MitD XV: The Other Dark One

[Coat]

That's some creative thinking that I hadn't heard before! Your 10-year-old son should be proud for noticing that.

Thank you! He will appreciate that!

If you think a snake-like creature, some form of Ha-Naga, IIRC, has been suggested with a very lengthy list of pros and cons.

Yeah, so I like a psionic or otherwise magical creature with a snake-like body for lots of reasons? It means you could fit a much larger body into a smaller space, for example. It explains how something about the volume of a person could also swallow something about the size of a person - which a large snake could plausibly do. It's really consistent with the way that MitD is never shown having hands and having trouble manipulating physical objects.

It even helps a bit with strength: I vividly recall a scene in The Jungle Book where Kaa knocks down a wall. Things like pythons are just one big muscle, and I readily believe that they could put huge amounts of force into a strike - though I don't exactly see how Kaa could knock down a wall without also crushing his own skull to pulp. But for a mystical snake-thing of some sort, less of an issue.

But that doesn't mean I think it's some kind of Naga.
I just think it will be a magical/mythical creature with a snake-like body. For example, a bit of googling of Snake Monsters brought me to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakunawa

That's a surprisingly good fit!
PRO:

• Definitely hungry. It eats moons!
• Causes Earthquakes
• Probably has good damage resistance: eats moons!
• Probably quite strong: eats moons!
• Definitely powerful enough: eats moons!
• If it can eat a moon, it could swallow Redcloak. Unless Moons are much smaller than you think?
• Maybe not as big as you think - fell in love with a human girl?
• Has a sister who is a sea turtle, so maybe is part of a family?
• Predates Strip 100 by at least a couple hundred years

CON:

• No explanation of the escape scene
• Is more of a singular being than one of a kind
• The 'sister who is a sea turtle' thing is really weak
• No obvious connection to the astral plane
• I mean, it's just obviously not, isn't it.

So I don't remotely think that the MitD is some kind of relative of the Bakunawa.
I was just surprised that a little bit of searching - literally about 10 minutes - in the snake-monster space turned up something new that's not really that much worse a candidate than many other of the proposed ideas. I suggests to me that it's maybe worth a bit more exploring.

For a mythical being like the Bakunawa, I don't even reckon the escape scene is that big an issue: it's a mythical thing that eats moons. It's not a huge leap to imagine that it has other amazing powers. Or maybe there's a story about it where it does this that I don't know!

The bigger thing, for me, is that Rich is just a better story-teller than that. Like... at the point when the umbrella comes off, how many people are going to go 'oh, a Bakunawa, of course!'. How many people will even have heard of what a Bakunawa is?! I'd never heard of it before. I can't believe that Rich will be happy with himself unless at least 80% of his audience are kicking themselves for not seeing it before - and in my opinion, even a Tarrasque barely clears that mark.

So I think that the MitD will be a really well-known and recognisable snake-like being, and the moment the umbrella comes off we will all just have no idea how we didn't spot it before.
But I have absolutely no idea what really well-known snake-like being it's going to be. So it's going to be a damn good trick.

The pot is seen in #476. It is slightly larger than Haley's head. A human children could put their head in that pot and lick most of it clean.

Sure, although a human couldn't also swallow another human-sized being whole. At least I can't!

I agree with the rest of your points.