Hurtsville Critter Spotlight vol. 2 - The Articulated Python

Welcome to Volume 2 of the Hurtsville Critter Spotlight! Continuing our educational unnature series, it's time to meet one of the premier reptiles in the greater Hurtsville area, the Articulated Python (Pythonidae Articulata).

As the name implies, the Articulated Python is very definitely a snake. A constrictor, the Articulated Python has a typical range of 10 to 16 feet in length and a weight range of 175-250 pounds, large for a snake but far from record-setting. The scale pattern generally features stripes along the back in shades of brown and green, with a lighter brown underbelly.

Unsurprisingly, Hurtsville's Articulated Python sports some characteristics uncommon to the family. The name comes from this serpent's unusual skeletal structure; unlike other snakes, the Articulated Python's spinal vertebrae are composed of a nigh-impossible series of ball-and-socket joints connected by locking hinges, allowing this highly-effective predator to bend itself into many shapes for camouflage and self-amusement purposes. Reports of these snakes posing as staircases, railings, and semi-truck chassis are common enough, and younger individuals have been known to impersonate umbrellas, ratchets, tennis racquets, street signs, and in one famous instance, an entire functioning wheelchair. Much like that Super-Poseable Spider-Man that you made finger its own butt while standing on one foot and curling his toes in the throes of ecstasy, the Hurtsvillian Articulated Python's depravity is only limited by its imagination.

Spending most of its time in the Hurtsville foothills, the Articulated Python generaly subsists on a diet of badgers, deer, tortoises, LARPers, spare tires, and people who like to debate the acuracy of the term 'hobby shop'.

Hurtsville Critter Spotlight vol. 1 - The Hurtsvillian Stealth Bear!

The Glorious Nation of Hurtsville is home to a variety of indigenous creatures, some unique, and some twisted, mutant kinfolk to creatures in the outside lands. In this series, we'll be giving you puny, worthless outsiders a glimpse into Hurtsville's preternatural ecosystem, with each installment spotlighting one of our many unusual and bloodthirsty organisms. Please note that all living things in Hurtsville are carnivorous, including the plants.

Today we take a look at... the Hurtsvillian Stealth Bear (Ursus Maleficarum)!

Visually similar to its more common and less mystical brethren, the Hurtsvillian Stealth Bear is similar in appearance to an over-sized American Black Bear, but with a distinctive purple bandanna tied around its head, Ninja Turtle-style, and the occasional bandolier of edged throwing weapons. Typically weighing between 500 and 700 pounds and averaging between 35 and 50 inches at shoulder height, the Hurtsvillian Stealth Bear is surprisingly agile for such a sizable creature. Atypical of other related species, the Hurtsvillian Stealth Bear walks bipedally, and has been known to ride unicycles unironically.

Sightings rarely leave survivors, but some recovered security footage has been pieced together showing a crack squadron of Hurtsvillian Stealth Bears executing a series of brutal maul-and-grab-and-then-maul-again robberies throughout the countryside and even within Hurtsville city limits. Unlike their cousins, Hurtsvillian Stealth Bears are primarily urban-dwelling predators, operating out of an unknown number of hidden locations which are presumably well-stocked with salmon. They are reported to excel at hiding behind shrubs, telephone poles, and other tall, narrow objects generally not suited for such purposes. 

An Introduction to Hurtsville – The Glorious Nation Welcomes* You!

If you’re reading this, congratulations! You are about to embark on a journey of wonder, discovery, and unbelievable psychological and physical trauma as you explore the unnatural beauty and primordial evil of the Glorious Nation of Hurtsville. Let’s get a few basics out of the way, so that Hurtsville might better insinuate itself into the very core of your being, using you as a host to spread its seeds into the world of Man in inefficient but deliciously subversive and violating fashion.

Well then.

Hurtsville. Where is it? What is it? The answer is, of course, convoluted. Hurtsville is a pandimensional city-state, a bustling metropolis under the tyrannical rule of The Foiler. Like your typical mystical settlement, Hurtsville is unreachable by conventional means, and the whirling mists that make up its barriers can only be traversed, or even seen, if The Foiler expressly wills it to be so.

Currently on the lam in central Indiana, the Glorious Nation of Hurtsville is quite mobile, although there are quite a lot of winches and intricate systems of pulleys involved in transporting a vaguely-sized city, its inhabitants, building, infrastructure, and the surrounding lands from one realm to the next. Hurtsville is also something of a contradiction, hosting specialized technology far advanced than that in use by lesser beings, particularly non-Hurtsvillian humans, but at the same time lacking the associated modern cancers of society like ‘democracy’, ‘equality’ and ‘human rights’.

Trade relations in Hurtsville contribute favorably to our eternal surplus of wealth; in addition to interdimensional trade of goods and services, Hurtsville has a veritable monopoly on shipping with a number of other worlds, many of which are populated by tentacled monstrosities and/or societies based around mid-20^th century character archetypes. Hurtsville is also home to the Quaker Meats Company, the universe’s unrivalled leader in questionable canned foodstuffs.

The population generally falls between 65,535 and 999,999, although it can vary quite a bit depending on just where Hurtsville materializes and what may or may not be considered sentient life in said location; as we will cover further in our upcoming series on the flora and fauna of Hurtsville, there are quite a few chatty Cathys in this most unique of lands, and not all of them are bipedal.

Public transportation is the main method of commute in Hurtsville, consisting mainly of a rapid-transit trolley line and a series of strategically-oriented catapults. Automobiles are rare, as the streets of Hurtsville are as narrow as a medieval village owing to our strict policy of having as many alleyways as possible.

Government in the Glorious Nation of Hurtsville is a pretty straightforward affair, a welcome contrast to the veiled corruption and indolent bureaucracy found in the world of Man. The Foiler acts as tyrannical dictator, as well as the creator and founder of the land. While he (really, ‘it’) employs a veritable army of administrators and legislators, The Foiler is the only voice of authority in the Glorious Nation, ruling by his whim and the fact that his nigh-infinite power can easily transform any dissenters into a plate of eggplant rollatini. Despite appearances, the citizens of Hurtsville enjoy the highest quality of life, if not the longest actual lifespans. The Foiler, being of primordial darkness that he is, has no vices he cannot sate through his own power, and seems to consider government as something akin to a strategy game.

Foiler Fact: the ‘do not disturb’ sign on The Foiler’s office reads ‘reticulating splines’.

This is all just scratching the surface of the rich and brutal history of the Glorious Nation of Hurtsville. Stay tuned for further installments, and be sure to send your questions and topic requests. I am quite literally required to answer, lest my skin be removed and made into a sporty windbreaker, so feel free!

-Kip Casper, Semi-Official Hurtsville Minister of Records and Barista

*usage of verbs, nouns, and/or adjectives subject to interpretation by The Foiler