The Barrians

## Description

The Barrians are a race of 4-foot tall humanoid amphibians. They are cold-blooded, living in temperatures between 10 and 50 C. If the temperature drops below 10 C for extended periods, the Barrians can hibernate for up to 3 months, or, if properly fed in advance, for up to 6 months. Their blue flesh is covered with brown patterns. Their body is pyramid-shaped, with an oval head. Catfish-like barbels, used for underwater navigation, stick out from next to their mouth. The Barrians have 3 fingers on each limb, including a thumb.

## Abilities

Olfactory Based Emotional Communication: While they use speech to convey information, the Barrians' main way of conveying emotion is through pheromones.

Resistance to Poison: Barrians are adapted to easily deal with poison, especially toxins originating from aquatic creatures.

Minor Healing Magic - Some Barrians can cast minor spells, that while not healing their subject immediately, can speed up the recovery process or help with an infection. Similar spells are also often used to enhance the nutrient gruel used in their hatchery pools.

## Weaknesses

Brittle Bones - Having evolved in the water, the Barrians have relatively thin and weak bones compared to other intelligent life forms.

Need for Water - The Barrians need to submerge themselves in water on at least a daily basis in order to remain healthy. They usually do this while sleeping.

## Personality

The Barrians are a calm and patient race. Most villages are willing to trade with outsiders. Outside of dealing with direct threats to their lands and dwellings, they rarely engage in any sort of combat.

Their relatively short lifespans and belief in the reincarnation of the soul has caused them to be rather accepting of death.

They are only saddened if a Barrian dies that already developed consciousness but hadn’t fully matured, or when the spores he leaves behind cannot be collected. In both of these cases, the soul bloodline of the Barrian is considered to have ended, which means true death.

## Lifecycle

Barrians usually live about 30-40 years. After death, the corpse of a Barrian decays extremely rapidly, leaving behind a pile of thousands of spores. These spores are then collected by the Barrian's kin and placed into a nutrient-filled pool. Most of these spores die, but a few of them survive long enough to develop into baby Barrians within about a year. These are then taken out of the pool. When they reach their second year, they develop consciousness. At the age of 6, they are considered to have matured and join the Barrian society as full-fledged members.

## Diet

Barrians are primarily carnivores, their diet consisting mainly of fish. They can however still digest most foods usually eaten by humans to at least some degree. Raw meat is deemed most delectable, while seasoned food is considered to be a necessary evil, eaten almost exclusively when raw food is not available. In some villages, vegetarian groups have formed, however, they are usually frowned upon by the rest of Barrian society, as a diet consisting solely of imported plants is rather expensive and seen as wasteful.

## Combat

When forced into taking up arms, the Barrians retain their customary patience.

Their main method of fighting is to ambush their foes. They then immobilize them with nets and keep throwing javelins and fishing harpoons at them until a conclusion to combat is reached. They will calmly retreat if victory seems unlikely, and attempt another ambush at a later time.

When defending their villages directly, they rely upon the mud of the marshes, upon which they build their dwellings, to slow down their opponents. At the same time, they are constantly launching projectiles from their mounds, repeatedly using their higher amphibious mobility to retreat to different locations, right before their previous positions are taken by the enemy.

## Societies

There are 2 common systems of rule among the Barrians. The more common one is a council of village elders, each of them usually representing up to a hundred of their kind. The system other is that of the duel hereditary chieftains. Whenever one of the pair dies, one of the Barrians grown from his spores is chosen as a successor by the other leader. Examples of triple or even quadruple lines of chieftains have been noted.

Barrians are not members of anything that would conventionally be considered families. They do however form groups that take care of each others' descendants. These groups can be most easily seen during social gatherings and festivals.

As wetlands usually don't make for the best of foundations when trying to construct buildings, the Barrians make large mounds of earth, that are then stable enough to build structures upon. The houses of the barrians have short walls and tall slanted roofs. They are usually built of branches covered with thatch or dried moss. Larger pieces of wood usually have to be imported from beyond their marshes, and as such are mostly used for important buildings such as council hatcheries and gathering halls.

The Barrians have a myriad of different languages, most villages having at least their own dialect. However, most of these tongues are quite similar to each other in terms of grammar and word construction. As such they can learnt by other Barrians in a matter of weeks if not days.

The olfactory emotional communication of the Barrians is rather universal and the meanings of smells do not differ much based on region.

## Homelands

Most Barrians live in wetlands, swamps, and marshes, as well as seaside locations. While rare, small communities can sometimes be found in larger cities that have the infrastructure to support the water reliant lifestyle of the Barrians.

Barrian Village - population of 2 thousand

Minor hunter-gatherer tribes in the Meshial swamp

## Trivia

The names of the Barrians originates from the Spanish word for mud - barro.

This is a Smell entry for the 6 races challenge.