Eledh
| Eledh | |
|---|---|
| English gloss | pig (translation, not identification) |
| Role | Food |
| Where found | Inside every city's walls, and in every caravan's and ship's provisions |
| Kept / wild | Kept; engineered |
| Used for | Eating the city's organic waste; meat that keeps for months |
| Lexicon | Eledh |
Coarse-furred and densely muscled, the Eledh is built to survive weather that would kill most animals, and it eats almost anything organic: vegetable waste, spoiled grain, rotten fruit, and a good deal that is not food at all. That it can then be eaten makes it an extraordinarily efficient thing to keep. Inside the walls it does the job nobody else wants, eating the waste that would otherwise rot in the streets, which is why Eledh keeping is common in every city and why the smell of it is too. Smoked, salted, or cured, the meat keeps for months; no caravan or ship is provisioned without some.
Hidden truth — not known in Teraell
It was engineered before the Fall to convert waste and resist disease, part of the same effort that produced the Fraeska and the Kravoen — essential functions moved into living things, because living things do not stop when the power does. It has continued the job for nine centuries without maintenance.