Iziakeesh
The Iziakeesh carry hard, sharp, thick scaling in black-red, orange and teal. They live in the harshest climates, volcanic ground and extreme heat or cold, "thus allowing them to survive the worst the world can throw at them." They are "the militaristic sections of their societies, as well as the ruling class in many regions of their species," which is the scale law working exactly as written.
"They are crude, vicious and unforgiving as people." Six feet, two hundred and ten pounds, most of it plate, and they rule more of the species than anyone else does.
Body
The plate is the heaviest in the species and the seed under each scale fuses to the one beside it after the fortieth shed, so an old Iziakeesh is wearing a single piece of armour and cannot turn its neck. They take the tail in the mouth and lock, presenting a ring of spines, and a locked Sharp Scale has been rolled down a slope, hit with a maul and left in a fire without opening.
The cost of all that mineral is the shortest life in the species outside the Iziakotiel: sixty to ninety years, the bone robbed to feed the hide. Their hide grades hard, which is armour worth a warhorse a panel.
Country
Volcanic ground, ash slopes and the extreme ends of heat and cold. They give their eggs to warm volcanic ash and run their beds hotter than anyone, losing a third of every clutch to it, and they consider the trade obviously correct, because a bed a few degrees hotter through the middle third of incubation produces hatchlings that shed harder for life.
They read the hatchlings' scale on the first day rather than at the First Shedding, because in the ash a soft-scaled child will not live to shed. The scale-hold is their form: a fortified place with a wall, a granary, an armoury, a hide-house and a lime-pit, where the hard-scaled rule and the soft serve, and it is what the reptilian generals left behind them.
Society
They rule anyway, and the arithmetic of ruling a species that lives twice as long as you do has given Iziakeesh politics its particular sprint. A Sharp Scale lord is old at seventy in a hall full of persons who will still be working at a hundred and sixty, and every decision he makes is made against that clock.
A scale-hold of theirs keeps an Ink Scale to read its book and sends for a Salt Scale to bless its clutch, because a hold without both is a hold no other Iziaka takes seriously, and the Iziakeesh have never been in a position to be laughed at twice.
Faith
Aezithis in his crust face, Aez'kesh the Hardening, the stone god whose skin is the ground and who holds the crimson down beneath it. To the Sharp Scales every scale is a piece of the crust, and a soft-scaled child is a place where the crimson might come through, which is the most frightening version of the scale law anyone in the species teaches and the one that governs the most people.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Which volcanic regions the Iziakeesh hold, and how many scale-holds answer to them
- Whether a Sharp Scale lord has ever outlived his own hold's Ink Scale
- What happens to a child read soft in the ash on its first day