I need to gain entrance to the Sisters of Edurneum Outpost to acquire Zohark. The only problem is that the snake women are immediately hostile to me. I should be able to talk to one of them and she will allow me to proceed to speak to the queen but I cannot since they all seem to attack me on sight. Is there anything that can be done? Is this a known issue?

Damn me and my curiosity. I did go through a secret passageway by jumping a few ledges to enter snake people domain. DAMNIT... I don't think I'm strong enough to beat the snake people. And I've since saved over any games that go that far back. I'm not sure I'm willing to do it all over again... GAH.
This is the point where I'd just cheat my way to killing the queen, but I don't think cheats are enabled in 1.19 anyways. I suppose I could go kill a bunch of creatures to try and gain a level or two. I'm level 5/6 atm.

That's odd... I went in through "the back way," too and the Sisters never became hostile to ME... possibly because I tried very hard to remain stealthy the whole time and nevre actually went THROUGH the the storage room into the main hallways. I also couldn't get all of the chests open. Maybe stealing something in particular triggers hostility?

I think you just have to be seen or heard by one of them, much like with the goblin kingdom's treasury; Joseph Morris' "anti-walkthrough" indicates that you can use a potion of invisibility to get out of the Sisters' storeroom and into the main area without them attacking. The same probably applies with a high stealth stat.

By the way I was ably to bypass this little situation by killing all the snake women and stealing their stuff. Got my two rings. I do have another issue now but that will be posted in another thread.

I also unfortunatly had to kill all the snake women cause they were hostile to me and it was easier than expected. Then you loot them and their locked chest, and you'r apparently good for the rest of the game...

I know this is an oooold post but have just gotten into this game (loved ultima and the underworlds). I've got the same problem: I accidentally killed the snake women (they were hostile to me for breaking into their store room). Anyway, I now need Zohark and there are no snake women - let alone queen - to talk to. Is there any way of getting Zohark without speaking to them? You say you could bypass the situation...

I also don't have save games for before I killed them, I didn't know they were integral to the plot! I'm on Arx-Liberatis.

UPDATE: Actually, I got past it. So on one of the corpses of the snake women should be an orb of some sort. You need to activate this with the door switch just outside the snake women's area on lvl 6 (the switch allows you to deactivate the field blocking access to the trial to get Korhaz).