HOME | DD

Description
Parnassus is, of course, the home of the Nadders, snake-like sophonts with Epicurean brains. But the ancestral “vertebrate” on the planet looked quite different—more like a twelve-armed octopus or starfish, with two arrays of six limbs. And from that basic design came many, many body plans, including the stiltsnakes.
Stiltsnakes are sometimes runners, sometimes swimmers, but mostly they’re waders out in the wetlands and estuaries. The six lower limbs remain prominent; the six upper limbs have hardened into a serrated beak around the mouth, opening and closing in different directions as is necessary to chew the food. Their large crests are used for display; during mating season males will tear at each other’s crests, a relatively safe way of fighting that leaves the option open for regrowing the crest or becoming a female next year (stiltsnakes are “tiresians”, switching between male and female as they see fit). The flamenco stiltsnake is large and relatively friendly, although the Nadders tend to dislike them for eating their fish and kicking apart their dams.

Description
Parnassus is, of course, the home of the Nadders, snake-like sophonts with Epicurean brains. But the ancestral “vertebrate” on the planet looked quite different—more like a twelve-armed octopus or starfish, with two arrays of six limbs. And from that basic design came many, many body plans, including the stiltsnakes.
Stiltsnakes are sometimes runners, sometimes swimmers, but mostly they’re waders out in the wetlands and estuaries. The six lower limbs remain prominent; the six upper limbs have hardened into a serrated beak around the mouth, opening and closing in different directions as is necessary to chew the food. Their large crests are used for display; during mating season males will tear at each other’s crests, a relatively safe way of fighting that leaves the option open for regrowing the crest or becoming a female next year (stiltsnakes are “tiresians”, switching between male and female as they see fit). The flamenco stiltsnake is large and relatively friendly, although the Nadders tend to dislike them for eating their fish and kicking apart their dams.