YUAN-TI IN THE REALMS (Free Tier) (Patreon)

Here’s an October 2014 lore overview I did regarding yuan-ti in the Realms:

The Nature of the Beast
The yuan-ti are a race that believes in the progression/improvement of their own kind over time—as a goal, as a rightful destiny, and as an innate inevitability. They are destined for greatness; eventually, they will supplant the fast-breeding, numerous, and adaptable but weak, chaotically disorganized and at cross purposes, and foolish humans.

That does not mean all yuan-ti agree on what yuan-ti should do, how they should live, and what they should strive for. Just like humans, they have their feuds, rivalries, and fierce disagreements.

Recent
Throughout the 1200s and 1300s DR, the rise in power of the yuan-ti was hampered by a triangle of enmity that existed between three races: the yuan-ti, illithids, and beholders. These races, in general (there were individual exceptions, of course) hate each other, in large part because they came into repeated conflict—because they were rivals for the same niche vis-à-vis the dominant human society of the surface Realms. A niche that might be described as lurking parasites: serving as local behind-the-scenes urban crime bosses, smugglers, and controllers of illicit investments. (Interestingly, all three races work well with doppelgangers.)

The Spellplague shattered this status quo of offsetting tensions and individual skirmishes. For one thing, in the immediate wake of the onset of the Blue Fire, when deaths and drooling insanity among wizards was widespread, Larloch and his servitor liches moved swiftly to seize what magic items and spellbooks they could, roving the lands in swift raids. They kept the most powerful and useful, intending to either keep these magics safe or to covertly feed them to human puppets to build such individuals into more formidable “front” agents. The items and written spells of lesser power and usefulness they often steered into yuan-ti possession, to keep them out of the grasp of the Shadovar—and to maneuver the yuan-ti and the returned Netherese of Thultanthar into ongoing conflict (so these two threats could degrade each other rather than running amok over the lands).

Get the full post (produced and narrated by yours truly) which includes the section headlines, Now, A Wizardly Society, Covert Conquest, and Yuan-Ti Hatreds.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/yuan-ti-in-83396924