131 - Messenger Snake

Unnatural Entity: Messenger Snake

Bred by a North Carolina adept during a deeply entrenched feud with the Postal Service, messenger snakes aren’t really snakes. They’re a hybridized snake-eel (with carrier pigeon parts worked into the snout, but you can’t see those). Combining the slick, mucus layer of the American eel with the golden-brown patterning of a Copperhead, they measure around 3 feet in length and are venomous but normally non-aggressive. The other primary distinguishing feature of the messenger snake is the USPS patch sewn deep into the hide just behind the head, originally stolen from the uniform of a postal worker of a dozen years.

To circumvent his postal issues the adept invented this creature to replace his need for conventional correspondence with his brothers in Los Angeles and Prague. Using a messenger snake is simple: write out a message to someone, roll it up and then slide it down the animal’s throat. It’ll thrash since this is extremely unpleasant but when you’re done bop it on the nose and drop a minor charge, it’ll quiet down as the rolled up paper disintegrates. Then flush it down a toilet.

Messenger snakes move at the speed of mail, though you don’t need an address and the area doesn’t technically need to have mail coverage. The recipient just has to be near a toilet of some kind when it arrives, an outhouse or latrine will do in a pinch. After it has had enough time to travel to them, the messenger snake will emerge from the commode and make a bee-line for its quarry. Being attacked by a supernaturally aggressive toilet snake is a rank 2-3 violence check.

Aside from the natural effects of copperhead venom (which are unpleasant but rarely fatal) the bite delivers the written message as an auditory hallucination in the voice of the person who wrote it. The delivery is a dull monotone, any nuance is lost in the translation. Hearing a message is a rank 2-3 unnatural if it’s your first time. After the bite the snake loses its aggression and if not recaptured probably slithers away. It can be reused by those who know how they function.

The original creator died in a 2014 shootout with police during the execution of an arrest warrant for booby traps laid along the local postal route, which had injured several people. A pair of messenger snakes were recovered by authorities and surrendered to the local ASPCA branch, they are regarded as cruelly mutilated oddities by their new carers. Several terrariums were also damaged in the altercation and the contents escaped. Messenger snakes breed true, although the patches on offspring found in the wild sometimes include rival delivery services like DHL and FedEx.

Messenger Snake, Neither Snow Nor Rain...
Wound Threshold: 10.
Venomous Bite 40%: Does hand-to-hand damage (a dry bite does the smaller die of the result), matched failure or fumble on a Fitness roll indicates medical complications. If it has a message for you this is how it’s delivered.
Special Delivery 60%: The snake’s toilet-based teleportation power. A successful roll indicates a normal delivery time, failure means an extra day or two. Matched failure means roll again in a week and a fumble indicates a lost message.