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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rhialto" data-source="post: 2227161" data-attributes="member: 630">Isslen males are large and agressive, if somewhat unwieldy and clumsy.  Each male is usually part of what non-Isslen refer to as a 'harem', a group of potential mates that serve a matriarch.  (Isslen call it a 'Sss-sekln-henith', a word non-Isslen can, as a rule, not say.)  Men outnumber women greatly among the Isslen, and each harem sees a great deal of competition among its members to serve their matriarch the best.  In this way, they hope to be chosen as her clutchmate for the season, so that they may sire children on her, to continue their line.  While there are a hundred small ways to get into a matriarch's good graces, tradition demands that an Isslen male prove himself by gathering the most attractive jewels he can, and then bringing them to his matriarch to line her nest with.  The male whose display of precious gems is most impressive becomes the matriarch's clutchmate.There are, of course, many ways to get jewels.  One has always been to raid for the jewels.  In this way, the Isslen have proved a nuisance to Aleasani, Shay, Bodai, and even each other.  However, some cunning Bodai traders realized they could preserve the precious stones they got from the Juni by hiring some Isslen as mercenaries to protect their hordes.  This introduced the lizardfolk to an intriguing new concept--trade.  Now many young lizardmen go east to serve as soldiers, muscle, and even entertainers, in return for precious stones.  A few matriarchs have even relocated their nests to the cities, to make such arrangements easier--most however stay in the Faegrim Marsh, suspicious of the scaleless ones, and clinging to at least some semblance of the old ways.The influx of Isslen has caused many scholars to become quite familiar with them.  According to Val Saldis, the great Altanian sage--"The male Isslen is, by nature, a vain, impulsive creature, incapable of detailed planning.  It is to the females they look.  Despite being quite larger than their women, the lizardmen are as pliable to the calm, intelligent matriachs as a child towards its mother, and are even known to credit them with supernatural powers, and as the living mouthpieces of the folk's strange gods."</blockquote>

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