Introduction:
Controlling almost half of the geographic area of the Great Convergence are the squabbling city states of the Snallygaster Snake People. These snake people have developed a unique culture based on refusing to live in secret among the humans like many other groups of snake people, and instead using their natural shape-shifting abilities to express themselves and show off among the other snake people of the cities. With snake people as the rulers and majority populations of the city states, the Snallygaster Culture has been able to thrive and grow without the usual fears of persecution from a human majority. Because of this, it is fairly common for snake people from other parts of the world to come to the city states and adopt the practices of the Snallygaster Culture. The culture is very welcoming to these immigrants and there are several orders of Snallygastrus worshipers devoted to helping these newcomers get starters and adjust to life in the open. The city states, each ruled by a different line of archons and their families, have never gotten along well, with minor border skirmishes in the hinterlands of the cities being an almost annual occurrence. Each archon seems to believe they have the right and duty to conquer the rest of the city states, unifying the Snallygaster Snake People and allowing them to expand outward like the great snake person empires of old. At this point, no city state seems to have anywhere close to the ability to do this, and it is unclear if any of them will gain that ability in the future.
Magic and Technology:
All snake people have the inherent magical ability to alter their appearance however they want, provided they stick to a humanoid shape and maintain the same mass as before. With these being the only true limitations on their abilities, however, snake people are able to get incredibly abstract and outlandish with their appearances. Control over this ability is a skill that needs to be practiced to achieve truly outlandish forms, so there are several schools in each city devoted to the practice of magic, usually geared towards training students for the professional body pageant circuits. Talented individuals who win many pageants are often celebrities in Snallygaster society. This fame and fortune is known to be quite fleeting, however, as novelty fades quickly and the public’s focus can shift in an instant. The few snake people who have managed to ride these waves and stay popular for a long time are absolute masters of their shape-shifting abilities, their public image, and what they need to change to stay fresh and relevant. For everyone else, however, learning to control their shape-shifting is about gaining the ability to express themselves in any way they want to regardless of what other people think, and much of the other magic practiced by Snallygaster snake people stems from this desire to express oneself and honestly show who they are to the world.
While the city states have taken advantage of their positions along important rivers and trade routes to import whatever enchanted items and magical practitioners that they need, their homegrown magics are often harmonious with their goals of openness and honesty. Spells to see true forms and undo illusions are very common, almost seen as essential in a society where true forms are often hidden. Those who specialize in illusion magic frequently have a bad time in the city states. Another field of magic which has received a lot of study in the city states is magic to compel others to tell the truth, although the morality around this is a little gray. While Snallygaster culture values honesty and truth, they also value free will and willing expression, so any magic that infringes on free will tends to make Snallygaster snake people uncomfortable. Related to this, and as an extension of their natural abilities, Snallygaster snake people have also developed many spells for transforming others into different forms and for extending the limits of their own transformations into larger and smaller forms, or even forms that are completely without humanoid shapes.
On the other hand, followers of Snallygastrus who are particularly pious and follow the tenets of their religion perfectly gain the ability to channel several powers from their god. These devotees, referred to as Paladins of Snallygastrus, are able to grow feathered wings capable of flight out of their backs, turn their teeth and claws into razor-sharp, steel blades of death, and produce an aura in which it is impossible for anyone to knowingly tell a lie. To gain these incredible powers, a snake person must always be completely open and honest with themselves and others. They must always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Furthermore, the paladins may only use violence against those who have directly attacked the paladin or some other innocent person. Finally, there are several religious rituals and holidays that must be observed in the correct manner throughout the year. If all of these conditions are met, a snake person gains the abilities of a Paladin of Snallygastrus and is thus expected to act as a paragon of honesty, goodness, and protection within their community. Given the difficulty of maintaining this lifestyle, there are rarely more than a handful of paladins in each city. Regardless, their magical powers are often useful in defending city states from external threats and maintaining peace when defense is not necessary.
Society:
Snallygaster culture is centered on the city state as the main political unit. Each city state controls a hinterland in which farming, hunting, and gathering can be done to find raw materials to trade and feed the cities. Those who work in the hinterlands usually live within the closest city and commute to their place of work each morning. Most snake people of the city states, however, work in the city they call home, usually either directly in or related to trading goods and materials with those who travel along the rivers and coasts of the Great Convergence. In the 800 years the Snallygaster City States have been around, some individuals have been more successful than others, allowing them to leave considerable wealth behind for their descendants to use, benefit from, and grow. These wealthy families have built their fortunes on commerce and have gained influence, even with the archons of their respective cities. The archons themselves usually claim to be direct descendants of their city’s founder, with the oldest living member of each line taking the office. In the last 800 years, several of these dynasties have been overthrown and replaced by usurpers, but these events always seem to result in a new archon being declared with a usually tenuous connection to the city founder’s line. The immediate and extended families of the archons tend to fill the other offices and executive roles in each city. There are frequently several levels of bureaucracy made up entirely of the archon’s relatives before other families are seen in government positions, but some of the archons prefer to appoint people to positions based on merit rather than relation.
In general, the archons try to make a show of being kind and generous to the people of their city states. Most of the city states have some kind of system in place to help poorer residents get the things they need, and many archons see public charity as a good way to stay popular with their citizens. This, along with several religious groups that try to help the poor, has led to a generally good quality of life for the majority of Snallygaster snake people, at least compared to places with less of a social safety net. On the flip side of this, many wealthy snake people seem to believe that they deserve their wealth for one reason or another and do everything they can to justify the existence of a wealthy class. In turn, they seem to think that the poor are poor because of character flaws or a natural hierarchy. City archons are frequently sympathetic to these beliefs, mostly because wealthy snake people have greater ability to meet with and influence their archons.
To help justify their wealth, the rich and powerful of the Snallygaster City States frequently sponsor lavish parties, spectacles of public art, and most popular of all, they sponsor body pageants. Body pageantry is one of the most important and popular aspects of Snallygaster society, as it allows snake people to show off their skill and mastery over their innate shape-shifting magic. Pageants are held frequently, at all levels of skill and formality, with several subcultures and associated styles of pageant being present in pretty much every city state. Large, public pageants sponsored by wealthy snake people often feature the highest caliber of contestants, referred to as artists, who wow the general populace with the most intricate and beautiful shapes they can imagine. Smaller events are much more common, with neighborhoods, families, and even religious groups organizing events that anyone can join and compete in. The winners of body pageants are traditionally given a bouquet of white roses with pink polka dots and a cash prize in an amount proportional to the scale of the event and the wealth of the organizers. The cash prizes can be enough for an individual to live off of if they participate in and win many pageants. The roses, with their unique color pattern, are native to the Great Convergence and are known as pageant roses due to their close association with Snallygaster body pageants. The importance of these pageants in Snallygaster culture cannot be overstated, as they seem to support and reinforce the values that many snake people think of as defining their culture.
Religion:
Snallygaster snake people are a surprisingly religious group, with most of them worshiping the god Snallygastrus to some degree. There has never been one single organization, but rather there have always been a multitude of competing orders with different focuses and goals. For the most part, snake people will attend the weekly sermons from the closest temple to where they live, but they do not usually consider themselves a member of that order and will go to different ones for different things depending on their specific beliefs and needs. For example, there are several competing funeral traditions based on varying interpretations of what an open and honest funeral ought to look like. While there have been religious conflicts in the past, the various orders and traditions of Snallygastrus worship have come to an uneasy peace in the modern day.
The thing that unites the various sects of Snallygaster religion is a belief, apparently based on communication with their god, that all goodness and morality is the result of being honest, open, and kind. All Snallygaster religious orders have this as their central commandment and conceit, although the priorities and executions differ between groups. Of note is that the worshipers of Snallygastrus do not see their god as a creator figure, but rather as the source of their morality, culture, and way of life. Most sects teach that all of Snallygaster snake person culture and society is born from the revelation of the three virtues to the first Snallygaster snake people, who then chose to leave their homes and find a new homeland. The story goes that they wandered for several years before finding the Great Convergence and settling in the upstream region and the western deltas, areas that the gnomes had always left unsettled as part of an early treaty with the Convergent Wanderers. Conflicts between the Convergent Wanderers and these early settlers have led to a lasting religious taboo against interacting with the Convergent Wanderers. Because of this taboo, Convergent Wanderers are banned from entering most cities. The Convergent Wanderers don’t seem to be too bothered by this, although they certainly recognize the injustice of being forced from their ancestral homes and then barred from entering the settlements set up by the invaders.
City States:
Each Snallygaster city state is independent, with the archon of each city usually seeing the other cities and their leaders as direct rivals. Many of the archons have the goal of building up enough power to take over the rest of the cities, unifying the Snallygaster City States into a single state which can then move on to conquering other parts of the world. The large number of archons with this goal, however, means that each city is constantly watching all of its neighbors and covertly preventing them from gaining enough power to threaten other cities. This is done through a sea of constantly shifting alliances and ententes between the cities along with the occasional war. This situation has made it almost impossible for any one city to gain enough power to actually unify the city states or to even conquer their closest neighbors. Many of the diplomats and traders from afar have described the archons as having a bucket of crabs mindset, working together to tear down anyone who starts to be too successful.
Each city state maintains its own diplomatic and trade relations with the rest of the world. Additionally, each city also maintains its own taxes, tariffs, and import laws, a state of affairs which has maddened many merchants through the years. If not for the importance of the Great Convergence for global trade routes, the city states would probably see much less trade due to the expense involved in trading with more than one or two Snallygaster city states on a single route. Many outsiders have attempted to conquer the city states and put an end to the fractious state of affairs, but it seems as if the only thing that is able to unite the Snallygaster archons is an outside threat. When the city states unify, they seem to field an unbeatable army, supported in their defensive wars by the Paladins of Snallygastrus, considered the most powerful warriors in the Great Convergence. These alliances tend to immediately fall apart when the threat is dealt with, however, and things tend to continue in much the same way they had been going before the attempted invasion.
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