Phylaxian (3.5e Race)

Phylaxian
Summary::One of the many surviving experiments of the Sarrukh (Serpent Kingdoms, Faerûn campaign setting), a half serpent, half human race.

Personality
The personality of the Phylaxian depends mostly upon whether found within the caravans of the desert or in solitude of the forests. Both are a peaceful in mindset, but are willing to defend family and home from onslaught. A desert phylaxian is generally more aloof than their cousins, but this is more of a ploy, due to their need to be merchants to keep the caravan alive and moving. Their forest cousins are more distant, having been more cut off from the rest of the world for a long time.

Physical Description
All phylaxians have a humanoid upper body conjoined to the long, sinuous tail of a snake at the hip, without humanoid legs. The phylaxian comes in two colors. The forest phylaxian has generally more pale to lightly tan skin, and their scales are in hues of green and brown. The desert phylaxian has more darker skin, and tan, white and orange in their scales. All phylaxians have yellow snake-slitted eyes. Those of the forests tend to wear dark, full body clothing to help with surprising prey, while those of the desert favor lighter and thinner clothing to fend off the harmful sun. Males are noticably taller and heavier than females, with an average height around 6 feet, and weight around 200lbs.

Relations
All phylaxians are distant and distrustful of any non-phylaxian who has not earned their trust, and they are unwilling to give out such trust unless the outsider has proven worthy to be trusted. The only exception is of their servile Ophidian cousins, who they welcome if the ophidian had chosen a master within the tribe.

Alignment
Any, but they tend to follow M'daess, the snake mother, into the NG alignment. Adventurers of this race tend towards any alignment regardless.

Lands
The Phylaxians call both the dense jungle and the arid desert home, albeit not at the same time, due to their ancestors settling within those two places. And so they can still be found in their tree houses within the forest, or in their nomadic caravans travelling the deserts.

Religion
Like their once Sarrukh masters, they follow the World Serpent, more specifically the fragment of it named M'daess. They are known to periodically participate in sacrifice, with the sacrifice either a willing outsider or one of their own, in order to please the World Serpent.

Language
Phylaxians speak Common and Sarrukhar. Desert phylaxians dabble within a few other languages to make commerce easier, while forest phylaxians may pick up a language or two from native woodsmen and women.

Names
Phylaxians tend to have long names, punctuated with one or more apostrophes, similar to Sarrukh names. Desert phylaxians tend to adopt partial mixes of their racial names and names found within cities they visit, in order to have more pronouncable names when they deal with customers and other traders.