision. They don’t have UV Vision (their eyes explicitly filter out UV), but their recent ancestors may have had UV Vision. This is plausible, but a bit weak, according to Space, which seems to lean towards normal vision for slithering predators. Pizard leans towards Hard of Hearing, which most articles I can find agree with, but Space finds improbable, but not impossible. Touch is likely human-normal, though I think acute touch or vibration sense would be reasonable and interesting. Finally, for smell, snakes typically have discriminatory smell, which Space agrees with.

For Alien Minds, we expect Low Intelligence, which is what we find snakes have (most reptiles seem to be IQ 2). I would expect Mating only, no pair bond, but Space expects an average result of temporary pair-bond. Space expects Solitary snakes, which fits their behavior.

This gives them a generic Psychological Profile of Chauvinism -1 (Broad-minded), Concentration +1 (Attentive), Curiosity -1 (Staid), Egoism +0, Empathy -1 (Oblivious), Gregariousness -2 (:pmer), Imagination +0 and Suspicion +0.

Generic Alien Snake Stats

GURPS Basic has a Python and a huge rattlesnake on B458. Pizard has a variety of snakes and, GURPS DF Allies has both an anaconda and a generic viper.

Variations

Slug Snake

We should definitely play with alternate skeletons. A hydrostatic skeleton works very well for slitherers, who don’t need as much structure to remain upright. The hamadryad from Revelation Space has a hydrodynamic skeleton. These might have a slightly tougher exterior, especially if they’re land-based.

Lens (Slug Snake): Invertebrate; DR 1 (possibly with Tough Skin).

Chitin Snake

On the other side of the alternate skeleton, we might imagine a chitinous snake to have a series of “ring plates” running up and down its length. Worms and caecilians have these “segmented” bodies, but with skin, while centipedes have a similar structure, only with legs. We would probably dispense with the legs. I’m not sure what impact it would have on the flexibility of the snake; perhaps a -1 to DX?

Lens (Chitin Snake): -1 DX; DR 1

Venemous Snake

I know I tread a dangerous and controversial line here, but what if snakes were venomous? Of course, they already are, but we could think about some different venoms, and different delivery mechanisms.

We could argue for even more lethal snakes. Snake venom is already quite lethal, but there’s nothing really particular about industrial nerve agents that biology couldn’t produce the same. It might be that the snake needs to resist its own venom, or if it uses the venom to hunt, it may need to resist its own venom as it ingests the poisoned target.

We could argue for less lethal snakes. What about a snake whose venom put you to sleep, or caused you to hallucinate? These are less useful than simply killing a target, especially for a hunter, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t happen. They may well be “good enough” for a constrictor that can kill via some other means, or a snake that has smaller prey and uses its venom primarily as a defense mechanism. In this case, the lack of the lethality might be an evolutionary quirk.

Speaking of defense measures, why do snakes have to bite their target? Poison arrow frogs simply are poisonous. Touch one and you could well die. Why not give the same to a snake? Amphibious “snakes” certainly exist, so a poison arrow snake it’s that much of a stretch. This has an interesting synergy with constriction, as they’ll attack you from two sides: the constriction attack itself, and the contact venom of their skin. This does suggest a skin-covered snake, though, perhaps a slug-snake or a slime-snake.

Lens (Ultra-Venomous Snake): add Toxic Attack 1d (Follow-Up; Fangs; resistible HT-7; cyclic, 6 one-minute cycles; symptoms: Coughing and Neurological Disorder (Mild), 1/3 HP; Nauseated and Neurological Disorder (Severe), ½ HP; Neurological Disorder (Crippling), 2/3 HP; use the worst disorder (it increases in severity as the character loses HP)).

Lens (Soporific Snake): add Affliction 7 (Follow-Up; Fangs; Drowsy, or Unconsciousness if failed by 5 or more).

Lens (Hallucinogenic Snake): add Affliction 7 (Follow-Up; Fangs; Hallucination, or Seizure if failed by 5 or more).

Lens (Poison Snake): replace Follow-up with Aura, Always On.

Slime Snake

As noted above, skin is likely an interesting topic to explore for snakes. So how might a snake operate with just skin? Well, the most likely, judging from the animal world, would be soft skin, but that means they’ve vulnerable to salts and other irritants, and the salt on your skin can damage a creature with soft skin. Earthworms writhe when you pick them up because the salt in your sweat is burning them. So, most such creatures have a layer of mucus, both for protection and to facilitate movement. This implies the Slippery advantage, but I’m not sure if that goes both ways. If so, then they would make terrible constrictors! However, they might not make bad scavengers. Hagfish are long, slithering creatures covered in copious amounts of slime, and they don’t hunt so much as burrow directly into dead creatures and absorb nutrients through their skin. Fascinating.

Lens (Slime Snake): DR 1-5 (Ablative; Corrosive Only); Reduced Consumption (Cast Iron Stomach) 3; Slippery 1-5; Weakness (Corrosives and Salts, 1d/second).

Omnivorous Tunnel Worm

What might an omnivorous snake look like? We have a few options, but I find myself drawn to the humble earthworm, because it helps to explain how we might also have a tunneling snake (though I think thread snakes also primarily tunnel and they do so by another means). The earthworm seems to eat the earth. It consumes soil, passes it through its body, draws any micronutrients out of the soil, and then excretes it. This makes them closer to filter feeders, but we can also treat them as omnivores.

This omnivorous nature ties into a popular trope with digging worm things, which is “they swallow people whole.” This probably stems from Dune’s worms, but it pops up sometimes on more human scale monsters, likely because of the horror of being eaten alive (and because of the image of a snake swallowing something whole likely evokes the imagination of swallowing a living thing whole). I would note, however, that there are a lot of drawbacks to consuming anything alive, because it can fight back; cue the image of a barbarian bursting free of the now dead monster that just ate him. This implies a dumb creature that’s consuming things mostly by accident, and would have to be quite large to be a real threat. It might help if they had some internal DR, though.

Lens (Omnivorous Tunnel Worm): Reduce IQ to 1; Replace Restricted Diet (Carnivore) with Universal Digestion; Add Blindness, DR 1 (Internal only). Tunneling 1 and Vibration Sense (Ground).

Tentacle Snake

Why not give snakes some sort of manipulator? Arms would seem to violate the theme of what we’re doing (though lot of snake-like creatures have vestigial limbs or spurs). But we often see some with “feelers,” such as the olfactory tentacles of a caecilian. We could give snakes something like that, where they can check something before they eat it. This makes the most sense with something venomous: sting it, and only after it starts moving, feel it over and see if it’s safe to eat. If so, then eat it.

We could go in a different direction and give them a gripper/manipulator in the form of a prehensile tongue, a bit like a frog’s tongue. This seems a little redundant as they can often do the same with their tail, which is manipulate things from a distance without risking their more precious head, but a prehensile tongue would let them draw things into their mouth. This does imply a lack of venom, though, because the tongue couldn’t carry it, so you’re probably limited to things you can just swallow directly (such as a frog eating a fly).

Lens (Feeler Snake): Reduce HT by one level; replace No Fine Manipulator with Bad Grip, Extra Arms (4; Extra Short, Extra Week) and Sensitive Touch (Feelers only) and replace Discriminatory Smell with Discriminatory Taste.

Lens (Tongue Snake): Replace no Arms with One Arm (Long, Prehensile); I’m not sure what trait would make it “sticky,” if you wanted it like a frog-tongue.

Regenerating Snake

The mythology behind particular animals often surprises me, like why would a snake be associated with medicine, but it may have to do with its molting. It sheds its skin and seems to renew itself, which has obvious symbolism with what a doctor is trying to do with someone. We might imagine a snake that “regenerates” by molting: it goes into a period of slumber, rebuilds a new, undamaged body and then bursts out of the discarded shell of its previous body.

Lens (Regenerating Snake): Add +1 HT; Regeneration (Regular; Temporary Disadvantage, Unconsciousness); Regrowth.

Spherical Snake

Ha ha! No. You can’t have a spherical snake. The point of a snake is to slither, and balls can’t slither.

Radial geometry can, however. We could imagine a snake with three “sides,” each side with its own part of a mouth, it’s own sensory apparatus, perhaps even its own slender spine. What would this functionally change about the snake? As far as I can tell… nothing. They would still have peripheral vision, they would still slither. You’ve just reskinned a snake in such a way that it doesn’t really have a top and a bottom, but rather three disctinct, self-similar sides.

Lens (Trilateral Serpent): No change