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Ossurn · “Ice Walker”

Ossurn'al

The largest of the three, eleven to twelve feet and up to sixteen hundred pounds, white-coated with black skin beneath, short curved tusks and a swimming build. They hold the sea ice and the winter coast.

They lean carnivorous and they are the least talkative of a very quiet people. An 'al in a bad temper is the most dangerous single body on any frontier, and this happens about once a decade.

Body

Eleven to twelve feet and up to sixteen hundred pounds, white-coated with the black skin beneath that takes what little light the winter gives, short curved tusks, and a build made for swimming as well as walking.

The feather-fur is the same on them as on the rest: each shaft branching and the branches branching, three inches of still air trapped against the skin, shedding meltwater, refusing to mat. The same body cannot lose heat, so the heavy work is done at night and in wind and never in the thaw, and a hard haul on a mild day has killed somebody in every holding.

Country

The sea ice and the winter coast, and the outer ground of a holding. They hunt the big animals, they break the ice roads open after a freeze, and they do the heavy work and the fighting for the hall.

The weight is a hazard of its own. Sixteen hundred pounds goes through sea ice that carried a thousand, and the 'al line loses people that way every few winters.

Faith

They are the ones who go out into the storm at the rite and come back last. The rite is to go out into the worst of it, stand, and stay out until the shaman calls them in, and a holding will lose someone at this perhaps once a generation and does not regard that as an argument.

The doctrine is the vuln shamans' and the 'al keep it without discussing it, which is consistent with everything else about them.

See also
OssurnOssurnaeOssurnvuln