On Creating a Tendrilled Sky Serpent
A Much Deadlier Tournament - Special
Edited/Proofread by Demon Ging
The following is an excerpt from the eminent magizoologist Newt Scamander's banned and purged sequel to "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" known as "Abominable Hybrids and How to Breed Them."
Warning!
This book and its contents are for Ministry use ONLY. Any attempt to reproduce, redistribute or implement practices learned from it is a one-way ticket to the execution chamber. This copy is to remain in the Department for Regulation of Magical Creature's secure vault at all times. Only authorized individuals may read its contents, and only then in order to combat an emergency as decided by a vote by the ICW.
To reiterate.
Owning so much as a page of this book is illegal and punishable by death. You have been warned.
The following is an excerpt from the eminent magizoologist Newt Scamander's banned and purged sequel to "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" known as "Abominable Hybrids and How to Breed Them."
Warning!
This book and its contents are for Ministry use ONLY. Any attempt to reproduce, redistribute or implement practices learned from it is a one way ticket to the execution chamber. This copy is to remain in the Department For Regulation of Magical Creature's secure vault at all times. Only authorized individuals may read its contents, and only then in order to combat an emergency as decided by a vote by the ICW.
To reiterate.
Owning so much as a page of this book is illegal and punishable by death. You have been warned
Of the many artificial breeds of magical beast, none invoke more terror than the Tendrilled Sky Serpent.
If the name didn't tell you as much, It is a serpent that can fly despite having no obvious means of doing so.
They can get up to one hundred meters long. They have red scales with a purple hue and whip-like tendrils all along their body of the same color. Interspersed throughout the forest of instantly lethal tendrils are an array of horns not readily visible.
Most frightening and unique about this creature is its breath, which when sprayed sticks to surfaces like a liquid and is also instantly deadly due to toxicity, assuming the heat doesn't kill you.
Originally developed by a reclusive Indian wizarding monastery, the methods for creating them were kept secret for thousands of years. These monks were renowned for being snake charmers and went by many names, most of which referenced their propensity for creating horrifying chimeric creatures.
The last person with the knowledge to create the one we are discussing died during World War One when the monastery was destroyed and its occupants slaughtered.
In 1936, I was contracted by the newly formed International Confederation of Wizards to help in the war efforts. Among other things, they wanted me to re-discover the techniques for creating such a beast, perfect them, study the resulting creatures and weaponize them.
I wasn't so much contracted as I was forcibly enlisted to work in a Greenland research and development facility. I was granted a full team of researchers from every field, both wizard and Muggle, complete legal immunity and near infinite financial support. All dangerous temptations on their own to any researcher, but together they became a ring of power that entrapped me.
I had more to work with than blurry black-and-white photographs and eyewitness accounts, however. So the task wasn't insurmountable.
You see, in World War One I served on the Eastern Front researching the disappearance of the Ironbelly dragons of Ukraine. Unfortunately, the reason for their disappearance was their skirmishes with a SINGLE Tendrilled Sky Serpent that had escaped into the wild and wound up all the way out there.
It was trying to breed with them. They weren't interested.
Long story short, I witnessed it die at the claws of a pack of females, who like human women, herd during the mating season. It killed a lot of them in the process and the population still hasn't recovered.
It was a glorious battle and, what's more, I had the pleasure of performing post-mortem research on it and its victims. My benefactors couldn't have wished on a genie for a better person to work on this project.
The first two components needed to create a Tendrilled Sky Serpent are also the most obvious. A dragon and a Horned Serpent. The particular breed of dragon is also obvious, as the only one with a serpentine body is the Chinese Fireball, which you are to breed with a flying variety of Horned Serpents. The particular breed doesn't matter, but I chose a red, gemless variant.
Every ingredient after that was discovered either through intuition, deduction, trial and error or dumb luck.
The offspring of their union was healthy and strong, but lacked tendrils, toxic flames or any purple discoloration.
It was when news of a man named Derwent Shimpling, who ate an entire Venemous Tentecula and survived, reached us that we found another ingredient. You see, Mr Shimpling was turned permanently purple by his meal - mutated by the plant.
We fed the offspring a diet that included Venemous Tentacula and, on a whim, Murtlaps, them being the only creatures with tendrils resembling that of the end product.
The result of their inbred offspring resembled the Tendrilled Sky Serpents almost exactly. The tendrils were too thick and weren't venemous enough, nor did they have the truly devastating breath we desired. Interestingly the venom gland inherited from the Horned Serpent had fused with the incendiary gland inherited from the draconic ancestry. So the flames were toxic, just not as toxic as we needed them to be.
Still, it was an amazing discovery for the field of magigenetics. A Venomous Tentacula and Murtlap diet works as an effective mutagen with results reliant upon what else is fed to the subject. And we experimented with this technique on many other creatures to fascinating and horrifying effect, which we will discuss in a later chapter.
We threw that batch away and started over with a new Chinese Fireball and Horned Serpent.
While the second batch of eggs incubated we prepared a new diet for the offspring.
We knew VT and Murtlap were required but we clearly needed another base for the mutagenic effects we wanted. Us researchers from magical birth could not deduce what this third ingredient might be, but the Muggle scientists we worked with could.
When told about the effects of the TSS's breath the chemists amongst them identified multiple compounds that would achieve a similar effect.
The first to come to their minds was chlorine trifluoride, it being fresh in their memory.
It was a chemical developed just recently(at the time) by the National Socialists of Germany, unsurprisingly as a weapon. What is surprising is that the NAZI researchers involved decided it was too volatile, too toxic and too inhumane to use.
I just want to point out, when even socialists tell you a thing is too dangerous or inhumane, you should probably step back from that thing very slowly, and then run away very quickly, preferably while screaming like a little girl.
I still wake up in night terrors with dreams of a creature capable of spraying this substance from time to time, which was definitely not the one we were looking for. It was too superior to the one we needed, and we wanted something biological.
Besides, I wasn't being paid against my will to be an overachiever now was I?
Fortunately, the Muggle biologist on hand knew just the substance we were looking for.
Hydrogen Cyanide.
It's liquid, flammable and, in case the CYANIDE in its name didn't tip you off, very toxic.
Several organisms are capable of producing it, we went with Apheloria millipedes which we fed a diet of rotting cassava, lima beans and almonds because
A - They are foods with high cyanide content.
And
B - We were clearly insane.
And so I reveal to you, dear reader, the entire process for creating a breeding an entire army of Tendrilled Sky Serpents.
Step 1:
Collect two Chinese Fireballs(one male, one female) of distant relation, two flying horned serpents(also one male one female) of distant relation, a hundred or so Murtlaps, a hive of millipedes, and grow a garden of Venemous Tentacula.
Step 2:
Breed the pair of Chinese Fireballs with the pair of Flying Horned Serpents.
While the eggs are incubating, feed your millipedes a diet of rotting cassava, lima beans and almonds while slowly engorging them to the size of pythons, and later as big as the offspring themselves once they've grown larger.
Step 3:
Feed the Murtlaps, VT and giant millipedes to the resulting offspring.(Keep the two litters separate until they are of breeding age)
Step 4:
Pair off members of both litters and breed them together.
Congratulations!
You now have roughly 7 genetically diverse and sustainable litters of Tendrilled Sky Serpents. Exactly as advertised.
In total, the process should take three and a half years.
Have fun. I hope you have a parseltongue handy.
- Newt Scamander
Pair off members of both litters and breed them together.
Congratulations!
You now have roughly 7 genetically diverse and sustainable litters of Tendrilled Sky Serpents. Exactly as advertised.
In total, the process should take three and a half years.
Have fun. I hope you have a parseltongue handy.
- Newt Scamander
Notes:
I have been completely blown away by the feedback for that first chapter. You guys have stunned me with your enthusiasm here.
In the first day I received 12 reviews, 32 favs and 58 alerts. I have never gotten that much feedback for my other stories, let alone a single chapter.
Thank you guys so much.
I already have a rough outline for this entire story but I won't be releasing another proper chapter until I update some of my other stories. I have a schedule to keep but you guys really did make this one a much bigger priority than it ever would have been otherwise.
So as a means of placating you all, I typed out this filler chapter to keep your palletes wet. I hope you liked it. Now onto reviews.
But first, a public service announcement
PSA:
Her name is Sue Li, not Su Li. I checked. Every source on Harry Potter says it's spelled Sue, not Su.
The spelling Su Li comes from Rowling's original documents where she revealed the Hogwarts Forty, but taking that as canon is akin to treating unused concept art as canon.
Which we can do. It's fanfiction, and us writers have that freedom.
It's Sue. The website is wrong.
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