Lampropelt

Shattered Serpent

Familiar

So many Shattered Serpents live in the Abiding Boneyard that the sand itself looks as though it's rippling like an ocean.

2000

The sand ripples like an ocean. Beware what leviathans lurk in its depths...

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Tales of unfathomably large Serthis, or perhaps serpents bred to enormous proportions as their steeds, have infested the Boneyard for as long as Serthis and dragons have coexisted. Such tails were dismissed by wiser dragons as rumor, for neither snakemen nor serpent has the ability to grow "large enough to rival a Guardian," or whatever other tales were being spun that day.

This changed when, one day, Blight and his band of hunters began hearing rumors once more of a serpent-beast fighting in the wastes. To the undead-hunters, this sounded not like idle imaginings, but like something more sinister: an Emperor rising out where few dragons would chance across it. They rode as soon as they could finish preparations, bringing the dune scavenger Maggot-Eater with them to act as a translator for the Serthis.

There they came across a warband of adolescent Serthis engaged in battle with their parent band. Territorial disputes were not in the hunters' purview, so they were prepared to leave—until Luta's third head chanced to spy a shift in the roiling currents of the Boneyard dunes. Amid the serpents coiling and twisting, there was a much larger shape: a desert leviathan, coming directly for them.

She raised the alarm, but in the next second it was upon them: the sand split like ocean waves as a serpentine body, dwarfing Blight in its size, rose up before them. Not an Emperor—not even an Imperial. Undeniably draconic, but what was it?

A second shape rose up to batter against the first, the two twisting and coiling and biting, showering blood across the sands as the Serthis fought on in their shadow. Finally the adolescent band drove the parent one back, and one great wyrm twisted and dove back into the sand as they retreated.

The other wyrm turned towards them. It spoke—in an ancient language bearing some similarity to the Gaoler's ancient draconic, but too different to decipher. Then, after a moment of consideration, it switched to the Serthis tongue.

The rumors were all true, Blight's band realized, and now they had living proof. The "great snakes" were not ancient Serthis or selectively-bred serpents—they were dragons. The ancient Water dragons spoken of in Gaoler myth, migrated from the ocean to the bonesands, cohabiting with Serthis out in the deep dunes where few dragons ever ventured—this new subspecies came to be known as the Dunetides.

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Since the initial meeting, the Dunetide Lampropelt and her warband have befriended Blight's hunters, and agreed to act as their eyes in the deep dunes. They have also made a pact with Maggot-Eater, who is ever eager to swap bonedune rarities for draconic crafts (and seems utterly taken with Lampropelt herself.)

Lampropelt is an adolescent of her species, only as old as the warband she protects. It is still unknown just what massive sizes her elders can reach.

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300g for undertide release <3
(alt name: echis?)
you could make a subspecies out of this...