How do you tie up a snake-person? [duplicate]

Question

The snake-person is humanoid down to the thighs. Below the thighs they have a pair of snakes replacing their legs. Specifically, the snake's spine attaches with the last thoracic vertebra being jointed to the lower part of the femur, which has the form of a snake's vertebra rather than its usual form in humans. The musculature blends between the serpentine and human sections. These snakes are quite a bit longer than human legs, and are very flexible. The cloaca on the back of the leg and no serpentine reproductive organs. They are terrestrial, and move over land by slithering with their snake-legs

Because this is a different species with different anatomy, the methods used to bind mermaids will not work on the snake-people

How could you use rope to tie up their snake-legs, so that they couldn't get away or attack easily?

Answer 1

Tie a bag around their waist, with the "tails" inside.

If you really must only use rope, use it to make a net (tip: tying in in advance is strongly recommended) in the shape of a bag and use the same procedure. Make sure the holes are small enough that their "tails" can't escape.

If you really have to do something "on the spot", place the midpoint of the rope on your victim's waist and tie it, then wrap it around both "tails" to form a sort of tube, tying the rope to itself occasionally. Make sure to narrow this as you go so they can't just push through the bottom of the tube. Finally, tie the bottom back to their waist so the "tails" are held bent in an awkward angle.

Note that none of these are going to totally immobilize the victim; even a human with their arms and legs tied is going to be able to wriggle a bit and potentially get somewhere after enough effort (and scraped skin). If you really need the victim to stay put, you need to tie them to something.

...in which case the quickest thing would be to tie a ring knot over an anchor with the middle of the rope, then tie their wrists together (in front or behind; doesn't matter), leaving however much or little slack you want, then wrap the remaining rope around the victim's waist and tie it together opposite their hands. As long as you do a decent job tying the wrists together, they won't be able to reach those knots to loosen them, nor the one on the opposite side of their torso. It doesn't matter if they loosen the knot around the anchor, since it can't be undone while their wrists are bound. (Well... maybe. This might require there is not so much slack that they can't slip their entire body through the loosened loop... so, limit how much rope you use between the anchor and the victim's wrists.)

Answer 2

Add a splint. (Edit for clarity: Simply lay a staff/rod down the length of the creature, then tie the creature to this splint at several points along its length.)

Alternatively, hog-tie. (Edit for clarity: Tie its wrists to its lower extremities.)

There's no need to overthink this.

Answer 3

You could tie a chest harness like any of these: https://www.shibariacademy.com/pages/chest-harnesses

Or there are various chest-and-arm harnesses where the chest harness goes behind the back like any of these, or like this:

Tying up your snake-people is the same as tying up humans IF you have something to tie them to (a radiator or something); you can just tie the chest harness to the radiator, or tie their arms on with your single-column tie of choice.

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Suppose you insist on tying up their leg-things for some reason. Now a single-column won't work, as their legs presumably taper to a point, so it'll just slip off the end. Nevertheless, there are some leg-ties that might work.

The Futomomo is everyone's favourite leg tie, and can be wrapped around the leg as many times as you have the time and rope for:

You may say they could slip out of it, but they can presumably only draw their tail-tip up a certain extent (not infinitely), so as long as the lowest loop is above their limit of flexibility, they can't slip it.

Alternatively, there are more elaborate leg-ties resembling fishnets:

...which can also be done as double-columns:

For foot-ties, there are weaving ties like this:

and stirrup ties like this:

There are lots of ties available, it just depends on how skilled your rigger is, how much rope and time they have, and what equipment they have (anchor points, ceiling harnesses, etc.)

Answer 4

Make a Tail. Then Tie Her up like a Mermaid.

For comparison with mermaids, everyone knows that to tie up a mermaid, you fold the mermaid into a U-shape, until she can no longer bend that way. Then you restrain her in that position by tightening a rope between her tailfin and neck (I suppose you could replace the neck rope with a body harness if you want to be nice). These are good anchor points since they are thinner than the surrounding body. Note depending on whether the mermaid has a horizontal (whale) or vertical (fish) tail-fin, the bending happens on a different axis. For whale-maids you fold her to arch her back. For fish-maids you fold her to her left or right.

The problem with snake people is there is no good anchor point for the rope. To overcome this you first bend the tail to one side, over itself, and lash it into a teardrop shape using a square lashing:

This can be done since the snake is the same length along most of its length, and only tapers at the end.

Lashing like this creates a "tail" which the snake person cannot move, since snakes can only bend left-right, and only slightly up-down. Of course they might be able to move the entire teardrop like a stumpy leg. To overcome this you simply bend the "tail" back and secure to the neck much like a mermaid tail, anchoring around the neck and by looping around the base of the teardrop.

If the snake-person has two snake legs, simply make each leg into a teardrop, tie the teardrops together, and treat the double teardrop as the "tail".