Hofar
The Hofar are the Hof of the warm shallows and the reef: a foot shorter than the Hoard's, spined all over rather than only on inflation, and hostile. Standing spines mean a Hofar is dangerous to handle at rest, which no Hof of the Hoard is, and it is the one morph that fishers will not take by hand at all.
The Hofar never joined the peace. They live in small pods along coral coasts, eat coral, and send themselves at any Omari they find, which is the only war still being fought from the god war and the only one fought by drifting. Where the Hoard is silent the Hofar are loud, in the Omari manner of sonar, and fishers know a Hofar reef by the sound.
Body
Four feet where the Hoard's run to five, on the same frame: a foam of small chambers under shell plates, a few cartilage struts, a ring of white around the head dotted with pupils, and tiny three-fingered arms. They weigh next to nothing and cannot dive, cannot chase and cannot flee.
The difference is the spines, which stand out from the body at rest instead of firing on inflation. That single change turns a thing that could be picked up into a thing that cannot, and it is the whole of the Hofar's defence. The two liquors and the wall between them are the species', unaltered, and so is what happens when the full inflation tears it.
Country
Coral coasts and warm shallows, in small pods, and they are the only Hof a shore ever sees twice. The Hoard keeps no coast and holds no ground; the Hofar hold a reef and stay on it.
What they do to a reef is slow and total. A pod of coral-eating Hof will take a reef down to rock over a century, and the coral coasts where they have settled longest are the bare ones. Below the eyes they taste the water chemically at a great distance, and the signature they read best is the Omari, which was the makers' point: a Hofar on a reef knows there is an Omari in the bay before the Omari is in the bay.
Regard
The single Hof that leaves the pack toward the coast and is not looked after was long read as the Hoard sending sorties against the Omari. The sorties are real and they are the Hofar's. The Hoard lets them go because a Hof that wants to explode is safer at a distance.
To a fisher a Hofar is the catch that cannot be lifted, and the poles and weighted nets that the trade uses on the Hoard's Hof are used on a Hofar with a great deal more care. To the Omari it is the war that never ended, arriving one body at a time, and the Omari could end it by asking the Hoard and have not yet found the words.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Which warm coasts the Hofar hold
- How many Hofar are left after four thousand years of one-use attacks
- Whether a Hofar pod has ever taken in an exile from the Hoard
- What the Hofar say to the Omari before they arrive