Scan'mor
The line in which the Iziaka came through in the bone. A Scan'mor stands at the top of the Scan'uun height and beyond it, with a long, low jaw, an armoured ridge running the length of the back, and a cold patience that unsettles Nu'umans more than the size does. The scale is thicker and darker, olive to near black, and turns a knife.
They do not smith. They stand: as pit-guards, bridge-wardens, the muscle a forge-row hires to keep the guild's collectors civil.
Body
Bigger than the rest of the people in every direction, with the dorsal ridge standing proud through whatever is worn over it and the scale grown thick enough that a drawn knife slides. Beneath the plates the seam runs as it does in every Scan'uun, the narrow channel of soft skin where sweat leaves and where a blade goes in, and a Scan'mor with an unscaled patch over the ribs, burnt or rotted bare, will not turn that side to a stranger for the rest of his life.
The patience is a consequence of the same banking that makes their cousins smiths, run the other way. A Scan'mor holds a great deal of heat in a great deal of body and can go a long time without moving to make more, which is why they can lie still in cold water for an hour and are said to enjoy it.
Society
They are hired, and the hiring is honest about what it wants. A Scan'mor is a pit-guard, a bridge-warden, and the body a forge-row puts between itself and the guild's collectors, and in a people who are otherwise paid in coin and silence that is the one Scan'uun trade nobody has to pretend is something else.
Their custom is the count of teeth: a Scan'mor shows its teeth to a stranger once, slowly, and afterward is polite.
Frailty
They dump heat slowly and badly, so a Scan'mor in a fight is formidable for a short time and useless afterward, and knows it, and would rather not fight. The whole reputation of the line rests on a body that is honestly good at waiting and honestly poor at a long engagement, and the Scan'mor have never been in a hurry to correct anybody.
The cold takes them as it takes all their people. Heat is banked and cold is not resisted, and a great deal of banked heat only buys a longer evening before the second picture dims, the hands go, and the judgement follows.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Whether a Scan'mor can smith at all, or only will not
- Whether the guilds hire them as well as the rows they are hired against
- What a Scan'mor does with a hundred and twenty years of standing still