Building the Bestiary #16: Serpentine Creatures

This week's column will look at how to build snakes, worms, and other creatures with a generally serpentine form. After I cover smaller monsters, I'll discuss models for creatures larger than I usually address in this series (like the purple worm above). Snake-like creatures are relatively easy to scale up, so I'll show how to build a few base models, then tweak them to make different monsters of the same general size and shape.

Premade Snakes

For snakes of Small or smaller size, it's easiest to just use prefabricated snake figures. Besides the classic rattlesnake used in Castle, Adventurers, and many other themes, recent years have also given us new snakes in the Ninjago theme, and a cobra in the Minifigures theme (Series 13's Snake Charmer). These snakes also work just fine for other creatures of the same size and shape, such as iron cobras, flame snakes, or eels.

While I normally just use animal figures to mark each square of a swarm (see Tiny Creatures), some of the Ninjago Spinjutsu spinners had toppers of just the right size (about 2" across) to use as snake swarms.

Back (L-R): 2 classic rattlesnakes, 2 Ninjago snakes, 2 Ninjago spinner accessory snakes, Minifigures Snake Charmer's cobra; Front: 2 Ninjago spinner accessory snake "swarms"

The Basilisk from set 4730 The Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter theme; below) is a lovely large snake model, but it is less than ideal for use as a D&D or Pathfinder miniature because it does not easily fit into a square space. Building a large snake from scratch will allow you to better match it to the size and shape of the space it occupies on a battle map.

Building Larger Snakes

A simple snake of Medium or larger size can be built by building 1xN plates into a zigzag shape, optionally with interesting-shaped pieces attached for the head. The blue snake pictured here gives a very simple example, while the two gricks use bow slopes, cones, and starfish to define that aberration's shape.

TECHNIC pieces can also be useful for building snakes. Angled connectors can be linked together with short axles to suggest the curves of a snake in motion. TECHNIC parts are also excellent for serpentine constructs, because they make the model look more mechanical.

Alternatively, hinges can be used to build a poseable snake, in much the same way that I built shapeable walls for my Spell Effects column. Such snakes don't necessarily need bases for support, but if determining what map squares the model occupies is confusing at all, you may want to place them on appropriately sized bases (see Giants).

One kind of hinge that I didn't use for Spell Effects is a cylinder with click-hinge "fingers" at one or both ends. The tight turns that a series of these can make is perfect for twisty snakes. To build a model that is able to raise its head, you'll need a pair of cylinders that connect via an axle, so that you can turn the plane of motion 90 degrees. Some of these cylinders end in a TECHNIC pin, which can be inserted into the bottom of a 1x1 brick to give some variety to head shapes--or into a minifigure head, to create a naga.

I used these hinged cylinders to create the snaky necks of the hydra pictured below (and on the the Index page). This model uses a variety of hinges and pin connections to attach all 12 heads to the body at different angles. Due to the number and narrowness of the necks, I kept the heads fairly minimalist. The body is a blocky quadruped form designed to support the bricks and plates attached to the necks; I kept it simple in order to keep attention on the heads.

Hybrid Snake Monsters

Some creatures, such as the salamander, have a (more or less) humanoid body from the waist up, but a snake-like tail below. A number of Ningajo Serpentine characters, as well as the Minifigures Medusa (Series 10), have a snake-like lower body that is perfect for these snaky hybrids, but this base takes up a 2" space on the map. This is not a problem for Large lillends, mariliths, or lamia matriachs (Bestiary 2; these last could use the Medusa as-is, or with non-snaky hair), but non-noble salamanders are Medium.

As with mermaids' tails (see Underwater Races), building a serpentine lower body that fits on a 1" (3-stud) base can be tricky. The salamanders in the photo below show a variety of ways to tackle the problem, but a couple of them are, strictly speaking, still too big for a Medium base.

The six-armed marilith demon requires special mention here. In the past, I have built minifigures with more than two arms by inserting a neck post into the bottom of an older-style torso that lacks the "X"-like structure in the center. (See my girallon photo in the Giants column for an example.) However, while attempting to build a marilith for this article, I cracked a torso when I inserted the neck post, because I hadn't realized that the post forced the torso to bow out just a little in the center. Some torsos will be resilient enough to take this abuse (as my now-disassembled girallon's did) but many of these "X-less" torsos are old enough that the plastic will be too brittle (as happened with my most recent attempt). I therefore cannot recommend this method unless you can find a torso with no protrusions inside whatsoever.

Fortunately, the popularity of the Ninjago theme--and its archvillain, Lord Garmadon--has made available a variety of parts specially designed to make space for another pair of arms. The LEGO Ninjago Movie Minifigures series includes not one but three versions of Garmadon; two lack shoulder armor, so can easily have another extender placed on top of them. The marilith in the photo above uses two of these parts. The downward tab on Flashback Garmadon's extra torso (the orange one) is located in the back, which allowed me to give her six arms without having one pair bending the wrong way. (And standard Garmadon's tab nicely covers the other's silly tie.) Finally, I placed her on a 6-stud base for stability, because she is top- and front-heavy with all those arms and weapons.

Building in Larger Segments

The techniques used to build snakes from hinges can be expanded to larger models. For example, this couatl is simply a series of hinged plates, with a 2-stud wide segment to attach the wings. Note the base used to show its Large space (in D&D Third Edition or Pathfinder). The D&D Fifth Edition Monster Manual changes couatls to Medium size, which will require a smaller model. Minifigure-scale wings, like those of Chima's Eagle and Raven Tribes, would better fit that scale.

The small back-and-socket joints from the Mixels theme can be used to make highly flexible large snakes. Build several small, identical segments, plus a few that gradually taper to smaller dimensions for the tail. The body of the giant cobra seen here is very easy to build, as shown in the third photo, and uses different kinds of hinges as the tail gets smaller. The hood is optional, and was built in two pieces to match the contour of the bent neck. The head is a bit more complicated, and makes use of more hinges and a couple small SNOT bricks. When coiled as shown in the first photo, the snake takes up a Huge space (3" square), without the need for a base.

I built the purple worm shown here (and at the beginning of this column) a few years ago when I acquired a large number of purple bricks (still a new color at that time) and posed myself a challenge to use them. The detail photos shown how each body segment is built. The connections between segments are staggered in height so that the body rises in the air as it attacks, and the 2x2 turntable plates allow it to so so in a coil. Two of the body segments have their smooth "boat plates" replaced with normal 2x2 round plates so that they can be attached to the clear bricks that support the model. The worm gets a 10x10 stud octagonal base to show that it is Gargantuan; a few extra bricks have been added to suggest that the worm has just burst out of the ground.

For a neothelid (also Gargantuan) you need only replace the purple worm's head with one sporting tentacles and tongues. This new head is built on an octagonal plate like those used for some of the insect and arachnid models in my Vermin column.

Adding Legs

My Vermin column also presented some methods for creating creatures with a multitude of legs, like centipedes. The necrophidius (Bestiary 2) here uses the same technique to build its skeletal spine and ribs.

Larger serpentine creatures with legs can be built using jointed segments to make the model more dynamic. The body of the Huge behir shown below is built from very simple repeated sections. The legs are made from robot arms and faucets; a wand stuck through the holes in the bottom plate of the body segment helps reinforce the hip joints so that the legs won't pop off as easily if they get bumped. (This model could be mounted on a baseplate, but the spacing of the legs doesn't line up with a plate's studs quite as conveniently as I'd like. Further experimentation could solve that issue.)

As with the purple worm, the behir can be modified to create other creatures of a similar size and body shape. To make an imperial dragon (Bestiary 3; called "oriental dragons" in past editions of D&D), start by reducing the number of legs (and maybe changing their style) then add new details to distinguish the specific dragon species. A linnorm has a similar body shape, but scaled up to Gargantuan or Colossal, and only one pair of legs.

To convert the behir into a remorhaz, I've substituted a more insectoid head, added red and orange spines to its back, and added some SNOT bricks to attach the jagged frill just behind its head. To get a very large centipede, simply omit the remorhaz's frill, and possibly the spines.

Appendix: Past "Building the Bestiary" Columns

#1: Humanoids
#2: Underwater Races
#3: Giants
#4: Undead
#5: Tiny Creatures
#6: Four-Legged Friends
#7: Oozes
#8: Spell Effects
#9: Elementals
#10: Devils
#11: Aquatic Animals
#12: Vermin
#13: Non-OGL Monsters
#14: Plants
#15: For the Birds
Index