ihr race description
Feb. 2nd, 2015 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonflower77Origin legend:
There was another version of the legend that involved donning magical masks and impersonating deities to mate with the sun, but its esssence was the same.
The race is affected by a set of four distinctive weaknesses known, after their origin legend, as "the curse".
1. Susceptibility to sunlight (the UV component):
All the members of his race were sensitive to natural UV radiation, and their ability to accumulate melanin in their whole body was a true blessing in that it was the one reason why sunlight was painful and debilitating to them, as opposed to fatal. For "black" ihr, the sun could only inflict fast-healing and, by the their standards, superficial burns that didn't quite reach fourth degree. Wearing thick woolen or leather clothes and a wide-brimmed sunhat or hood was enough to block it out. For "white" ihr, the sun was more dangerous and caused serious burns even at dusk and through closed heavy drapes or several layers of thick wool, though to be killed by it one had to be chained or stranded outside in direct sunlight for one to several hours, which was plausible only in the event of premeditated murder or suicide. There was a handful of darker-skinned subjects who suffered seriously too, due to a peculiarity of their genetic pattern, although, of course, this was far less common.
This was why light-skinned human candidates for being made into ihr were avoided as a general rule, unless they were to live in suitable conditions (for example, in catacombs underground) where they wouldn't be in constant pain or wouldn't need to take precautions at each step to prevent it, and wouldn’t risk being killed by exposure to sunlight while asleep.
While not life-threatening to those of them who had black tissues, exposure to direct sunlight caused excruciating burns – anywhere from first- to third-degree, depending on the time spent out in the sun, and on whether or not one's skin was covered by (sheer) fabric. On bare skin, third-degree burns could occur in less than an hour, sometimes even in minutes, depending on the time/solar angle, distance from the equator and the presence of reflective surfaces such as snow, ice, water or concrete. Even slight, short-term contact with sunlight caused tenderness that started with the outer side of the hands and the area where a UV-sensitive human would have a butterfly rash (lower forehead, nose, cheekbones), then spread to the rest of one's face and any remaining unprotected skin - followed by tingling, a burning sensation, searing pain and, finally, pressure or numbness if one was severely affected. In some situations, this was used as a punishment or a handy way of inflicting serious pain.
Their eyes were much more light-sensitive than those of humans, which makes sense for a nocturnal creature that has a natural instinct to sleep throughout the day and is harmed by sunlight to this extent. Even in humans, the ocular tissues are just as sensitive to UV radiation as the skin, or even more so, and the same is true for them – when exposed to sunlight, the eyes were hurt first, before enough time passed for any epithelial wounds to appear.
If pushed out into the sun, their instinctive response was to squeeze their eyes shut as tight as they could, giving a loud open-mouthed hiss from pain both in the exposed skin and in the eyes as their face uncontrollably gained more feline features. Those who lacked self-control go into frenzy. Those moments were enough for them to develop severe photokeratitis - within seconds, not hours, and outside the usual conditions, such as proximity to surfaces whose reflectivity is particularly great (the sea, ice sheets, snowed-over fields, solid whitewashed streets and walls), exposure to strong sunlight for an extensive period of time, or looking at an artificial source of UV radiation like a welder's arc or high-intensity flash without any goggles or other protective gear. At first, one was blinded; over the following ten minutes to two hours, one's vision was restored, but residual symptoms could persist for one or two nights, including sharp pain from any brighter light, itching, a sensation that there is sand, dust or some other foreign body in the eye, extensive watering (tears), general discomfort, and floating reddish, greenish or multi-colored circles.
If one of them was forced to stay up during the day and refused to go outside without a bulky blanket, hood or jacket to use as a makeshift shield for the head and face, it was because of this. It was not so much the fear of instant burns to the face and hands, which were very painful, but healed fast and didn‘t pose even a fraction of the danger they would have presented to a human, as they could easily survive full-thickness burns to well over 70% and up to 100% of the total body surface area that would have been guaranteed to kill a regular human; these didn't produce any of the common complications, such as septicaemia, wound infection, pneumonia, respiratory failure or renal failure, and there was no risk of permanent disfigurement. The short-term loss of eyesight was just as painful, but its immediate consequences could be more serious. Any situation that had forced one of them to stay awake while the sun was up and was about to drive them out of their shelter had to be grave enough as it was, and the last thing one wanted was to be crippled and completely powerless as well as in agonizing pain.
Depending on its intensity, artificial UV radiation also harmed them. For instance, a welder‘s arc would instantly blind them, just as the sun would have, and caused skin burns if one was standing too close. However, most human-made sources of UV light in their world, as in ours, tended to be weak and weren't much of a problem; certain lamps caused pain and watering in the eyes, but that was about it.
2. A strictly nocturnal sleep-waking cycle that precludes full functioning during the daylit hours:
At dawn, their metabolism started to shut down; the heartbeat slowed, the body temperature dropped and levelled out with that of the environment and one sank into hibernation that lasts until sunset. In this state, they were paralysed, oblivious and unresponsive to their surroundings, and, as a result, vulnerable to various threats. Their limbs were cold to the touch, there was no palpable pulse, the pupils were dilated and didn't respond to light. In some, the eyes rolled back into the head, leaving only the white visible when the eyelid was lifted. The muscle tone varied; some became completely limp and manipulable, like waxen dolls, while in others every single muscle would lock up. In the latter case, their bodies became so rigid it was impossible to change their position, bend their limbs, or, for example, unclench their finger or toe talons without breaking the bones and ripping the tendons apart first. Unless specialized testing was performed, this condition was indistinguishable from clinical death.
It was not impossible to fight the urge to go to sleep and force the body to continue to function even after the sun rose, but one would be extremely weak, exhausted, sluggish and drowsy, and, in effect, semi-conscious. Full loss of consciousness could occur any moment. Typically, one exhibited many symptoms of moderate or serious muscle weakness (paresis): the fingers could not grasp objects strongly enough and they were likely to slip out and drop to the ground; the eyelids drooped, forcing the eyes to close; the tongue seemed to be made of cotton wool and wouldn't turn fast or well enough, making the words came out slurred as if one were drunk; there was a pronounced feeling of weakness in the thighs and knees and the legs appeared to be about to give way and buckle under one‘s weight, as if made of stretchable rubber or cotton wool. Reduced sensation or numbness (paresthesia) was also common, as was a heavy sensation in the extremities, described as having invisible weights tied to them or lead coursing through the veins instead of blood. Physical and psychological responses were considerably delayed, and to an unsuspecting observer, the person seemed to be drugged or sick with a high fever. On the night that followed, one was bound to be fatigued, much more so than a human who hasn't slept for one or even a few nights, and was un able to use one’s abilities to their full capacity because one’s body hadn't received the rest it required.
On the whole, it was easier to stay up after sunrise than to wake during the day once one had gone to sleep. Often, one was able to regain consciousness, and, in some cases, open one’s eyes, provided there were no bright lights around, but not to speak or stir, and faded out again in a few seconds.
The deep daytime slumber was an energy conservation mechanism that enabled the ihr to sustain their inefficient, high-maintenance metabolism, and it was been theorized that diffuse sunlight might serve as the trigger that signals the body to begin shutting down its vital functions.
Just before daybreak, when the sky began to brighten, every ihr experienced an odd sensation most of them had trouble putting into words. Some chose to describe it as a strong, pervasive sense of an impending disaster, or of something being seriously amiss, an anxiety that was almost palpable in the air; one's skin crept and one's hair stood on end, though one couldn't tell for certain why. Others likened it to a sound, smell or subtle tactile sensation that was below the threshold level and therefore not registered by the senses, but still produced a response in another part of the body or in one's being as a whole. The most commonly used example was hearing a dog's ultrasound whistle while wearing tight ear-plugs. This was the body's signal to seek shelter before one collapsed or the sun came out and burned one's skin and eyes, a biological alarm clock of sorts. For the younger, the injured or the weakened, it could mount to a panic at the prospect of going into a coma while still out in the open and becoming vulnerable to every threat imaginable, and that, in turn, triggered frenzy. The sensation was euphemistically referred to as "the call of the earth" or "being called (back) to/into the earth" (used not only by those who slept in the ground in the literal sense, but also virtually by everybody who didn't), or the need to "go home" (also used by those who didn't have one, except for a self-dug grave in the bare ground).
Rest as we understand it - that is, lack of physical activity, relaxation, remaining in a reclining, lying or sitting posture - did little (if anything) to restore their strength and relative sanity. For this, they required the deep, coma-like daysleep. They were biologically incapable of human-like shallow sleep, but even if they had been, that wouldn't have been sufficient for bringing their nervous system function back to normal.
3. An elevated body temperature that produces an extreme sensitivity to cold:
Their body temperature was elevated to about 55-65 C, which produced a continuous sensation of being cold that was their – perhaps one shouldn’t use the word "curse" here because it'd be too strong, and there were far worse aspects to their condition (such as a much higher incidence of neurological and psychiatric disorders, psychological fracturing, a plunge in self-awareness and severe disruption in one's perception of oneself and one's surroundings) – but let's say that, despite seeming negligible on first sight, this aspect of their altered physiology was permanent and so all-pervasive that, for many, it drove home the point about [coming back wrong] or [no longer being human]. there was no escape from the cold - it was there every night, every hour, every minute, creeping into their bodies whenever a cooler wind began to blow, or they stood still a bit longer, or, say, their garments happened not to be thick enough. Most eventually grew used to the sensation, learned to live with it each moment of their waking lives and didn't expect to be warm most of the time.
As a result, all of them experienced a deep and perpetual physical discomfort, occasionally described as being about to catch fire on the outside and being about to turn into an icicle or having an icy wind blowing on the inside. There was a sort of feverish state, even a feeling of malaise, not unlike having a high fever of 38-39 C and being unable to tell whether one was hot, or cold, or both. If one was outdoors on an overcast day, the surface of one's skin burned, but inside, one felt a deepening chill. It was common to experience alternating heat waves and chills, accompanied by shivering and "ants crawling up one's back", comparable to the symptoms of influenza and other viral infections, or those developed by some women at the onset of menopause. It was very hard to combine the layers of woolen clothes, indoor heating or the intervals at which one took hot foods and drink so as to find an optimum balance that would feel just right and result in genuine physical comfort.
The rare moments when this did occur were sheer bliss. When it came, the warmth they had been craving so much caused their bodies to "zone out" on them, making them drowsy and sluggish, so they dozedand/or went to sleep (which could be as deep as the semi-comatose state they lapsed into during the day). Before they did so, they could spontaneously switch to pleasure-frenzy, called [naqtaara], and act a little crazy - laugh, purr, go through a peculiar cat-like set of movements where they opened their mouth wide, demonstrating the cat-like canines, threw back their heads and watched each other through the corners of their half-closed eyes. To an observer, they looked drugged. Warmth was intoxicating to them in the most literal sense of these words.
Note: the so-called ihr "purr" is a a series of short, intermittent rumbling sounds, rather like their growl or roar. Both resembled the sounds made by lions or leopards to show affection, but not the soft continuous sound made by domestic cats, servals or caracals. It's so loud it can hurt the ears, and quite startling or frightening, especially when it isn't expected.
The extreme susceptibility to cold went beyond a mere subjective sensation. The cooler it was, the greater the gap between their internal temperature and that of the immediate surroundings, and the more heat was radiated into the environment and lost. If the thermometer showed less than -5 C, they began to grow lethargic and their reactions slowed down; at less than -10C, their bodies' attempts to compensate for the wasted energy became futile and they could no longer retain the temperature necessary to function, so a near-complete metabolic shutdown was initiated and they were forced into long-term hibernation. In their own world, this was why they never migrated into temperate and subarctic latitudes, where the climate would have caused them to remain asleep for half a year or so and to suffer from the cold throughout most of the other half. Even in subtropical climates, they experienced constant chills and were notorious for their unseasonable warm clothing, their fondness for hot drinks and their wide use of space heaters, primus stoves and other devices that allowed to maintain a higher background temperature. A typical sight was one of them swaddled in a woolen winter shawl or cape, "nursing" a thermos mug or "hugging" an indoor heater.
4. Pyrophobia:
The race suffered from an irrational fear of fire. Flames were less of a hazard to them than to humans, because their burns healed much faster and easier and with none of the usual complications, and only turned into a serious danger if they were engulfing and one was trapped in a burning building or forest fire with no chance of escape, but the sight of them caused a deep instinctive dread.
Unlike most other phobias, it didn't lessen after continued exposure to the object and repeated reasoning or self-assurance, but could be controlled or tolerated through an ongoing effort of will. Most small, stationary sources of fire tended not to be an issue. Upon seeing a candle, an oil lamp or a torch on a wall sconce one was likely to be startled and to feel a momentary wave of fear accompanied by trembling and a sudden weakness, but these would soon level out. However, if the same torch, or even something as tiny as a lighter were unexpectedly thrust in one's face, one would have a full-scale panic attack. A campfire or the opening of a wood stove inside a home felt like a considerable threat, and those who hadn't undergone fire-conditioning training found it difficult to force themselves to venture closer, even when they were shaking with cold. A larger conflagration, such as a house fire, triggered an intense and overwhelming fear even from a distance. In those who were younger or recently weakened by an injury or intoxication, the fear was much stringer and harder to manage, and got out of hand more frequently, resulting in devastating panic attacks; their instictive response upon seeing fire in any form was to shudder, shrink back and flee.
If one watched a feral pack sitting or standing around their trashcan bonfire, one could observe a curious ambivalent response: a wary, cautious, almost timid edging closer to the flames, step by step, stretching out their palms to warm them, then starting back as soon as there was a louder crackling sound or a larger tongue of flame leapt up.
Large, tall bonfires were widely used at facilities for daara-conditioned warriors, in some situations, to foster their self-control through teaching them to overcome the fear, and in others, to work them into a frenzy on demand. During rites of passage, walking through or jumping over one served as an additional test of courage; in bonding rituals for the members of the same unit, the frenzy caused by the close proximity of fire, combined with self-mutilation (whipping, slashing or stabbing oneself with a dagger), wild dancing and chanting, produced a special ecstatic state where all of them appeared to become a single organism. Sticking one's hand into a fire, having opened the nose clip and taking breaths to feel the stench of charred flesh and staring at the flames with a stony countenance was a common method of demonstrating one's endurance and strong will.
In times when natural fire was the only source of warmth and lighting, they had to choose between two equally distressing options - that is, cold or fear. When electricity was invented, their nightly lives became somewhat easier, but warfare became worse due to the extensive use of explosives and incendiary weapons, which were effectively employed not only in their direct capacity, but also to induce terror and demoralize the enemy.
Melanism as protection against the effects of „the curse“:
The ihr were characterized by a type of pervasive melanism - or melanosis, depending on whether or not one chose to see it as a condition or disorder – where melanocytes proliferated not just in the skin but also in the osseous, muscle and connective tissues and internal organs, making their flesh and bones look jet or coal black. This is what gave most ihr their distinctive appearance, which many found intimidating and bizarre: black eye sclera, black mouth, tongue and gums, and palms that are just as black as the outer side of the hand. Flesh wounds were black, too, and oozed dark deoxygenated blood, which again looked black, especially in poor lighting or at a distance.
The skin din’t have to be quite as melanin-rich as the internal tissues. Not all ihr were hypermelanistic; their complexion varied from pure black to mid-brown, perhaps even lighter, and, in the cases where the skin is lighter than the flesh, due to being translucent, it seemed to have a darker tint underneath. The hair, finger- and toe-nails and cornea never gained any melanin.
According to popular legend, all ihr were "black", "white" ihr were just a figment of people's imagination and didn't exist, though once in a while the friend of a friend of a friend of a colleague's grandfather claimed to have seen one. In actual fact, the quantity of melanin was tied to one's genetic heritage. The vast majority of ihr started out with a phenotype we would identify as African, Afroasiatic or Southern Caucasian (Mediterranean), which were linked to the highest concentrations of melanin. For fair-skinned people who didn't tan that easily, there could be a considerable variation in outcome depending on their genetic pattern, with different degrees of melanin saturation, and the most diverse shades of brown, being possible. In a typical Northern Caucasian (Nordic) person, the concentration of melanin was low, close to negligible, and an albino or person with red hair, freckles and gray or green eyes had none whatsoever.
Pallor, if present, disappeared during the transition from human to ihr and was replaced by a healthy, flushed, rosy-cheeked complexion often described as "blossoming" (though their flush tended to be darker than human due to the darker hue of their blood, and was more ruddy, rust-red or brownish-red than pink). There may have been white ihr, but there weren't any pale ones.
Over the years, the more or less constant sunburn, ranging from mild to severe, eventually made the melanin production in the epidermis go haywire; who knows what the melanocytes even looked like at that point. In the same conditions, a regular human would have long died of melanoma, but their physiological defenses prevented any cells from becoming malignant in the straightforward sense of those words - as in, capable of causing metastases and destroying the entire body - so the skin simply changed its properties.
In those whose skin was brown, the uniform pigmentation was lost and a darker jet-black pattern started to show against the brown background, similar to the ghost markings on melanistic felines - the faint spots or rosettes on a black panther or the faint tabby stripes in a black domestic cat.
In those whose skin was already pitch-black, the color did not change, but the same shiny, velvety textural pattern appeared and became more prominent with time.
The lips darkened to a somewhat shiny black that extended for some 1-2 cm outside their boundary and then faded gradually into brown, and gained the same thick, velvety texture as the other skin stains. In some cases, the stain covered the entire nasolabial fold and formed a triangular streak extending to the middle of the chin. For two or three peoples related to Ibgxe's, this was a rather attractive physical feature, because their women tattooed their gums and the inside of their lips with indigo dye - or, more rarely, with a mixture of soot and butter - which caused the outer lips to blacken and could produce a more diffuse black tinge to the wider area around the mouth delineated by the nasolabial fold and chin.
The same happened to the area around the eyes. The eye stain helped protect the tender skin around the eye against sunburn and prevented light from being reflected back into the eye, which was one of the factors that contributed to, or aggravated photokeratitis, one of their persistent problems, performing the same function as generous black or coal-gray makeup applied to the lower eyelid.
The look this created could be at once enigmatic, uncanny and frightening. Much like Western-type makeup, the black stains produced an impression of impenetrability and distance, and the same formal air. If they just barely outlined the contour of the eyes, one could come to resemble a figure from a mural in an Egyptian tomb, and if they were wider and began to fade some 1-1,5 cm short of the eyebrows or filled the entire eye cover fold, one could seem to be wearing a venetian half-mask, and maybe look a little like a ghost. The image could be especially striking if one developed "tear marks" that ran from the inner corner of the eye downward, along the wings of the nose, and from the outer corner of the eye sideways, toward the temple, slanting down beyond the edge of the cheekbone, and a fleur-de-lys mark on one’s forehead in the form of the letter "M" or the inverted letter "M" ("W"), like those seen in cheetahs or domestic cats with a classic or mackerel tabby coat. These then merged with the eye stain and, later, with the lip stain, creating an astounding and complex facial pattern.
The skin staining could be seen as yet another sign that one's metabolism was completely disoriented and was trying hard to protect itself from what it took to be casual torture by fire, so even the precious few physiological mechanisms that had still functioned in a sane manner up to this point no longer were.
If one compared a daara-conditioned warrior and an elder, both of whom could no longer shift out of the frenzy mode, the face of the former would seem a lot more "normal". It'd be a homogenous dark brown or black, the lips would be the same shade and wouldn't stand out; because of the way they blended into the background, he or she would look "lipless" from a distance. The elder, on the other hand, would have thoroughly black lips and eyelids and a sort of black watercolor wash all over their face.
There was an inverse correlation between the depth of the muscle paralysis during the day and the quantity of melanin in the ihr's tissues; higher concentrations (a darker skin tone) were linked to better muscle functioning, shallower sleep and a limited capacity to respond to certain outside stimuli, which were part of the same general daylight resistance package, as it were. It was possible that the genes governing the two were interlinked, or a single gene determined both. In terms of survival for the race as a whole, though, it made less sense - one would think that it's the "white" ihr, who could be burned to death if left comatose outdoors for the whole day, that should have been able to awaken from the pain and at least crawl away into the shade or dig themselves into the ground, while a "black" one could well sleep on, as all they risked was having their skin burned off, which was painful, but not fatal and healed back quickly.