Salamander

Orange and red-skinned, hardy past the point of stubbornness, and permanently at war with one another, the Salamanders hold the desert — and hold it badly. The Emberwaste offers almost nothing: a few springs, a few shaded canyons, a few workable glass-fields. Everything a Salamander has, another Salamander wants, and the resulting cycle of raids and reprisals has run without interruption for as long as anyone can document.

The Kingdom quietly encourages this. A united Salamander host would be the most dangerous army in the world, and a divided one is a reliable source of mercenaries.

Appearance

Deep orange through arterial red, with skin that runs hot to the touch and scars pale. Their wings are short, heavily veined, and usually singed at the edges — Salamander flight and Salamander magic are difficult to practice in the same moment, and most choose the magic.

Attuned Magic

Fire. A nascent Salamander makes and moves small flames. A powerful one raises firestorms, shifts the heat across a whole canyon, and forges weapons out of living fire that cool into something no other smith can reproduce. It is the most immediately lethal of the attuned magics and the least subtle, a fact Salamanders are tired of hearing.

Society

War-bands under war-chiefs, with the Kiln — a fortress of fused glass — passing to whoever last took it. The Eternal City recognizes whoever is sitting in it, sends them a title, and otherwise does not involve itself. Barely three percent of Salamanders live in any settlement, because a hold that grows large enough to matter attracts an army.

Relations

The Emberwaste was not made for Salamanders. It was made for the sand-swimmers, an armored burrowing people shaped to drink from the sand itself, who were conquered long ago and are still there in far greater numbers than the Salamanders realize, having simply gone deeper. Faerie histories record the conquest as a heroic founding. The sand-swimmers record it in a song, in a language no Faerie has bothered to learn.