Overview
The Spire-Sight Naga is the feudal, certain eye of Serpent Spire, a serpent-bodied, green-gold scaled judge of the temple-spires who sees from the highest spire and keeps the court's long word, the spire's feudal, clannish, and most certain eye. It stands over three and a half meters from crown to tail-tip, watchful and patient, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept sights rather than years. Where the lizard men of the delta feel the pool, the Spire-Sight nagas of the spire see the word, and they have been seeing the first word on the first spire for a very long time.
Habitat
The Spire-Sight Naga keeps to the high spires of Serpent Spire, a range of scaled, temple-fed ground where the court is a promise and the spire is a treaty. Its dwellings are coaxed into the faces of the spire-towers, hollows of carved stone and laid scale that catch the warm spire-light on their inner face and the shelter of the court on their outer. It favors the higher spires where the word runs oldest and the watching is oldest, the places where a sight can be kept without the spire's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Spire-Sight Naga stands about 3.66 m from crown to tail-tip, long and watchful, with thick green-gold scale that reads as bright in the warm spire-light. Its brow carries the bone-white fang-band, a deliberate mark worn as a record of the long art of the watching, and its underbelly is dark venom, the color of the spire's own glow at dusk. Its eyes are pale amber, bright and certain beneath the brow, and they hold still in a way that no other eye in the spire does.
Behaviour
The Spire-Sight Naga is feudal, clannish, and profoundly certain, a creature of long watches and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It watches before it acts, often for hours, watching on a spire or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the word, and only then does it act, and then with an exactness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Spire-Sight naga is a debt the spire will keep long after the keeper has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Spire-Sight naga is no low-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the sight and the spire itself, not force. Its primary defense is the stone, for it knows every corner of the high spires and can lead a pursuer through Serpent Spire until the pursuit loses its nerve and its footing on the walk. Should it be forced to act, a Spire-Sight naga is precise and patient, 5 m/s along the spire-walks and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a scale, dimming a light, or holding a spire until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Spire-Sight naga is attuned to the long word of the court, for the court is the watching and the watching is the whole of its power, and a naga that has a spire and a court and a word does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the court, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the watching, which is not a magic but is a thing that the nagas of the spire have watched for a very long time, and the watching is the word, and the word is the whole of its power.
Society
The Spire-Sight Nagas live in Serpent Spire in feudal, patient courts of perhaps twenty or thirty, bound by the sights they keep together rather than by blood or by place, and the eldest keeper among them is honored as the Venom-Queen. There is no elder and no ruler beyond the Venom-Queen, for a naga that has watched the most and kept the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a sight and the sight is the whole of their society.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Spire-Sight Naga is a culture of the kept sight, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is feudal and clannish is the only honest word in the spire. They keep no records, for a naga that has kept a sight does not need a record, the watching is the record, and the watching is feudal and clannish and does not fade. Their stories are slow and patient, told at the court at the dusk, and they are stories of sights kept and words seen and the feudal, clannish difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every watching.
Home
Serpent Spire is the Spire-Sight naga's home and its watching, a range of scaled, temple-fed ground where the court is a promise and the spire is a treaty, where the nagas keep their sights and their feudal, clannish words. It is a strange and patient place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Spire-Sight naga has learned to live inside that spire rather than against it. The warm spire-light that runs up through the high towers is the spire's own, a soft gold glow that the nagas have come to read as the color of a kept sight.
Relations
The Spire-Sight Naga keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of Serpent Spire, a truce of kept sights that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the spire. To the warm spire-light of the high towers the Spire-Sight naga is a feudal, clannish, and absolutely certain presence, an amber-eyed keeper that is at home in the towers and in the word, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the watches pass, for a naga that has kept you has decided you are a promise and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the spire, the Spire-Sight Naga is the feudal, clannish edge of the tale, the place where the sights are kept and a word is seen and a watching is read. It is the figure that keeps a new sight in the dusk and holds the spire very feudal and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the venom-sensing nagas grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old sight feudal and clannish and absolutely certain.