You arose from an egg, the Dragon‍-​Witch‍-​Mother’s curse latent in your blood from the beginning. You always knew the day would come when it would writhe to life.

A serpent struck and bit you, whether in attack or ritual, yet you survived, even as venom wracked your body. The pain ebbs, and a trickle of new power comes in its wake.

In amusement or desperation, a snake has chosen you to be their servant. You act as a locus of their power, wielding it as they command.

You wear the scales of the slain, whether obtained by your own hand or a fair coin. This stolen power responds stiffly to your command, but preservation of dragonhides is a mastered art. Alchemy replicates the venom, and fangs adorn your weapon.

Your mouth is seething with a potent, cursèd bite. Like all of your kind, a moderate dose of venom is sufficient to vex your prey, but you have refined the mixture itself to alchemical lethality.

Each $1 multiplies the vexation of a single bite. Because you can adjust the dose injected, you can achieve similar effects with less venom, increasing your effective reserves.

At $1, a full force bite is needed to kill a laymaiden. At $5, one drop of venom has equivalent effect.

It is said that vexwyrms never stop growing, but their extent does taper off. A common vexwyrm is as long as a human, but elders often reach tremendous lengths.

Each $1 double your size, starting with two meters at $1 and capping off at $5 for just over thirty.

Your can strike in the blink of an eye and pursue your prey with a relentless slither‍-​stride.

Each $1 increases your reaction time, the distance you can lunge, and your average overland distance.

At $1, you can outspeed a running layman; at $3 you can outspeed a galloping horse; at $5 you can outspeed an arrow.

The Long Hunger is never sated, only allayed momentarily. Your ordained purpose is to consume souls, a devourment‍-​damnation.

Each $1 enhances your capability as a voracious predator, granting a new ability and slightly enhacing the others.

• Greedy Maw. You may consume prey larger than you are, though this limits your mobility.
• Incorporeal Digestion. You may consume only the soul, ripping it out of swallowed prey. If you spit them back out, they shall go on to live a wretched life.
• Slow Metabolism. Your stomach boasts exceptional efficiency, allowing you to last several times as long as lesser vexwyrms eating the same meal.
• Perfect Pneumaphage. You digest souls with exceptional devastation, allowing you subsist entirely on spiritual energy.
• Brumation Fast. You can last indefinitely without eating, by entering a torpor‍-​slumber.

As your gifts grow more powerful, you gain a richer understanding of your inherited affliction, this spiritual attunement‍-​bondage with the Dragon‍-​Witch‍-​Mother. Your enlightenment creeps up slowly, but soon you attain unique comprehension the nature of the venom‍-​hex and Long Hunger.

Each $1 subtly augments all your abilities, allowing you to bend their rules and twist their meaning.

• Spirit Boost. Select a gift you have. Amplify its stated effect in a minor yet distinct way.
• Fragile Spirit. Select a gift you do not have. Reduce its cost to $0, but you can only ever use it once.
• Raveling Spirit. Select a gift you have. You may add a new restriction and relax an existing specification. These relate to when it takes effect, what it requires, whom it must target, or how it manifests. The restriction must bind you tighter than the power thus gained.
• Spirit Dither. Select any gift. You may reduce its cost by $2, but it is now half as effective or twice as demanding.
• Bridged Spirits. Select a gift that targets prey or allows vexing. Reduce its cost to $0, but prey gain the ability to use it against you, or you are likewise vexed by it.

Serpents yearn for warmth just as they hunger and thirst. Some vexwyrms turn their souls to the mastery of temperature, so as to never again known that privation.

These vexes all expend a reserve that replenishes when you bask in a heat source (such as the sun).

Each $1 grants a minor vex:

• Heat Sense. You can sense all heat sources in a certain range, scaling higher the cooler your own scales are.
• Venom Conduit. Your venom now channels and conducts heat. You may warm or cool your scales at will by transfering heat to or from a vexed target.
• Freezing Fangs. Your fangs are akin to blades of ice. You may vex prey to leave them shivering cold, even frozen. You may survive freezing temperatures indefinitely.
• Fuel Glands. Your venom grows oily, and your scales can spark it alight. You may vex prey to make them blister and burn. You do not feel pain or injury at scalding temperatures.
• Burning Visage. Your slitted eyes glow with bright malevolence, illuminating dark spaces. Those who stare directly in your eyes witness illusory afterimages according to your devising.

Snakes are born in shadow, fluent in its occult majesty. It is only natural that vexation should become a tool of stealth and negation.

These vexes expend a reserve that replenishes when night falls.

Each $1 grants a minor vex:

• Tactile Darkness. Shadows become an extension of you. When you are in shadow, you can treat any surfaces within the same shadow as your own scales. You can feel anything that touches it (coarsely if the target is much larger than you are).
• Dark Acceleration. You move at the speed of dark. When you would be illuminated, you can reflexively move at several times your normal speed if and only if this would keep you in shadow throughout.
• Counter‍-​Illumination. Light itself trembles to shine upon your work. Coat a object or creature in your venom, black like ink: when it is illuminated, you can vex the light source. Its luminance will abruptly flicker, and it may be outright destroyed if your soul is strong enough to snuff it out.
• Shadow Play. Your shadow moves on its own. When you are illuminated, you can cast arbitrary shade as if block the light right at the source. You know intuitively the perspective distortion required to convincingly portray your own shadow at any imaginable point around you. All light blocked in this manner entails you absorbing that energy and consequently warming.
• Shade Invocation. When you consume a soul, you may retain a shade of it. Parts of its memory and will linger within you thereafter. When you gaze into abyss‍-​black darkness, you may drip a small dose of venom to regurgitate your shades, returning them to an occulted form of life. These shades die when illuminated, and even dim light does harm. Shades have the power to use other Dark Vex gifts and convey their thoughts.

To slither and strike means apprehending blood and grace. For your venom takes effect in the panicked thrill of prey‍-​pulse; for your bodily extent from tongue to tail is a curve of draconic beauty.

Each $1 grants a minor vex:

• Blood Dance. You move with utmost grace. Only those outright faster than you can hope to keep up with your movements, and when you dance, any who watch your movements are hypnotized, the trance deepening until one gesture of command sees them kneeling, fleeing, or embracing your coils.
• Tracker’s Prescience. Tendrils extend from your soul, like spiritual tongues. You gain awareness of all the air currents around you, and exceptionally keen olfaction. No prey‍-​scent eludes you. More than that, a wave of these tendrils stirs the air. You control the diffusion of scents, and gain all the telekinetics of subtle, persistent wind.
• Venom Control. Your venom carries your pulse; it slithers, liquidly animate. When you envenom prey, you may vex them and obtain deepening awareness of their body through their circulatory system. They are in your grasp. The greater the dose, the more control you have. With enough venom, you may outright possess prey, but exercising control burns feverishly and rapidly expends the dose.
• Vampire Wyrm. You have learned to sip from veins as from a spiritual river. You no longer need to consume prey to sate the Long Hunger: Instead, you may drink their blood, consuming only part of the soul.
• Antivenom. Your venom is more than a vex. After much experimentation, your persuasion of biology is complete, and when dosing prey, you may allow your venom to numb pain, supply nutrients, and act as an antivenom. When you close wounds, though, subjects may find the flesh heals back with scales whose glimmering shares your hue.

No place is more safe or sacred than a serpent’s den. Snakes are attuned to the earth‍ ‍‍—‍ but not any mere patch of land. Only the soil burrowed by their own snout, smoothed by their continual weight and passage, grows truly infused with their soul.

These vexes are all most (or only) effective in the “lair” that you sleep in most often, accumulating with age.

Each $1 grants a minor vex:

• Underslither. You can burrow with skill sufficient to allow you to “swim” through the earth itself. You move at a hundredth your normal speed when tunneling through solid earth, increasing to as much as a tenth when near your lair. For navigation, you have a dim sense of the material composition of the soils you burrow through.
• Lair Shaping. You have become partly flesh and dirt. You may treat the material of your lair as your own scales and all that touches it is in your grasp. You may shape it any architecture you can imagine.
• Predator’s Lair. Your very hunger has seeped into the stone. When prey enters your lair, you are alerted (even if not nearby) and you may vex this target. If you will it, your lair may slowly drain their life, preserving their flesh and soul for later consumption.
• Venom Vessels. Your maw is salivating stone. You may drip venom into a rock from your lair, turning into a vessel. This preserves the venom indefinitely. If you shape the stone into a weapon, it vexes targets upon penetration, but the vexation must be decided when the vessel is created.
• Ocean Den. You dwell within a maelstrom. You lair is sunken down in drowning depths, and torrential waters roil like endless coils around you. You can swim and breathe underwater, and all Earth Vex abilities apply to the waters you live in. Due to its fluid nature, your lair can move.

With each hunt and each life subsumed, your vexsome soul burgeons and baffles, a poison‍-​pearl. You may turn this wisdom and power upon itself, as if hunting your own tail. Can you ever strike it? Should you?

Each $1 grants a minor vex:

• Gift From Beyond. Your soul was marked at inception, given a unique feature present in none other. You have command, if not mastery, over a power no other vexwyrm can mimick. What is it? (Design a minor power, or import one from another setting.)

• Inner Space. Your soul expands and hollows itself out. Your throat trifurcates, admitting not just breath and meal, but a new passage into your hidden depths. There is a extradimensional volume within your soul where you can store objects, weightless and imperceptible to others.

• Ghost Slither. You soul wriggles and contorts. The first time it happens, you thought you’d died, a ghostly form ascending from stilled flesh. Perhaps your body died? Had you shed your flesh like old skin? When you returned, you understood that this was astral projection.

  You can project your serpentine soul outward from your body. This detached soul can vex targets at a distance with phantom fangs, but beware that a bare soul is acutely vulnerable, courting a defenseless death. Your body withers the longer it goes without a soul, and further your silver cord stretches. Go too far, too long, and you cannot return.

• Soul Redefinition. Your soul is alive, recursively redefining itself. The longer you focus on your soul, the more you map its convolutions. You discern yourself discerning yourself. This metanoia grants you the paradoxical power of self‍-​creation. You can reshape your soul to emphasize the quality you deem coremost.

  Chose another ability to weave axiomatically into your soul. You become a master of this ability, peerless in the world, and all who would meddle with your soul become subject to it.

• Ourobooros. You descend into your depths, chasing the essence of self that runs away even as you run after it. And then, monument to tremendous striving, you strike! You catch it! There, caught in your fangs, is your own tail. A ouroboorus of the soul, self‍-​consuming, self‍-​critiquing, self‍-​refining! You can take spiritual sustenance from your own being, now; the Long Hunger is halted in its tracks. You have total awareness of your soul‍ ‍‍—‍ it’s enough to know this alone doesn’t exhaust the depths of this apotheosis.

  • If you have a hollow soul, you can now enter your own inner space, leaving a pool of venom in the world.
  • If you can astrally project, then you no longer have range limits, and can resize your projection to be twice or half as large.
  • If you can do both, your ouroboorus projection can at will become a portal to your internal space.

Your venom need not just kill. Even those who can resist your strike may suffer spasms, twitching agony, and visions of maleficient disgrace. You can manipulate its potency and effect of your venom to imitate any biological formula‍ ‍‍—‍ paralysis, delirium, deadly dysfunction.

Your power and pedigree is immediately apparent to all who behold you. The minds of common folk are by turns frightened and allured; one glance will persuade all but rare exceptions to comply with your will. Fellow vexwyrms will not mistake you for easy prey‍ ‍‍—‍ though they may consider you a tempting mate.

You’ve learned the innate tongue of the slithersoul, letting you utter universally understood sibilation. Vexwyrms are hardly cooperative, but by perfectly conveying your intent, you can deceive and threaten with utter plausibility.

Any prey that falls into your grasp can be squeezed, disrupting circulation and felling common beasts. Your cursed soul flares life throughout this slow murder, letting you vex your prey by prolonged contact.

Your tail is tipped with a hollow instrument of ghastly stridor. When shaken, it produces a shrieking noise that stops mundane foes in their tracks‍ ‍‍—‍ they cannot overcome the fear. Against all else, a physical strike of your rattle is enough to vex prey.

You may eject a spray of venom from your fangs, costly yet allowing you to strike at range. Your venom has adapted to have a weakened effect upon contact, vexing your prey.

Your scales are perfectly adapted for stealth. If you remain still for a moment, the apparent colors of your scales shift and render you invisible. Movement blurs this effect, allowing the keen‍-​eyed to spot you creeping.

Your tongue discerns the subtle scent of souls. You can detect the presence of anyone nearby, whether or not they are vexwyrms, and how powerful if so. Soul‍-​scents linger for a day, allowing you to follow trails.

Your body is long and your trail is longer. You have mastered crawling and climbing over the most unforgiving substrates. When moving carefully, you may proceed as if weightless, allowing you to slither over the surface of water or fragile structures. You may vex the ground in your wake, laying a trap for those who follow you.

You have a pit organ for the sensing of body heat, but its true sensitivity is spiritual warmth, allowing you to discern the emotional state of nearby creatures. When close, this scan is detailed enough to discern every nuance of mixed feelings and subconscious impulses, but you are granted no semantic knowledge of their thoughts and beliefs. You can parse these auras quickly enough to grant a kind of foresight in combat.

Your venom has adapted for combat against your own kind. If you envenom a vexwyrm or magical creature, you instead target their soul, crippling their abilities. A full dose, rather than killing, strips away all powers.

You can bask in power and absorb it. A few hours lying in the sun allows you to regenerate from damage. When foes draw near, their reserves are enervated, and their magical attacks are half as effective against you; a portion of their power soaks into your scales and empowers you.

You can taste and drool the essence of power. When your tongue enters the body of another creature, you may transfer your magical reserves into and of their soul as long as you maintain contact. Wielding your borrowed power creates a debt, and if they cannot pay it, you may immediately devour their soul.

You can feel a soul’s innate design. When you hold prey in your grasp, you gain a sense for and understanding of their abilities, more detailed the longer you constrict. You become keenly aware of their weaknesses.

Your neck scales can expand into a fearsome display. Its beauty is mesmerizing, patterns swirling around an eyespot of piercing glare. Your soul imbues it with glowing light, allowing you to hex all who stare inward. This effect automatically paralyzes weak prey.

Your venom is compleat and utter desolation, bringing ruin to all things living and even things beyond life. Your toxins can corrode objects as if it were strongest acid or hottest fire.

Your soul lingers in your shed skin. When another creature touches your molt, they feel an urge to wear it. The longer it remains in contain with them, the greater your influence over them. They find themselves inclined to makes choices beneficial to you. When completely enthralled, your scales fuse inseparably; they will seek you out and serve loyally.

Your sibilation enchants all who hear it. You can hiss as loud as a shout, and vex anything that feels this vibration, weakly at first, but if maintained as song, you may profoundly twist a whole area to your will.

You now entwine with subtle and phantasmal force. Any object or creature squeezed in your grasp is vexed. For a time, you retain awareness of its location relative to you, and may apply force at distance to move it. The precision of your awareness and the strength of this force scales higher the more time is spent held in your grasp.

You were born with wings, though you did not fledge until late in your adulthood. You can fly, these leathery wings rendering you as maneuverable as a bat. They are fragile things, bones easily broken and skin easily penetrated, and you cannot take off with a belly full of prey.

Your venom is ontological in its destruction, with seething toxins that act against concepts. When you vex prey, you may target any part of their body with surgical precision, and you may even target their mind, cutting away memories, skills, thoughts. A decimation‍-​vexation.

You shed your form when you shed your skin. At any time, you may trigger a molt, and until you crawl free, your shed is inviolable. Any malady or ailment can be negated: you will be free of it when you eclose. You cannot use this ability again until your scales harden and flush with deathless splendor. This takes a full day the first time; each time thereafter, it takes twice as long to renew.

You entwine your will into the weave of time itself. Whenever you make a choice, you can lick your brilles. They cloud like a crystal ball, and you know the forked path. You receive a vision of the consequences both choices would have from now until you choose to end the vision, and you must chose your preferred option with this foreknowledge. You then live out that option as if in a fugue, waking up at the end. If you vex a target during this effect, the threads cross, and the target remembers the other path, now aware of the vision.

Once bound, nothing escapes you. When something living is coiled in your grasp, your undulations insinuate into their veins, and you gain control of their heart. Each hour prey is so bound, you may implant an association of love, peace, or fear at a trigger of your chosing. You cannot control their thoughts, but the emotional certainty can only be briefly denied.

You have the hunger to devour the world and a womb to remake it. You may swallow any object that fits in your mouth. Instead of digesting it, you may instead lay an egg. You must incubate this egg, shivering to keep it warm, but with each day that passes, you lay a new enchantment over the object, augmenting some existing property and granting it a will. When it hatches, this artifact will obey you as its mother.