Baruun
Most Baruush are Baruun. They are the common caste of the one locked genome, and the thing to understand about them is that they are not a different animal from the barons: a Baruun kit fed as a Baruunmor becomes a Baruunmor, and a Baruun who grows fat enough is weighed against copper and ceases to be a Baruun. The caste was decided in the first winter, by a baron, in a room with a scale in it.
They are the ones in the water. Every dam, every bridge fortress, every course of timber and clay in a holding that charges the world a tenth for the privilege of crossing is Baruun work.
Body
Two to three and a half feet, lean by the standards of their people, sixty to a hundred and ten pounds. The build is the base build: barrel-bodied and low, short thick legs, feet broad and webbed to the second knuckle, a flat scaled tail as wide as a shovel blade, fur brown through black and kept oiled with rendered river fat. The two orange chisels in the front of the mouth are snubbed flat by timber and worn on purpose to a working edge, and they are uncapped, because caps are for nobles and capped teeth cannot wear.
They swim fast, they hold breath for an hour, and the lips close behind the incisors so that they can gnaw underwater without drowning. What a Baruun does not have is weight. Wood alone will keep a Baruush alive at commoner size and will not carry him past it, and a Baruun eats wood.
Society
They are the gnawers, the timber crews, the lodge-builders and the ones in the water. They fell the toll-trees, they cut and set the courses, they trap and trade river pelts on their own account, and they pay the tenth to their own house on everything they earn, which they consider correct.
At the spring Weighing a commoner is weighed against wood and must top a measured billet to keep his portion. A Baruun who grows fat is watched with interest. A Baruun who grows fat enough is weighed against copper, and if he tops it he ceases to be a Baruun, which is the only social mobility the culture offers and is genuinely available. They eat wood at the low trough, in sight of the high one, where the nobles eat paid meat slowly.
Life
A Baruun kit is weighed within its first hour against a green stick cut that morning, like every other kit, and goes into the water if it does not top the stick. It swims in a week and gnaws in a month and sets its first tooth-mark on the house-beam at three. Work begins at five.
The teeth fail at forty. A commoner's are drawn, and he is put to the trough to be fed pulp, and there is no copper and no gold for him. If he dies out of debt he is packed into the dam wall in clay with the next course laid over him, and holds the river forever, which is the whole of the reward the faith offers. If he dies in debt to his own house he goes off the downstream face and his name is scratched out of the beam.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- How often a Baruun actually tops the copper and rises, and what happens to him afterwards
- Whether a Baruun may hold property that the house cannot take at the beam
- What the river pelt trade is worth, and who buys it