Torgaen

Body

Four to five feet, dull olive-brown and warty, with the bony ridged head of the people and the swelling around the eyes. What sets them apart is the glands: two great swellings behind the eyes that make them foul to eat and difficult to poison, which is a road-trader's whole insurance. The milk of those glands is a purgative in small doses and an arrow-poison in large, and the baronies tax it.

They carry the rest of the people's body unchanged: the dry hide that lets them cross open country and kills them in a dry summer, the throat sac that breathes and speaks, the belly that swallows air and ends an argument, and the tongue with its glue. A Torgaen at a table is a Torgaen at work, and a dry board in front of one is an accusation before a card is dealt.

Life

A clutch laid in slow warm water on a market river comes up Torgaen. The water makes the kin, and the market rivers are the easiest water in the swamp to lay in, which is why there are more of these than of any other kin and why no barony has ever had to plan for them. They live about seventy years, as all Torgai do.

Society

They gamble like the rest of their people and travel further to do it, and a Torgaen's First Bargain is usually struck on a road rather than at home. The Half-Tongue is one of these. So is Gorb, who has sat in every tavern between three rivers and has never once been caught, which every barony finds more useful than a spy.