Silt Serpent

This creature is a silt-grey snake that slithers through the dust, baring ivory fangs and hissing menacingly.

Description
Although the standard silt serpent is most at home in the shallow silt, specimens occasionally are found in the deeper silt. Far larger than their reef-dwelling cousins, these giant silt serpents can reach 18 feet or more in length, and their venom is more potent still.

Combat
Silt serpents are cowardly but cunning opponents. They lie beneath the silt, making use of their tremorsense ability to detect potential prey. When a target is detected, the serpent swims towards it, strikes and swims away again to wait for its poison to take effect. When the target stops moving (the serpent‘s chief criterion for victory) it swims back and begins to feed. Although playing dead can fool a serpent, this generally only prompts it to start feeding, and so is of limited use.

Description
Silt serpents are precisely that – serpents that have adapted to live in the shallows of the Sea of Silt. As with many of Athas‘ denizens, they have evolved basic psionic abilities to help them to cope with life under the dark sun. Small and timid, they nevertheless possess a venomous bite that can bring down all but the hardiest of opponents.

Silt serpents are carnivores that dwell alone or in familial nests in reefs and rocky ruins in the shallow silt. They are hunted for their flesh, which is succulent and tasty. Giants of the silt archipelagoes were among the first to prepare the creatures as food, but it is the Sky Singer elf tribe that has become most famous for their dish known as alrasb, prepared over an open flame from the sizzling meat of the serpents.

An adult silt serpent can grow to be four feet in length. Their young, laid in clutches of 2-12 eggs, are thin and slender, but with a more potent venom than their parents.