Naga

'Important note: This species was created with vore in mind so there will be references to it throughout this (both fatal and non-fatal). If you don’t like vore this species doesn’t have to be used for it but please keep this in mind when reading, thank you!'

Nagas are a half humanoid, half snake species that are found across most corners of the globe in Faria. They are some of the most feared predators about yet their reputation as merciless predators in it for their own pleasure overshadows the fact they are a perfectly intelligent species capable of fitting into society. Those who want nothing more than to live an honest life among others are often held back by those who have no interest in integrating with society and would rather make a meal of townsfolk.

History
While the nagas have no written or verbal history of their own other than stories or rumors of achievements among their own kind, they have a more significant place in history than they recall in the present day. They were among a handful of species created by the anomaly on the crossing of the A.R.K II alongside the beastkin and chimeras 155 years ago. The beastkin allowed the nagas and chimera to run free rather than destroy them, and ever since they have cemented their place in Faria's ecosystem and as powerful yet cunning predators.

Biology
Nagas typically they have a humanoid upper body and the lower body of a snake. Nagas are found in most corners of the world though they tend to prefer a mild to warm climate, they dislike the cold so will avoid mountain alps, peaks and are a very rare sight in Reistein. When it does become colder in their territory, a naga will retreat somewhere dark and warm to wait it out by hibernating, often in groups to take advantage of body heat. When they do remerge for spring, they will be ravenous with hunger.

Average standing height for a naga tends to be around 8'-9' tall, though their full length from their head to the tip of their tails is more around 30'-50' long. Nagas can be smaller or much bigger than this, the largest known tending to reach over 80' long with rumors of nagas over 100' long being commonplace.

The upper half of a naga varies greatly, most commonly they are human-like. They may in some rare cases have the upper half of beastkin or halfkin but their snake-like traits remain prevalent in their biology in any case. Nagas have a sharp pair of eyes, a good nose and hearing and a mouth full of commonly sharp teeth, sometimes with long fangs for their canines able to deliver venom through a bite. The upper half contains a smaller stomach for smaller meals.

They are of course covered in scales on their lower half (and sometimes on their upper half in patches) that can be a medley of different colours, these colours tend to denote additional abilities a naga has up their sleeve. Drab coloured nagas are usually powerful constrictors or cunning ambush predators. Brightly coloured nagas however may also bear fangs filled with venom that can incapacitate their prey enough to make devouring them easier. These poisons range from a paralyzing venom able to make muscles tensed up, a venom that puts prey to sleep to a toxic venom that subdues their potential prey with sickness, some of these poisons can be fatal to smaller creatures. Some nagas have the ability to hypnotize their prey with the use of their eyes, lulling their prey into a false sense of security added with dulcet tones or song to make the process easier.

Nagas have long, powerful tails, making them excellent tree climbers and good ambush predators from above, able to coil their tails around their prey to keep them effectively in place. Their tails contain a much larger stomach for bigger meals or to aid in breaking down their smaller ones. Nagas have some extent of control over the digestive qualities of their tail, allowing people to sit in their stomachs for ages on end without worry for their lives. Some nagas take advantage of this quality and offer themselves as an escort to allow people to cross through dangerous places safely.

Because their bodies keep growing overtime, they need to shed their skin from time to time. Surprisingly this extends to the whole body and not just their lower half, making it quite a bizarre sight to come upon. It is however also a dangerous sight as they are vulnerable in the middle of shedding and will be a lot more aggressive in response to anything coming near them.

Behaviour
For the most part nagas prefer to live alone away from others of their kind, though some may live in small groups of between 3-5 members. In rarer cases nagas may find themselves all drawn to a particular ground enough to tentatively cooperate and live together in an entire village of nagas. These villages are founded on the basis of nagas wanting to claim a particularly choice hunting ground for themselves and to reduce what would be constant competition otherwise. Naga villages are very simplistic otherwise, situated in forests, jungles, caves or cliffsides. Villages have minimal decorations and furnishing to even make them out as a village, mainly as nagas tend to sleep up in trees or some other warm and comfortable spot at night ideal for keeping their eyes peeled for prey.

Naga personalities are rather varied much like any other species, but they tend to have a divide among themselves based on their personalities. The nagas most known by other races are greedy, cunning, single minded and largely uncaring about anything other than fulfilling their own needs and desires. Generally speaking, this extends to treating smaller races like toys for their own amusement before devouring them like little more than food, and tormenting them past this point until their meals are processed.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are nagas that are the polar opposite of these cruel and uncaring nagas. These nagas are considerably more upstanding, good and honest folk who do their utmost to look out for others and rarely meddle in the affairs of smaller races. Some of these nagas develop a keen interest in trying to live in a settlement with smaller races, but this is no easy task thanks to their less sociable cousins eating the townsfolk they need to gain the trust of. The handful of nagas who do break through this barrier of trust become powerful protectors of the settlement, able to fend off or eat other threats to the settlement.

While friendly and adverse nagas differ greatly from each other in their ideal way to live their lives, they still have common ground. Nagas are very sexually charged and love nothing more than teasing others for their own pleasure, along with the feeling of being dominant over another. Nagas are also very immodest and don't particularly care to dress up more than wearing jewelry, if that (though friendly nagas may be more willing to compromise and dress themselves for the sake of fitting in). Sex is a completely unsacred act to them so they have no qualms about doing it just about anytime or place, at the bare minimum flirting with people for the fun of it. For this reason it's rare to find any naga with a strict preference for a single sex or being picky over species and body shapes as they like to keep their options open for all sorts of fun. Their ability to devour smaller races with ease can also become part of their idea of fun, implemented in other creative fashions as well.

Nagas as Predators
Nagas are very capable predators as most anyone knows. Because of their snake biology they are more than capable of ingesting a meal whole, and in great numbers at that. Their upper stomachs can contain two people but the stomachs contained in their tails can fit 10 or more without difficulty, though it's rare for a naga to feed this well before they're chased off.

The way a naga approaches eating their meals depends largely on their personality. Adverse nagas are more inclined towards tormenting their prey and drawing out their fear and the experience as long as possible, even to the extent of deriving pleasure from their preys pain and suffering from constricting them, subduing them with venom all the way to the digestive process within. These nagas hold little to no remorse, seeing their prey as little more than food to sustain them, at best a toy to have fun with before they get bored of it and eat it. Digestion happens without so much as a second thought, while they need to eat as much as any other creature, they are not known to exercise restraint and will gladly eat as much as they can get away with. These nagas abuse the digestive control over their stomachs sometimes to draw out the struggles of their prey before they digest them eventually.

Friendlier nagas practice their predation rather differently. These nagas prefer to avoid eating people if they can help it and will instead focus on consuming other prey, but sometimes they're starving and the only opportunity for a good meal is a member of another sentient race that has crossed paths with them. When they must eat a smaller race they will try to make it as quick and painless as possible, sometimes knocking them out so they're unconscious throughout or if they have a venom able to put them to sleep they may gently nip them enough to administer it, or hypnotizing their prey so they believe they're somewhere comfortable and safe the whole time. Sometimes friendly nagas may end up eating a smaller race, not for food but for company. Their friendlier natures often see them outcast by the rest of their less friendly kind, so they can get rather lonely and desperate for any interaction they can get. These lucky people eaten under these circumstances are let go later on, or sometimes they may develop a sincere bond with the naga and they become close friends.

Pretty much any sentient species can find their way onto a nagas menu, though deceivers can prove to be too slippery a meal to be worth the effort and equally matched apex predators like rock aghrahns may require some whittling down in a fight before they could be vulnerable enough to be devoured, something only a desperately hungry naga might resort to.

Nagas as Prey
Nagas being devoured is a very rare occurrence, especially to witness, but it does happen. Nagas will sometimes find themselves caught out and devoured by predators they are outclassed or equally matched by such as an Oskeli wyrm or a rock aghrahn. In some other cases nagas may find themselves eaten by their own kind due to now much they can vary in size from one another, a bigger naga may opt to eat smaller ones, but some rumoured stories of a smaller naga managing to swallow a bigger one circulate as a fun story from time to time.

Diet
Alongside eating other sentient races, nagas will eat livestock, wild game and fish, almost any kind they can get their hands on. Nagas are overall very unfussy eaters, though much like rock aghrahns nagas are known to have a favourite food they will keep coming back for, making nagas a potentially dangerous local threat to a settlement if a naga has a particular taste for the townsfolk or their livestock they depend on. Nagas are obligate carnivores and cannot digest plants or fruit. Even if a naga is reluctant to eat people, they still need to eat meat in some form, leading to these nagas to resort to eating livestock when desperate but otherwise they will try to steer as clear from settlements as possible unless trying to get into their good books to be welcomed as a resident.

Weaknesses
Some smaller races find it hard to fathom nagas having any sort of weakness, but they do indeed have some.

Nagas are quite vulnerable when caught in the middle of shedding an old skin, other predators on their level may take advantage of this to devour them and reduce competition against other predators. Their senses can be disoriented with smellingsalts or something to temporarily blind them. A small handful of people have managed to repel the hypnotic approach of some nagas by reflecting their eyes back at them with a mirror, causing the nagas to fall under their own spell and allowing the would-be prey to slip out of their coils. Southern and Eastern lyres have the natural benefit of being immune to many forms of venom that nagas can produce, but it's possible to be well armoured enough to protect yourself from being bitten.

Nagas tend to be solitary hunters so a well coordinated team can fend off an attacking naga if needed with a good plan or sturdy defenses. Many settlements opt for wooden pikes to deter nagas climbing the walls or to create a boundary around the settlement, though a handful have also found barbed wire effective (albeit an expensive option for this very reason). Most nagas don't possess weaponry of their own as they see little need for it, so if you can overcome their natural offenses they can be brought down.

Spirituality
For the most part nagas have little to no interest in spiritual beliefs due to living out of the way of other races most of the time. Those integrated into settlements may adopt some form of belief system but nagas are not a terribly devout species overall. At the bare minimum they are confused about the notion of religion, though some adverse nagas might enjoy using the subject matter of their preys beliefs to torment them before eating them.

Overall
Other species are wary of them at best and terrified of them at worst, tend to get chased away from settlements even if they want to live in a settlement and make an honest living. In rare cases a naga can break past this barrier by protecting townsfolk from other threats which may allow them to build enough trust to be accepted. Other nagas find out they have an easier way to do this by selling themselves and fulfilling the sexual fantasies of others behind closed doors in one way or another.

Lyres

Nagas are very disliked by lyres simply for being especially terrifying predators to them. A single naga that gets the chance to will happily devour and kidnap multiple residents of a village before being satisfied and can easily overpower a group of warrior lyres trying to fend them off. Lyres are still brave enough to fight them, even alone if it means others can get to safety.

Lyres are so common and widespread that their presence is frequently the reason friendly nagas are driven away. As a means of gaining trust with lyres, nagas will eat other predators/threats to lyres safety to get into their good books. It's common for nagas in mixed settlements to maintain doing in order to ease the tensions their living amongst their prey would create, allowing them to build a decent reputation.

Anurans

Nagas are as terrifying a predator to anurans as they are to lyres, but it would be argued by anurans that it's even more dangerous for anuran swarms to bump into them, as lyres have an ever so slight advantage in being just too tall for a naga to eat a whole villages worth of lyres, while a naga could potentially wipe out an entire swarm before they're full, so anurans need the entire swarm to have a chance to take one down and protect their territory.

Halfkin

To the surprise of few, nagas and halfkin get along well due to their rather odd mannerisms compared to most. A friendly nagas desire for companionship paired with a halfkins desires for experiences of all sorts with other races has often lead to very colourful nights behind closed doors. In some cases nagas and halfkin may pair together in more devoted relationships as nagas understand the importance of life being interesting and fun which pairs well with a halfkin, keeping them from getting too caught up in their interests.

Treating Each Other
Nagas hold a tentative relationship among their own kind, they are not much for truly coordinating or working together even if they live in groups or villages but may do so out of mutual benefits to be had compared to squabbling for territory or food, though sometimes these groups may run into conflict over choice hunting grounds or other such matters. Among friendly and adverse nagas there is a greater conflict among them born of their ideals. Friendly nagas believe they would have a better life trying to work together with settlements and helping the smaller races with their problems, adverse nagas however have no interest in the affairs of their food and would rather just eat them and live a simpler life in this way, believing the risks it comes with are worth the potential reward of a more exciting meal.

Reproduction
Mating seasons for nagas does not take place at any set time of year, but is instead determined by the climate and availability of food in the area. The mating season can be quite a tense time for nagas due to their instincts being worn on their sleeves. Males become especially aggressive in the contest for an ideal mate, enough to fight with other males for the right to a female they have their eyes on. Males are known to be stubbornly persistent on chasing after a particular female and doing whatever it takes to impress her. Alongside fighting a male will try to impress a female with feats of skill or strength where possible, in some cases a male may even eat their competition just to have the best chance.

No matter what they do however, the female has the final say, and indeed even if a male does everything right she might still coldly reject him if she isn't interested (which can happen simply because she has her eyes on someone else or isn't interested in the opposite sex). Males will otherwise not give up until the females give their final say. While it's certainly easy for a female to reject a male outright, the females seem to find entertainment value in the males all going at it so they will draw things out as much as possible before they ultimately reject them, purely for the fun of it. Friendlier females tend to be a bit less inclined towards the games that the less friendly nagas delight in, being more forthright (but gentle) with their rejection if they're not interested, usually with judging remarks of them being "no fun", even from the males who enjoy the fun of courting as much as the females do.

When it does happen that a male manages to sincerely impress a female, they will slither off to somewhere a bit more private and comfortable (sometimes with other partners who have gotten together) and do as mother nature demands of them. Nagas are rather inventive when it comes to spicing up sex and enjoy plenty of foreplay, going at it as gently or roughly as they like and indulging each other in plenty of aftercare. This is because nagas rarely stay together as long term partners so they make it count for however long it lasts before they all go their separate ways, the females typically going away impregnated.

It's also known among some circles that nagas are not strictly limited to other nagas for their potential partners. In mixed settlements, nagas have gotten together and had children with humans, halfkin and even beastkin. This is likely due to them all having a shared heritage that is largely unknown to the wider world.

Female nagas either lay eggs or have live births, though it takes about 6 months for their offspring to be ready to be born or hatch. Naga eggs have been documented as being white and soft-shelled like snake eggs, with a considerably thicker but still pliable shell.

Life Cycle
Nagas deviate strongly from their snake roots in this department. While snakes are generally known to abandon their offspring the moment they're born, mother nagas tend to be much more protective of their offspring. Indeed baby nagas are as vulnerable as most other offspring from other species and need the protection of their mother for the best chance at survival. Hardly anyone has ever seen a wild naga child because their mothers hide them away from the dangers of the world so well, likely these youngsters are hidden away deep within caves or tunnels far from the dangers of the world.

Luckily they grow up relatively quickly, becoming quite precocious even at young ages, though they will still be kept a close eye on by their mothers until they turn 18 and have grown big enough to handle the outside world. While nagas are full grown adults at 18, a naga never truly stops growing all throughout its life.

The estimated lifespan of a naga is about 110 years, though they typically live about 50-60 years in the wild.