Imvak
The heaviest Imps, and the loudest. The Do'urssan bone comes through hardest in the Imvak: a jaw too wide for the face, black-bristled hair that will not lie flat, and a scream that carries across a market. An Imvak is squat where other Imps are plump, and it bites.
They hire as door-guards for the shops of other Imps and as the small vicious end of a larger fighting company, and they are the one Imp lineage a Man-at-Arms will hesitate before kicking. In a people whose whole strategy is to be somewhere else when the trouble starts, the Imvak are the exception that the rest of the quarter pays for.
Body
Squat rather than plump, with the weight carried low, and the parent's angles where other Imps carry soft flesh over them. The jaw is the mark of the line, too wide for the face and set with teeth that are used; the hair is black bristle that will not lie flat under any oil, which in a people who oil, comb and display their hair is a standing embarrassment the Imvak have made into a style. The scream is the other mark, and it carries the length of a market.
Underneath, the skeleton is the same light, thin-walled Imp frame with the same cartilage bracing, and the Imvak carry more weight on it than it was ever built to take. The line runs, as all Imps do, on a body that shatters, and an Imvak is simply an Imp that has decided to stand where the blow lands.
Society
They stand at doors. Imvak are hired to guard the shops of other Imps, and hired out to larger fighting companies as the small vicious end of one, and both arrangements turn on the same fact: a three-foot thing that bites, screams and does not run is worth having in a doorway that a Nu'uman would have to stoop through.
Their custom is the scar. An Imvak shows every wound it has taken and names each one. In a people that clots slowly, where a cut hand is bound for days and a small wound is a serious wound, every scar on display is a bleed somebody survived, and the Imvak know precisely what they are showing.
Frailty
The line pays for it at the joints. Bone-heavy births are commonest among the Imvak: an Imp born with too much of the Do'urssan density, half again the ordinary weight, on thin-walled joints that cannot carry it. Such a one is strong and admired at fifteen and cannot walk at twenty-five, and the Imvak produce more of them than any other line and are proud of the ones that last.
Few Imvak door-guards are still standing at forty, which in a people where a patronised tailor reaches ninety is the whole of the argument against the trade, and the Imvak make it anyway.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Whether any Imvak has ever held a fighting company of its own rather than hiring into one
- How many bone-heavy births a line can carry before it stops producing door-guards at all
- Which cities will let an Imvak stand armed at a door and which will not