EBB: The aspish are known for the ability to molt. Their Ebbing allows them to molt on command, granting them a unique resistance to Rots of all kinds, so long as they’re careful, but molting routinely also has its price—skin cracks and splits, and with enough overuse they gain an ailment similar to leprosy.

EBB: The slake put great merit into the upkeep of their shells. Their Ebbing is a natural part of their culture, an ability that allows them to suffuse oils from their underskin and create new layers of shell, lengthening their horn and thickening their armor. With this, of course, comes the unfortunate reprise of heart failure, taking thousands of slakin warriors before their time as their body simply gives out on them and speaks to their short average lifespan of 35 years, even if they’re capable of living much longer.

EBB: The true value of a satid is not in their heat resistance, but rather, in their heat generation. The satid are capable of venting heat, their scales bristling as they push their naturally high internal temperatures out through their pores, resulting in a cloud of steam that can be anywhere from pleasantly warm to scalding on contact. However, this puts even greater emphasis on their water consumption, leading to kidney failure, internal bleeding, and a horrible affliction known as ‘scaleblisters.’

EBB: The mustine are a proud race, a clever race, and most of all, a hungry race. Though slim and lithe, these fursnakes can unhinge their jaws wider than any other, consuming prey several times their size at the severe risk of lockjaw, a distended stomach, herniation, and a host of other medical problems when used on objects too often or too large.

EBB: How do the ariadi balance on such slender legs? Is it luck? Is it survival? It turns out, it’s goo. Owing to an arachnid ancestry, the ariadi suffuse a sticky, invisible ooze on their carapaced arms and legs, adhering them easily to any surface they like. Obviously, more must be used the more difficult the surface is to balance upon, and their Ebbing allows them to do just that at the risk of calcifying their joints and rendering them paralyzed, or worse yet, simply clotting their arteries and capillaries with the stuff and causing an embolism.

EBB: It has long been wondered if fish can talk. The sahagi know that they can scream. Though their ear canals are simple in outward appearance, these sharky goons can attune their hearing, blocking out certain noise and amplifying others. However, the further away it gets, and the harder you listen, the more likely you are to blow out an eardrum and go permanently deaf, or worse yet, break your brain open like glass resonating to C sharp.

EBB: The secret weapon of the llamen is not their tenacity in the face of prejudice. It’s quite a bit more literal than that. Quills actually grow all over the body of a llaman, but most of them remain underneath their scales. Much like the satids, they can ‘vent’ these quills outward, protruding inch after inch of razor-sharp spines. However, these quills can cause serious nerve damage if they’re pushed too far, and the cases of llamen who have overstressed their quills by pushing them out too far or too fast number in the thousands, resulting in severe bleeding and commonly death by exsanguination.

EBB: Never challenge a hodnan to a jumping context, because they will win. Not only are they capable of the most incredible deep breathing exercises you’ll ever listen to, but venting air forcefully through their gills from their large and extremely advanced lungs allows them to move with incredible speed and efficacy. However, those advanced lungs are also their downfall, as lacerations from exertion are almost as common as seeing a hodnan in a surgery waiting room. It also puts an unfortunate stress on their voices, causing older hodnan to sound like a bunch of chainsmokers who swallow the cigarette butts after they’re done.

EBB: Don’t. Stab. Onin. The only thing higher than their pressure to be beautiful is their blood pressure, which they can loose from any hole on their body, whether it be their eyes, their wounds, their mouth, nose, or…
The point is, they can vent their blood like a power washer, and even if they don’t cut your head clean off they’ll at least give you a seriously ugly scar. The price of this Ebbing should be obvious, and anemia is extremely common among onin as a result. It also adds a great deal to death scenes on the theatre stage. They’re really quite dedicated.

EBB: Possessed originally of a four-chambered stomach much like a lamb or a cow, these chambers have long since grown vestigial, and are now instead used as air bladders, granting them great agility and buoyancy in the water, and even as a reservoir of oxygen if they elect to undergo a small, common outpatient surgery. Moreover, they can forcibly push air into these bladders, expanding their stomachs with a pneumatic force that can break concrete and bow metal. However, embolisms are common, especially after the surgery, if these air bladders are used in such a way too judiciously, leading to swift and incredibly sudden death. Moreover, the pressure it places on the gastrointestinal tract is incredible, leading to a network of organ failures if one isn’t careful, and often even if one is.

EBB:And perhaps stone is not so inaccurate an association—the adamen’s Ebbing allows them to produce Rust from the fine mineral that make up their horns, shell, and nails, and Rust thus naturally grows from those points, turning many adamen warriors into jagged creatures with long, brilliant coppery horns and a staggering gait from the spears of Rust that have long since sunk their way through their shell and into their sides. Brain damage, paralysis, tetanus—any variety of awful afflictions can result from this Ebbing, much to the benefit of their alfin masters.

EBB: As birds regurgitate to feed their young, so too can the pinians produce Bile with relative ease, and require significantly less Rot overall to perform intense and fantastical magics. This does, however, lead to all variety of stomach issues, as well as esophageal erosion and enamel loss. Pinians are known to avoid such measures, and instead find the largest bulbor and approach them with a prescription for ipecac.

EBB: Elves can produce Wax on command, much as the adamen produce Rust. However, as the nature of Wax stems from mollification, so too do the elves run the risk of rotting their bodies beyond repair. As a result, deep care is put into the usage of Wax, and it is considered customary to avoid using it until later in life when one assumes the title of elf-crone.

EBB: The halvish are naturally quite adept at feats of dexterity, a nature owed in part to their Ebbing. Their collapsible skeletons can be granted yet further degrees of articulation, stretching and twisting them in all manner of horrid ways, whether it’s to splay one’s ribs out wide to glide and break one’s fall, turning a slender finger into a natural lockpick, or even temporarily changing their face, the halvish run the risk of fractures and internal bleeding in exchange for incredible adaptability.

EBB: Though inherently weak in the face of all forms of Rot, the entish do have one weapon against it: they can transfer Rot to the plantlife around them, even going so far as to strip it from themselves with relative ease. However, in doing so, they run the risk of Rotting their cells, bleaching them and leaving them unable to produce the nutrients they so desperately need from the Sun.

DELEGATED SPECIAL PREFECTURE OF FRASNOST: Frasnost, or simply the Heights, is the result of decades of research. Originally a piece of the Hyean mainland, Frasnost was painstakingly segmented from its parent island, lashed in Chains and elevated high into the sky, creating the world’s first artificial biome. Rot was cleared away from the forest floor and research enclosures were built where once only mushroom forests thrived, leaving only a small country, devoid of the Rot that so characterizes the rest of the world. Naturally, the pinian reached out to the entish, searching far and wide for their last hold-outs and hamlets, and invited them to stay in Frasnost, an offer which many entish gratefully accepted. Now the home of a research institute dedicated to ending mankind’s dependency on the Rot, the thirty square mile plot of land is seen as Hye’s crowning achievement, where all manner of scientific vocations may ply their craft in the pursuit of Hye’s idealistic views.

ARCHDUCHY OF RECUMEY: And lo, the great bog of Sharksborough! Recumey, known for its swampy and sloppy terrain, has made great use of Brine dams and Wax to ward off the slimy deep, allowing its heavily vertical cities like Biresang and Derbloudd to sit atop gorgeous, freshwater canals even surrounded by the murky bayou below. Known for their great love of blood sport and even greater love for the chivalric philosophies of balderism, the sahagi natives of Recumey have fully adopted a culture both spartan and athenian—where a bar brawl can have the words of philosophers slung in joyous fullisade and knife fights can occur with a look of absolute jubilation and both participants looking their church best. This does, however, lead to an unfortunate degree of reductive sexism, to the point that ‘rowdy’ women will often be quietly shuffled off to Frecore to pursue something other than a sahagi way of life, usually meaning an education, sometimes meaning an education in the school of hard knocks. Naturally, the clever sahagi make wonderful mercenaries, and are generally bankrolled by their bulbor oligarchs, with little worry about things like ‘exports’ so long as they continue to protect Frecoran interests.
ARCHDUCHY OF SLASTEY: Ah, the home of the slake. Crabsbucket has forever been home to all manner of curious things, from mile-deep ravines to breathtaking waterfalls, but the slake have long occupied their jungle home with a sense of brutality, their walls festooned with chitin-husks of all shapes and sizes as ‘survival of the fittest’ is the name of the game. Though the slake would never fight their own, they readily invite the dangers of the jungle, seeking to best it in combat as a test of strength. This has bred a hitherto unmatched method of private domestication, and many breeds of dog, cat, bird, and horse alike find their lineage-thread spun in Thabers or Polderg. Heading up the other half of the bulbor’s impregnable defenses protecting their market control, the only stumbling block is that the slake themselves despise the bulbor but find their money hard to deny, as they import not only animals for breeding purposes, but an unseemly amount of opiates for the sake of tending to the wounded. This is, as one can expect, a coffer-exhausting adventure that keeps Frecore and Slastey in good graces with one another.

UNION OF KAMDI: The Grave of Peace. Where the Plague Wars began so long ago, Kamdi has remained, having given itself over to Camir in exchange for its benevolence and protection. Possessed of a rich natural bounty, the llaman lands are far smaller than they once were, but the techniques used to grow rarities like ivorywood and silk are secrets kept well by the denizens of Kulbi, placing great value on Kamdi trade—a value that Camir could see.
FREE LANDS OF RASKITT: Camir has allowed the mustine to do as they like, granting them the wild expanse of Raskitt to build and trade and invest entirely too much in perfumes. The mustine profession of whale-hunting is seen as a natural duty, as harvesting their ambrosia is vital to their manufacture of all manner of perfumes, but overfishing has led to quotas and quotas have led to a reliance on the entish of Frasnost—with pinians as middlemen—to produce floral concentrates, whose scarcity has shot the price up to apocalyptic sums. The Bramblings, as they’re called, mostly by the native Yorksbay and Larksboroans, refers to the sea of nettles in the undergrowth of Raskitt, and use of the nickname is seen almost the same as citizenship. Raskitt exports all manner of perfumes and extracts, as well as a great deal of the freshwater from their soaking wet near-pillar summers.

FIEFDOM OF THANSLEIGH: The dogmatic and Wax-laden elves of Thansleigh have long since marched to the beat of their own drum, but came under ariadi rule against their will, alienated not only from their original culture but even their nomenclature almost two hundred years ago. Though some still remember the ways, they are spoken only of in the whispers of elf-crones, secreted away in the comparatively well-lit dark corners of this ariadi fief. The ghost-worship of the Selist faith stems from the elves’ deep connection with the Wax, and this fact in tandem with Thansleigh’s natural mountains have given this country the affectionate moniker of the Spine. Exporting a great deal of Wax to the Papacy and importing whatever their ariadi masters will allow them, Thansleigh elves are quite well-read, but terribly, terribly poor.