WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK 0041 0041
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Chapter 3: RACES & REALMS
Bev al-Khim with a passion and chase any from their
lands at spear point.
Humans of the Chindi tribe share these further traits:
• Marriage Contracts: Chindi marriage contracts
have fixed time limits, and are seldom renewed
when they end. Both parties separate and seek new
lives. Children are raised by extended families of
both parents without regard to these contracts.
• Patience: Chindi are patient and good listeners.
They have a tendency to stare during a conversation, never seeming to blink.
• Manju Eaters: Chindi herd the tiny meat-bearing
rodents called manju and consider them a delicacy.
• Spice Smokers: Chindi manufacture and partake
of a variety of dried leaves and spices, often smoking them in strange pipes. Teaweed is probably the
most famous aromatic Chindan pipe weed.
• Night Business Preference: “Paired moons” also
put a damper on business, because Chindi only resolve barter after sundown.
• Thung: Chindi also produce thung, a long-burning
material that is essentially oil-treated dung.
• Sheesh: Chindi weave a fine fabric made from spider webs, dyed a variety of brilliant colors and sold
in caravans in every corner of Khitus.
Rumors & Whispers
Superstitious outsiders attribute many ills to the Chindi and their odd ways. Their remoteness and terseness
make others ill at ease, which generates more confusion,
misconception, and rumors.
• One persistent misconception is that the Luksaw
women drove the Dragon Kings away by seeking
a magical means to impregnate each other without men.
• Haru, an ambitious Chindi Shadazim and among
the most famous Chindi personalities, has allegedly charmed many Chindi and even Prajalu
courts; some whisper that evil malice lurks behind her mask of pleasantries. (As ever, examine
whom one marks as an enemy to verify any truths
said about them.)
• The Chindi Deathsense trait seems magical or necromantic to outsiders. All Chindi women can sense
another’s impending natural death by several days;
they use this foreknowledge to make critical arrangements for the soon-to-be dead and gather
loved ones and family. This ability has such a high
degree of accuracy that a person can be declared legally dead at any time after deathsense notes his or
her pending passing, even before the actual death.
• At the end of life, some Chindi choose to have their
bodies fed to prized animals, which are then sold at
auction for family profit and a buyer’s luck.
• Chindi are especially fearful of the desert vermin called maradoch, thinking them harbingers
of deadly consequences, so they enlist children to
hunt them out (see Chapter 7).
• A long-held Chindan legend says that a single proto-human race once dominated the equatorial jungles. Two members of this race parented the human
race; the remainder coalesced together to become
the Dragon King Mangkir.
• According to Chindi Trakeen, Mangkir still exists,
though he is only visible to them now; he and his
power will manifest anew when the Black Tower
falls.
• Many Chindi maintain that one day a Chindi princess will give birth to triplets who will ultimately
divide the world before final destruction.
Cold Skins (Oritahl)
Lizards can be found in every Khitan ecosystem from
the moist fens remaining in the mountain shadows to
the sun-blasted deserts. Large or small, they fill essential niches of survival wherever they can eke out an
existence. The Oritahl, more commonly called “Cold
Skins,” are not a new race, but were previously semiintelligent lizards, little more than animals. Since the
departure of the Dragon Kings, Oritahl have slowly begun making and using simple tools and exhibiting the
barest grasp of basic technologies for shelter, clothing,
and fire. Other Khitans, long inured to them, now notice
and worry about these rudimentary societies sprouting
up on the fringes of “civilized” Khitus. Their relatively
recent changes in intellect and rising territoriality (and
some means to defend it) now cast a new shadow on the
face of the world.
Cold Skins are bipedal lizard folk equal in might and
stature to a full-grown human. Cold Skins function best
when warmed by the sun and slow down when deprived
of its heat. Most have green or brown scales highlighted
by brighter markings around the face, brow-ridges, and
down their spines and tails. Their four-toed feet have an
opposable thumb. They reproduce oviparously, females
laying and hatching clutches of eggs, then rearing the
young with barely any education into society and technology. The Cold Skins have yet to create an effective
child-educating tradition, since they have only recently
developed any technology.
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