SHISZIR
(100 points)
ST+4 (+45 points)
HT+2 (+20 points)
IQ-1 (-10 points)
Striker (tail) +3 ST (+15 points)
Claws +2 (+15 points)
Construction Attack (15 points)
DR+1 (+10 points)
Extra Flexability (10 points)
Longevity (+5 points)
Sharp Teeth (+5 points)
Peripheral vision (+15 points)
Bad Reputation -3 (-15 points)
Intolerance (-5 points)
Mild Shyness (-5 points)
Paranoia (-10 points)
Cold Blooded (less than 65) (-10 points)
Difficult to understand (-1 point)
Consider their race/culture to be superior (-1 point)
Posion (1 point)
Survival (desert/swamp) (1 point)
Weight is double normal for their strength and their serpentine bodies are 2 to 3 hexes in length (i.e., adults laying flat from head to tail they are generally between 9 and 12 feet in length).
The Shiszir (pr Serpent Folk) are a race having a humandiod uper torso on a serpent body. They stand usually six and a half to seven feet in height, and are very muscular. They stand upright, and use their long tails as balance support. They are normally black, brown or tan in colour, but their scales do come in different shades. They have wide, flat heads with widely seperated eyes, which give them the advantage of peripheral vision, almost to the point of being able to see all the way around them. They normally wear little in the way of clothing, possibly robes for religious ceremonies. The warriors have been known to wear some armor, but rarely metal armor. They often wear helms, metal wristbands, breast plates and "collars" into battle, and the collars are also ornamental. Rings and armbands are also popular, and since the Ophite people tend to have large amounts of gold, this is their main ornamental metal.
Originally, tools and weapons were made of stone and organic materials, but in the southern parts of the Serpentine Jungles, copper and precious metals are becoming increasingly important. In battle, they usually wield copper weapons of poor quality, but they are highly skilled in the arts of poisons. Usually their first attack is an all-out attack, with +4 to hit, aiming for exposed flesh or light cloth. This will get the poison into the opponents bloodstream. From there, usually the fight is defensive, waiting for the poison to take effect.
Shiszir regularly eat their enemies. They prefer eating Orc and Dwarf. Human and Elven flesh is relatively appealing to their taste buds, and they refuse to eat Goblin and Kobold, except when starving.
Shiszir are cold blooded creatures. This means that they require only about 1/3 of the food that warm blooded races do. While they are less subject to actual damage from high and low body temperatures (+2 on rolls to avoid hypothermia or dehydration) they tend to stiffen up in cold weather. After a half hour spent in cold conditions, Speed and DX drop by one point for each 10 degrees below 65. At temperatures below 32 degrees, they must roll versus HT or take 1 hit of damage. Warm clothing allows a +2 bonus to the roll. Lost speed and DX are regained at a rate of one point each per hour once the individual returns to a warm climate; this rate is doubled in an exceptionally warm environment.
Shiszir have their own heirarchical system of government, hinging upon the lineage of the leading family.
Shiszir Religion
The major Shiszir diety is Apep, the King of the Serpents. The form Apep takes is a gigantic water snake, so large it can wrap itself around the entire world. It lives under the oceans, and when it swirls its coils, great waves are made. The Ophites fear the sun and the moon, seeing them both as the eyes of a great eagle waiting to catch them unaware and pluck them up in its great beak. Apep protects them from the Great Eagle.
The creation belief for the Shiszir is simple. There are eight original entities. Apep lived in the great ocean. He scooped mud from the bottom, and formed the True Worlds. Then, as Toads are creatures of earth, he created Nun and Naunet (primordial matter and primordial space). Then once they were made, he created the remaining six original entities in his heart, and then brought them into being by speaking their names. There are the two serpents, Kuk and Kauket (the illimitable and the boundless); The lizards, Huh and Hauhet (darkness and obscurity); and the two turtles, Amon and Amaunet (hidden and concealed ones). These eight accidentally bring the great eagle into existance, as the sun, and in the Ophite theology it is said to come forth from Apep himself.
The Shiszir religious symbol is the serpent's eye, symbolizing Apep's eternal vigilance. The symbol of their imperial homeland is a snake eating its own tail.
Shiszir Language and Writing
The Shiszir have their own laguage, very different than human. It consists of many hisses, along with glurging noises and growls. It is important to look directly into an Shiszir's eyes while talking to them, because different eye movements change the meanings of certain words, along with changes in the alignment of their heads.
They have a written scrip for their language, but it is undecipherable as of yet to all non-Shiszir. Its seems as though there are thousands of letters to their alphabet, and each one is barely distinguishable from the next. Clerics and Mages from all cultures have been working for years trying to decode this language.
The written language was given to the Shiszir by the great eagle. After killing one thousand Shiszir, Apep fought the eagle and held it down for nine days. During that time, the sun neither rose nor set, and the moon was completely dark. The great eagle, nearing death, offered Apep the secret language in exchange for letting him live. Apep agreed, and gave the new language to the Shiszir.
A stand-offish, cruel race, the Shiszir view other races as food and slaves. The homeland of the Shiszir is a Nile River valley like area surrounded by desert on both sides on the coast leading inland to the Serpinetine Jungle. Shirzar are an old and ancient race (their history goes back many thousands of years). They excel at necromancy and posion making.
Patyrsun's Main GURPS Page
My Main GURPS Index Page
This page has been visited 
times.