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Foulen · “Blood Brush” · Crimson strain

Foulkar

Crimson touched, and therefore no longer their own. A creature in molten contact belongs to the hive mind of the great crimson god beneath the ground, and a Foulkar is an extension of it wearing a fox.

They keep the cleverness, which is the horror of them. A Foulkar will still work a latch, still whistle, still speak to a farmer at a gate.

Body

The coat sheds in wet clumps, leaving raw and weeping patches. The snout splits along the midline into a second jaw. The brush is stripped to bare vertebrae and drags. The eyes have gone over entirely to a flat wet red.

The brush is the balance organ of a Foulen and a stripped one should end the running, and the Foulkar goes on regardless, which is one of the several things about it that the other kin cannot look at.

Society

It was Foulen once and it kept what Foulen keep: a range on the Verge, the brush-marks cut on the jumping bearing, the bell if it ran a thin pack, and the two Nights twice a year at a chosen place. That is the whole of the difficulty. The Nights are the only time the species gathers anywhere, the place changes, and a Foulkar remembers where they are held from before it was taken.

The taboo list of the other eight is short and absolute: do not cut a brush, do not open a last den, do not take another Foulen's mother-thing, do not answer a horn. There is nothing in it about a Foulkar, and the kin who will cut a brush over an insult have decided anyway that this one is left alone.

Regard

The other kin will not go near one and do not kill them either, and the reason given is that a Foulkar remembers the two Nights and knows where they are held.

That is the whole of the standing arrangement, and it is not a truce and is not a taboo. It is eight kin who cut a brush over an insult and open no last den and take no mother-thing, declining to act, and giving a reason.

See also
FoulenCrimson HorrorsFoulsenFoulekFoulmarFoulreiFoulgahrFouloom