Linites

## Distribution

They are just going to be Jews, I am making the equivalence to Jews for this world because I get that privilege.

## History

##### Exodus

The uh, Linites were enslaved by whoever the in world equivalent to the Egyptians were. they were taken south to the south western continent and a few decades after the world was created spent one to two hundred years as slaves of the Irgans playing the role of the Egyptians
They forgot about and lost touch with their racial god. That in around year 300 after invention Linite Moses inspired a slave rebellion haiti style but they got militarily defeated so they led a 20 year trek north to what was supposedly the original spot that the Linites were plopped down on the world before being captured and enslaved. It is said Linite Moses had to cross the water between peninsulas between Alyanka and Karakyalvia. But Linites can’t swim long distances and survive, not to mention the ancient Linites had no navy. It is written down that the god of the Linites made a stone bridge across continents to help the god’s race.

### Religious Beliefs

You can’t really develop sects in an ethno-religion until the information age (when we might get Linite Lenin), although due to constant movement and exchange of information, a religious renaissance might be in the near future. While they didn’t wear anything in the classical age of chariot racing, olive trees, and candle miracles. As they have developed body shapes for cloth wearing society, so too have they dawned heavy clothes. If you ever catch a Linite washing, sometimes you can see ripples in the bodies akin to that of a tunic, even though they know that the clothes of their neighbors aren’t parts of their body, their bodies can’t catch up.

## As a Jew who is both very into golems and geology I thought “ since golems are soulless abominations my race should be golems with god given souls”.

### **description**

* These guys are actually golems, not crafted by any human, they were just made by their god to emerge out of the earth one day. Then again the defining feature of a golem isn’t being made of clay, it’s being man made not god-made, you can have flesh golems and many other materials if I recall. But I'm going to keep the connection going even if the main defining factor is absent.
* Linites weren’t originally human shaped at all, they weren’t malleable beings but they did have a vague body base and stumps for four limbs. They could breathe out of pores in their skin that connect to a hollow vein system that spreads around the entire body.  In the middle of the body is the only organ.  All pores connect to it eventually, like roads to Rome. It’s the soul surrounded by a crystal shell which they use to breathe.

### **Needs**

* Having breath means that Linites won’t survive in space, or even just at extreme altitudes because of suffocation.
* Linites reproduce by pushing their hand into themselves and grabbing a chunk of their chrystal and placing it in propper red clay (most other sediments won’t get a reaction, but when it’s material only adjacent to clay things get weird).
* While Lininites do kind of age from the moment they are born of the earth, it is really just erosion and their body losing quality from traveling the earth, not really a biological clock. But Linites have their actual biological clock start ticking the moment they reproduce.  Linites, after having children start aging in like, 30 new ways.  Even with cards played right this will give a linite 50 earth years at most.
* You’d think with the passing on of a soul for a new soul the Linite population would be in perpetual decline.  Alas each Linite can have two offspring,  and since this is asexual reproduction, if every household had two kids the global Linite population would double in hours.
* Linites don’t eat.
* Linites are born with  80% of the body mass they will have for the rest of their life (unless they lose a limb or something).  Their bodies naturally redistribute clay through exercise or lack of it.
* Linites do need to drink, but because they have no mouths, they do so by absorbing water through pores.  Like Jews they have a god given food restrictions, but it applies to water quality only,   like salinity, sewage, and poisonous materials.  Linites are extremely sensitive to water quality because they are basically clay amphibians. Linites will gain whatever extra body mass in their life through silt in rivers.
* Ostensibly if a Linite was to stay still in a cave with running water and never reproduce, a first generation Linite could be alive in the present day somewhere obscure.  But anti-natalism  was warned against by their god, as medium tier sin. This leads us into

### **Are Linites shape shifters?**

If you travel the map you’ll notice that Linites will have very different height, shape, and features depending on where you are. No, Linites can’t move their clay around to sculpt themselves how they like, it’s more of a mendelian type thing. Linites don’t breed with the other races, they can’t, yet most seem to have taken the appearance of a weird halfway point between an original Linite and a clay shaped local.

This is because as Linites adapt to their external cultures, the mental notes result in barely noticeable differences in their ground children, but after a dozen generations things become apparent.

As mentioned the Linites weren’t particularly that anthropomorphic originally, and the two legs they had were more like hardened clay trunks swaying across the ground.

In fact Linites didn’t even have secondary sexual characteristics before hanging around other races, the extent of their gender roles were who said what prayers at night, men taught children to read, and women couldn’t do chariot warfare.

But now, along with non-Linite limbs and necks, Linites will develop breasts clumps and some pretty impressive stone beards (even though both don’t serve the practical purposes they do in the races they learned about them from, the spiritual-societal significance of these body parts has transferred their meaning). Not to mention noses, ear bumps and opposable digits. Although genitals and nipples have not once developed because Linites don’t see these things in delis or libraries, let alone comprehend their purposes. Maybe if you placed a Linite in a nudist society for a 10 generations, but that would be gay.

Like Jews they are constantly being forced out of nations, and as this adaptation is gradual you can tell a third or fourth generation Alyankan Linite from a more native Linite in one of the eastern continents.