#hssken

[cattun]

While Hssken are generally not great at regulating their core temperature, cooling down is often more difficult for them than warming up, largely thanks to their particular lack of sweat glands. Swimming is one of the few activities coming with built-in cooldown support.

Apart from the recreational aspect, regular dives in the cave river are required for maintenance on waterworks and the fishery. Diving comes easy thanks to their different gas exchange chemistry, but it can also be significantly more dangerous.

[cattun]

Variations in the quartz in their diet will cause colour banding in quartz-reinforced Hssken body parts, such as horns, tail, claws and teeth. Since these parts grow and regenerate at different speeds, the patterns tend to be very much non-uniform.

The scales they develop depend on genetics. Hands, feet and ears are to be expected, but mosaic scaling across other body parts is also reasonably common. Sun exposure will trigger scale development in most, too.

[cattun]

The very center of Hssken life and culture is Sstki ("the town"), a colonised part of the vast cave system extending beneath the Shadow Mountain Range. Deep into the rock, temperature and moisture levels are rather consistent throughout which is essential for Hssken comfort due to their lack of sweat glands and generally lacking thermoregulatory abilities.