Serpent People

The Serpent People, or Serpent Men, are an interesting Mythos race. They have been around essentially from the inception of the Mythos, first appearing in Robert E. Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom", published in 1929.

In "The Shadow Kingdom", Howard's first and best-known (and arguably best) King Kull story, the Serpent People are able to magically disguise themselves as human (and as specific people), and worship the Great Serpent. They form an ancient conspiracy working against Valusia - and, implicitly, they have infiltrated all human civilizations. They, and several other nonhuman intelligences, are said to have dominated the earth until defeated by early humanity; the serpent men survived by concealment and infiltration.

The phrase "Ka nama kaa lajerama", said to be handed down from the days of the wars between early humans and the serpent men, is usable as a test to determine if a person is real or a serpent man in disguise. Serpent men cannot speak the phrase, since their vocal apparatus is different from that of humans. When confronted with it, serpent men seem to change into their true form - but this is probably just a defensive reaction to being discovered, rather than actually being affected by the phrase.

In Clark Ashton Smith's "The Seven Geases", the serpent people are advanced, scientific, urbane alchemists, and not hostile to humans. "Ubbo-Sathla" has a briefer reference to them; their civilization's glory days seem to have been very ancient, probably pre-dinosaurian. Howard's serpent men are ancient and pre-human, but they seem to have directly predated humanity; the serpent men of "Ubbo-Sathla" seem far earlier.

On the other hand, Robert E. Howard also included serpent-like creatures descended from humans or near-humans in his stories. In "Worms of the Earth", a Bran Mak Morn story set in Roman Britain, the titular worms are serpentlike creatures descended from an ancient, possibly not quite human, people who warred with the Picts ages before. They were driven underground, and eventually became snakelike through ages of separate evolution or degeneration. They seem unrealistically snakelike for a human descendant, though, with "viper fangs" and viperlike heads. "Children of the Night" seems to describe the same creatures in an earlier, more humanlike, less degenerate state - but their appearance is still described as suggestive of snakes. The ancient feud in this story is with the Sword People, who seem to have no relation to the Picts.

Howard's "The God in the Bowl" includes a human-headed serpent. It is unclear if this has any relation with the other serpent-people and snakelike human-descendants, but it appears not.