Naga Tail Armor Concepts (Patreon)

Call them nagas, yuan-ti, ophidians, lamias, or just snake people; nagas are cool. But one thing I’ve noticed in pretty much every single picture I’ve seen of them, the snake tail they slither on is always completely uncovered. They may wear a skirt or kilt to cover their hips, but past that their tails are always naked. Which seems to me like it’d be a liability if they were to go into battle- leaving such a massive section of the body unarmored would make you an easy target for someone with a sword or an axe, so I decided to try and come up with some designs for snake armor.

In designing them however, I discovered a good reason why they’re always drawn without armor- it’s really hard to design armor for snakes. You’d think it wouldn’t be, but since their tails are just long, smooth things without appendages or anything else to serve as anchor points, I don’t know how they’d be able to keep the whole thing from just sliding off like a sock. My best guess would be that they could strap it to a belt around their waist, like a garter belt. Even then, I wasn’t sure how they’d still be able to move and slither about in armor without it sliding off or wearing out due to friction.

Another thing to consider was flexibility. Snakes of course are extremely flexible creatures, and armor for them would have to be at least nearly as such, so some kind of mail like scale mail would be appropriate for them, in more ways than one. I also experimented with adding spikes on the armor that would stab and mutilate opponents the naga caught and crushed in their coils. Impractical, perhaps, but still very cool.

Of course, it wasn’t until after I drew these that I thought of another factor I hadn’t taken into account before: climate. In my brief study of armor design, I found that the type and style of armor depends largely on the climate of the armored person’s homeland, and pretty much every naga I’ve seen has been set in places where real-life snakes typically thrive: hot biomes such as deserts and jungles. Wearing a lot of armor, metal or otherwise, in a hot climate is way trouble than its worth for obvious reasons. Because of this, many fighters in hot climates, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, took to carrying large shields in lieu of body armor, so perhaps a naked naga tail is simply a matter of practicality.

Still, I think this is a topic worth brainstorming. What do the rest of you think?