Yuan-ti Malison (Type 2)

Source: Monster Manual (2024) p. 343

Yuan-Ti Malison type 1 (left) and type 2 (right)
Malisons exhibit snakelike features that make them deadly in combat.

  • Type 2. These malisons have human bodies, but they’ve replaced their arms with snakes.

Malisons possesses deadly venom, which some manipulate into magical strikes. They can also shape-shift into snakes, helping them to position themselves for surprise attacks or to slither away with nary a trace.

Yuan-ti

Power-Hungry Serpentine Conspirators

  • Habitat. Desert, Forest, Swamp, Urban
  • Treasure. Relics

Exploiting pacts with sinister supernatural forces, yuan-ti bargain away their humanity for the lethality and predatory deviousness of serpents. From hidden bastions, they manipulate rulers and the wealthy, seeking to control the world. Many yuan-ti possess venomous magic, which often manifests as fangs or striking serpents.

Yuan-ti have humanlike forms with a variety of horrifying serpentine transformations. Some have a scattering of reptilian scales, while others are giants that are more snake than human. Typically, the more snakelike yuan-ti are, the greater esteem they hold among their kind.

Yuan-ti might gain their reptilian features through dangerous supernatural rites. Roll on or choose a result from the Yuan-ti Transformations table to inspire how yuan-ti obtain their serpentine aspects.

Yuan-ti Transformations

dice: 1d6A Yuan-ti Gained Its Snake Features From…
1Bargaining parts of its soul to a pantheon of serpentine demigods.
2A curse laid on its people in the distant past.
3The dream-venom of Merrshaulk, a slumbering snake god.
4Experiments by spirit nagas or other yuan-ti.
5A ritual involving the skin of a fiendish snake.
6Trials to excise its “weak” human parts.
^yuan-ti-transformations

A quote from Last Message of Sorril Venil, Explorer of the Labyrinth of Madness

Great magic, twisted and corrupted… Malice beyond reckoning… Flesh reshaped, becoming serpentine horrors…

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