> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Shadow Serpents > [![[Shadow_Serpents_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Shadow_Serpents.webp) > ###### Faction Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Faction | > Category | Street Gang | > Allegiance | Independent | > Base | Old Camaar, [[Camaar]] | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Active | The Shadow Serpents are a street gang of [[Camaar]], operating out of the rough northern streets of the Old Camaar district, where they collect tolls, extort the vulnerable, and hire themselves out as muscle to anyone who has not yet watched them fight. Throughout the world of [[Elandis]] they are known for their stealth, their cunning, and their ruthlessness — a reputation believed, in its entirety, by themselves. ## Purpose & Goals The Serpents deal in fear and the coin that fear produces. They run tolls and protection across their patch of Old Camaar, lean on the unwary, and take paid work when paid work is willing to be seen with them. By their own account they are predators who strike from the shadows and prey upon unsuspecting travellers and rival gangs alike. The phrasing is precise: the business model depends to an unusual degree on the targets remaining unsuspecting, and tends to develop complications the moment a mark turns out to be either suspecting or armed. Their ambitions are correspondingly modest. They wish to hold their corner of the district, to be taken seriously by the others who share it, and to be feared. Two of these three goals have proven achievable. ## Structure & Leadership The gang is a loose pyramid of cloaked thugs working in small crews, each fronted by a ringleader who answers up a chain whose upper reaches the public has never had occasion to learn. Members favour dark hooded cloaks and leathers worked with serpentine patterns, and regard the wardrobe as essential equipment — the operating theory being that a sufficiently intimidating ensemble may settle a confrontation before anyone's actual fighting ability is called upon to contribute. The theory is sound. It has simply never been tested against opposition that found the leathers as persuasive as the Serpents do. ## Reputation The Shadow Serpents believe themselves to be notorious. The belief is sincere, deeply held, and largely confined to the Shadow Serpents. In practice the gang's fearsomeness is inversely proportional to whether anyone fights back. Against the intended clientele — a cornered shopkeeper, a traveller alone after dark, a debtor with no friends nearby — the swagger and the serpent leathers do excellent work. Against anyone disinclined to be impressed, the performance comes apart with a speed that has become something of a local curiosity. Every encounter of consequence on record has concluded with Serpents dead, Serpents fleeing, or Serpents being asked, magically, to grovel, and complying. The name remains genuinely frightening right up until the gang attached to it arrives. ## History The Shadow Serpents are one of several outfits that have long shared Old Camaar, the city's neglected and lawless northern end, where the buildings lean and sag and the law keeps a respectful distance after dark. They carved out their patch through intimidation and have held it the same way, coexisting warily with the district's other organisations — most of whom regard the Serpents less as rivals than as weather. Their recent history, however, has been defined almost entirely by a single losing feud. Having selected, in a back-alley ambush, a target that turned out to be a band of seasoned adventurers, the gang has spent the time since being humiliated by the same band on every subsequent meeting. The campaign has been one-sided to a degree that strains the word "campaign." In the telling of anyone who witnessed it, the Serpents have completed the rare transformation from a name spoken in lowered voices to a name spoken in order to make people laugh. ## Relations ### Veiled Cubs The Serpents have no quarrel and no dealings with the [[Veiled Cubs]], [[Camaar|Camaar's]] orphan network. The two share Old Camaar but move in entirely different circles — the Cubs keep to their own narrow trade and stay well clear of gang turf, which is the official reason the two have never come to blows, and a tidy arrangement for all concerned. The Serpents likewise share the district, without incident, with the local nest of the [[Order of Ravens]] and, down in the Docklands, the [[Green Gryphons]] mercenary guild — neither of which has ever found cause to take notice of them. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 09 - The Veiled Den]] The party's first encounter with the Serpents was an ambush in a dark Camaar alleyway, where a pack of thugs and their ringleader fell upon the adventurers in confident expectation of easy prey. This proved to be a misreading. The party put several Serpents to sleep, employed one of the sleeping Serpents as an improvised club against another, and cut down the remainder, picking off the last as he fled around a corner. The gang left behind several dead, their coin, and their weapons, and took with them a lesson they would shortly demonstrate they had not learned. #### [[Session 17 - A New Journey Begins]] Returning to Camaar considerably stronger, the party noticed three Serpents shadowing them and elected to let the gang commit first. The intimidation attempt did not survive the encounter: one thug was magically compelled to grovel, another reduced to helpless laughter, and the trio bluntly out-intimidated and unmasked as the Shadow Serpents — at which point they fled. A parting arrow pinned one fleeing cloak to the wall, the wearer having already vacated it. Whatever menace the gang had once briefly possessed did not make the return trip; by this meeting the party regarded them, accurately, as a recurring joke.