Nu'umanak
The Nu'umanak were set down under Hyton's full glare and the acclimatising rays fixed them there. Their skin took on darker, richer, black pigments to combat the hot rays of the sun within the desert and even hotter climates, and the surface of it is rougher and callused, a secondary protection so that the vital organs are not tainted by the sun.
They are the water mages, and the only strain in the whole species that produces fire mages at all. The inheritance shows on the outside: a hyper blue vein structure visible on those who still wield the powers of their ancestors, which is a boast in the desert and a coroner's note everywhere else, since the vein-bloom is the warning that comes before the rupture.
Body
Darker, richer, black pigments, and a rough callused surface over the organs. The change went inward as well: the nasal passage is long and convoluted and recovers the water out of a breath before it leaves the body, so a Desert Walker's exhalation is dry and cool and a Desert Walker corpse in the dunes does not lose weight the way another strain's does. They carry their fat in the buttock and the upper thigh rather than around the core, which keeps the trunk free to shed heat. They live sixty to one hundred and ten years.
Their origins are that of water mages, "thus leaving a hyper blue vein structure that can be seen on those that still wield the powers of their ancestors." A Desert Walker with visible blue veins is announcing an inheritance. They also have the most channelling injury of any strain, because they have the strongest inheritance to spend.
Country
Their cradle is the hot desert: dune seas and salt pans under Hyton's full glare, where the water lies beneath the ground and the people move with it, and where a house is a cistern with rooms around it.
Tongue
The Desert Walkers give a given name and a water-name, the name of the well or cistern the family drinks from, joined with a breath. A family that moves to another water changes half its name, which is a thing the heralds of the surface houses have never been able to file.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Which country holds the desert cradle
- Why fire channelling arose in this strain and in no other
- What the water-name does when a family drinks from more than one well
- Whether the blue veins can be lost, and what that means in a family