Satha

Satha (or Satha the Old One) is a giant serpent kept by the wizard Tsotha-lanti as a pet in the Halls of Horror beneath the Scarlet Citadel. Satha is white with yellow eyes and measures eighty feet in length. His fangs are twelve inches long and drip with burning venom. When Conan was held prisoner in the dungeons beneath the citadel and confronted Satha, a drop of venom fell on his thigh and left a scar for the rest of his life. Although he is venomous, Satha is also capable of constricting his prey.

Satha hunts for prey in the great central corridor of the dungeons, and for this reason the monsters that inhabit the numerous smaller side passages avoid the main corridor. The sorcerer Pelias was once forced to watch while ten of his acolytes were fed to Satha by his rival Tsotha-lanti. On the other hand, Pelias is the only being that Satha fears after having seen what was in the sorcerer's naked soul.

Satha had an extremely long lifespan, measured in the thousands of years. At some point after the Hyborian Age but before recorded history, Satha was killed in the jungle by a warrior named Niord who belonged to a southward migrating tribe of Æsir. After trapping Satha and cutting off his head, Niord steeped his arrowheads in Satha's venom and used them to slay a gigantic tentacled monster known as the Worm. After destroying the Worm, Niord died of his injuries.

Niord's battles with Satha and the Worm formed the basis in reality for future tales of dragonslayers such as Siegfried, Beowulf, and Saint George. Legends and tales of Satha himself became twisted into demonology so that he became deified and revered by the Stygians as Set, the Old Serpent. In later ages he would become Satan and Leviathan.

Satha is described in "The Scarlet Citadel" as white in color, but in "The Valley of the Worm" his scales shimmer with a "thousand changing scintillations".