Flesh Pocket (UT211) Hygiene

[Nereidalbel]

You know, a thin layer of chitin or keratin in a less flexible pocket would go a long way towards avoiding poisoning from objects being carried.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Anybody doing enough research to create a new species would have probably noticed the oil ducks rub on their own feathers. Magically grafting that into a race with flesh pockets really isn't much of a stretch at this point.

The shapeshifting abilities weren't intended. The idea was to make semi-sapient, hard to kill war machines with innate access to magic*. The three primary species mixed together were the troll (for the hard to kill bit), the elf (for the magic) and a monster called a sorrow-singer. The last are based somewhat on the chasmfiends from Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives, and like those creatures has a life cycle that involves pupating and transforming into a new form. Somehow, the mixture of regenerative abilities and a lifecycle involving transformation, perhaps with a bit of influence of the elf's innate magic, resulted in a creature that could slowly reprogram its body at will, changing shape to add new functionality. The flesh pockets are just something the Feuyaner came up with on their own.

*One of three (hard to kill) isn't too bad, I suppose - the Feuyaner are fully sapient and actually have even lower likelihood of developing magery than do humans. They can become pretty dangerous fighters, so I suppose "war machine" is a partial success there. One-and-a-half out of four?

Originally Posted by Bruno

Keeping e.g. a copper rod in the flesh sheath along with the blade would help, but I have no idea if the copper itself (or the copper oxide forming on the rod) would damage it (or accelerate it rusting). I know just enough to know that two dissimilar metals can have bad reactions, but not enough to know which ones are bad combos.

Space is at a bit of a premium in the flesh sheath, so having a loose copper rod probably isn't an option (and is unlikely to be something the character would think of doing anyhow). Good quality steel and copper are probably OK to have together, but I know that with galvanized steel the zinc and copper can have a nasty reaction. Simply using brass instead of pure copper would insure even if the steel has a decent amount of zinc it's safe from this, I think, but I'll end up just going with either an antimicrobial sword oil (like boiled linseed, possibly with an oil-extract of an antimicrobial herb in the mix) or a bronze blade. Possibly both!

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

You know, a thin layer of chitin or keratin in a less flexible pocket would go a long way towards avoiding poisoning from objects being carried.

Feuyaner flesh pockets are actually the best of both worlds here. Strakoliths* - the clade to which sorrow-singers belong - have an interesting form of armoring, where their skin goes from flexible to rigid upon impact. Feuyaner can grow this, and invariably line their flesh pockets with it. They can typically safely carry sharp objects in their flesh pockets thanks to this, although that can still be risky, as a slower cut rather than a sharp impact may not cause the skin to harden (in fact, there's a specific draw-cut style technique that can be used to defeat the hardening nature of the armor, making it easier to get through, but that's a digression for this thread). In the case of Corwin's flesh sheath, it's actually permanently hardened to prevent this.

That said, there's still the potential issue of objects stored therein to have a bad smell, reaching in there with a cut hand (or pulling something out then rubbing one's eye) resulting in infection, and of course the fact that getting stabbed hard enough in the flesh pouch to get through its thin armor (likely if it got through the armor you're probably wearing) could mean a greater chance of infection than a normal stab. Of course, I think Bruno showed early on that flesh pouches need not be festering stink-pits, so that's probably a non-issue.

*Yes, I know that sounds more like a type of stone than a type of creature, but it was the best I could come up with when mashing Greek words together - and sadly, I don't even recall what word the strako- prefix was from. They're typically just called "strakes."