Iziakelesh

Body

Much of the mass is tail. An Iziakelesh stores a year of famine in a tail thicker than its own thigh, drops it at the shed plane if something has hold of it, and regrows it at the cost of everything stored, which is why a Scale Gut who has lost its tail will not stop eating and will not stop talking about it.

They are gecko stock and they see in the dark, in a flat washed grey, and so they run the night shift of every kitchen and tannery in the hot country. Their hide grades soft and makes cheap leather for gloves and grips, which the strain treats as one more thing they are good for.

Society

They are the food hoarders of their people and they are found in markets serving and selling it, which puts them in more Iziakan streets than any other strain and in more foreign ones as well. The hiss-laugh carries three streets and is the single most recognisable Iziakan sound in any city that has a quarter.

They are soft-scaled, so they command nothing and are obeyed by nobody, and they are also the strain the rest of the species is most consistently glad to see. The record does not treat those two facts as a contradiction and neither do the Iziakelesh.

Life

The Iziakelesh cook for a Counting for three days beforehand and the feast is larger than the rite, which is the only case in the species of the eating outweighing the reading.

The mineral hunger that runs through the whole people runs hardest through a kitchen. Every Iziakan kitchen cracks and boils bone, every child is given burnt shell in its food, and the crushed lime-and-shell paste called grek is handed across an Iziakelesh counter the way another people hands salt.

Faith

Nunamnir in her hearth face, Nun'elesh the Full Belly, the world as the board that is never bare. The Iziakelesh grace is to eat the first mouthful of every dish they serve, and a cook who will not is not trusted. It is a poison test, a blessing and a piece of showmanship at the same time, and no Scale Gut has ever been asked to separate them.