Torkar
The ruling noble strain and the only Torkan with a fixed weight: "If given the right luxury and environmental presets, the Torkar can grow up to eleven feet tall and to over 900 lbs." Black bodied, with "yellow-white discoloration" across the face, and teeth "larger than most, thus many overhang." They go anywhere that is not north, on the principle that "their presence needs to be felt everywhere."
And the line to build a house on: "They are few in number now, as their species is waning in size, but they hold the near extinct mantle proud and all are afraid of them to further push their extinction." Every one of the eleven bloodline matriarchs is a Torkar.
Body
Black bodied with yellow-white discoloration across the face, teeth larger than most and many of them overhanging, up to eleven feet at over nine hundred pounds. They mark a bite-log deepest, which is why they rule: the plate, the anchor sheet and the closing muscle of the jaw are one structure, and the heaviest shell carries the heaviest mouth.
They never stop growing, which is the part outsiders miss. An eleven-foot Torkar is simply one that has been fed for ninety years, and the reason none has ever been recorded larger is that the heart gives out first.
Life
The growth clause is the whole of Torkar politics. A Torkar raised poor stays eight feet and is no Torkar in any way that counts, so the strain spends ruinously on its own young, and a clan that cannot feed a Torkar heir will sell its ground to a clan that can. Famine does not kill Torkan, who can go a season on a meal; famine stops an heir growing, and an heir who finishes at eight feet is a clan demoted for a generation.
The narrowness that comes with the luxury tells on the body: bowed spines, a hip that fails at forty, and a joint disease of overfed heirs that comes on in the twenties and is treated by feeding them more. A Torkar heir who is ill is still fed, because a small Torkar is no Torkar.
Society
Every one of the perhaps eleven true matriarchs in the world is a Torkar, and a clan with one outranks a clan without one regardless of numbers, land or arms. What a matriarch controls underneath the ceremony is the feeding, and since the eating makes the jaw and the jaw makes the rank, the standing of every male in the clan is arithmetic she has been doing since he came out of the nest.
Everybody knows there are almost none of them left and nobody dares be the one to finish it. Torkar plate is not sold; the three known suits of it are royal gifts and the Torkar know exactly where all three are.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- How many Torkar are left, beyond the eleven matriarchs
- Where the three known suits of Torkar plate are held
- What a clan does with an heir that fails to grow
- Why the strain is waning in size at all, and whether it can be reversed