Serpent Men - Origin and Society

Origin and Society

In Robert E. Howard's King Kull stories, the serpent people worship a god known as the Great Serpent. Later writers would identify the Great Serpent with the Great Old One Yig and with the Stygian serpent god Set from Howard's Conan stories.

The Serpent Men were created untold aeons ago by the Great Serpent. At some point the Serpent Men group split, with one group becoming the Man-Serpents- these creatures, unlike their kin and predecessors, have the bodies of giant serpents and the heads of human beings, with smaller snakes for hair like Medusa. A Man-Serpent is the titular being in the Conan story "The God in the Bowl". Man-Serpents have hypnotic gazes and lethally venomous bites, as well as terrible crushing strength.

The seat of the First Empire of the serpent people, during the Paleozoic era, was Valusia. Valusia is a fictional country in the Kull stories of Robert E. Howard and his stories tell, among other things, of Serpent Men trying to conquer the world once again, around 20,000 years ago, where Kull from Atlantis reigned over the Valusia Kingdom, located on the west coast of the main continent of Thuria. The ancient serpent empire was based on sorcery and alchemy, but collapsed with the rise of the dinosaurs about 225 million years ago during the Triassic era. The Serpent Men originally ruled over humans in Valusia but were defeated and almost wiped out in humanity's battle for survival against the "elder things" that predated them. Over time, humans dominated Valusia and the Serpent Men became a legend. The Serpent Men, one of the few surviving "elder things", infiltrated human society and ruled from behind the scenes for a time but were again discovered, defeated and cast out in a secret war. However, they later repeated this tactic but added the front of a Snake Cult religion, which gained power and influence within Valusia while they also used their abilities of disguise to murder and replace each reigning monarch. Their power is eventually broken by King Kull, formerly an Atlantean barbarian who had recently conquered Valusia, and the Pict Brule the Spear-Slayer, whose society was aware of the Serpent Men's infiltration.

After the destruction of Valusia, the serpent men escaped to Yoth, a cavern beneath K'n-yan in North America (ironically, the Pictish Isles of the Kull stories). They built subterranean cities, of which only ruins remain in the modern age. Explorers from K'n-yan visited Yoth frequently to learn more of the serpent men's scientific lore. Their next downfall came when they brought idols of Tsathoggua from N'kai and abandoned their patron deity Yig to worship their new god. As retribution Yig placed his curse upon them, forcing his few remaining worshipers to flee to caverns beneath Mount Voormithadreth.