Imvae
The smallest of the small, rarely past three feet, with tufted ears, enormous eyes and hands so fine they can thread a needle they cannot see. The Imvae are the apothecaries and the copyists, the Imps kept by scholars and physicians for the work that needs a hand smaller than a Nu'uman's.
They chatter constantly and remember everything, and a household that keeps an Imvae keeps no secrets from it.
Body
Slight even by Imp standards and rarely past three feet, with the tufted ear that is the mark of the line and the enormous eye that goes with it. The tufted ear is the best in the species, which in a people who hear a coin set down through a floor is a considerable claim. The hands are the finest hands any people has, and they work by the long tendons that run from high in the forearm, so an Imvae threads by feel at a speed nobody watching can follow.
The eyes are the worst in the species, and they fail early and completely from close work by lamplight. The great Imvae apothecaries are commonly blind by sixty and working entirely by smell, taste and the sound of a liquid poured, which is possible because an Imp detects sweetness at concentrations no other people can find and an Imvae has spent fifty years learning what everything else tastes like beside it.
Society
They are kept, and the keeping is the whole of their place. An Imvae sits in a physician's back room or a scholar's study doing the work that needs a hand smaller than a Nu'uman's: compounding, measuring, copying, and finding the thing on the shelf nobody else can reach behind. Where other Imps hold the patron bond as a private contract made in a whisper, an Imvae's whole value is that it is in the room, and a household that keeps one keeps no secrets from it.
They are the least vain of Imps about their hair and the most vain about what they know. In a people who oil and display their colour and pity a dulling head more than a lost hand, that is close to heresy, and the Imvae say it out loud.
Frailty
The eyes are the frailty and the trade is the cause. Close work by lamplight takes them, early and completely, and there is no version of the work that does not. An Imvae who has gone blind is not put out; it is simply the senior apothecary now, and the young ones read to it.
They carry the ordinary Imp catalogue besides: the thin-walled bone that breaks on a stair, the slow clotting that turns a cut hand into a fortnight bound in cloth, and cellar-lung where the household is damp. What an Imvae fears is what every Imp fears, the hands going early, and it comes to them last of all the lines, which is the one mercy in the trade.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Whether any Imvae has ever been credited by name for a work copied or a remedy compounded
- What becomes of a blind Imvae whose household closes
- Whether the tufted ear is a difference of shape or only of degree