Iziakinic

Body

Between the spines the hide is grooved with channels finer than a hair which run from every part of the body to the corner of the mouth, so that a Thorn Wind standing in dew, in fog or in another creature's blood drinks through its skin without moving.

It is the reason they can hold a watch position for nine days in open waste, and the reason a Thorn Wind battlefield ritual that looks like gloating is a meal. Their hide grades hard and is armour worth a warhorse a panel, and taking it off the body is a job nobody volunteers for.

Country

Desert realms and hot wastelands, with the Iziakoh in the same country and very little in common with them. The waste is not a hardship for this strain; it is the condition the body was cut for, and the water in it is enough as long as something is wet at dawn.

They are strategic in their watching, which in practice means they are already in position when the argument starts. An army that has crossed a waste held by Iziakinic has been counted the whole way.

Life

They cannot be carried, cannot be embraced, cannot share a bed, and their courtship consists of standing close for a very long time. Every custom the strain has is shaped around a body nobody can touch.

The clutch is buried and the Counting is held as it is everywhere, and a Thorn Wind hatchling is soft and blunt for the first years, which is the only period of its life in which it can be picked up.

Faith

Vaeyar in her scouring face, Vai'nic the Scouring Wind, the sandstorm that strips soft things to the bone and leaves the hard standing. It is the Hardening stated as weather, and it is the most literal version of the doctrine anyone in the species teaches.