Lexicon:Modern/Brosdh

Brosdh
Stage	Modern CLT
Pronunciation	/ˈbɾosð/
Part of speech	Noun
Etymology	from Middle brosdhē, from Proto brosd
Related words	Dorath, Vaelith, Draebaech

Brosdh — the small draft beast. About the mass of a large Vaelith, and the animal most people who own an animal own.

Notes

Stocky, barrel-bodied and short in the leg, with a hide thick enough to shrug off most of what a working life throws at it. The snout is short and flexible and strips forage nothing else will touch, which is the whole of why it is affordable: a Brosdh feeds itself on hedge, scrub and the rough edges of a field while a Dorath eats what a family would rather have sold. It swims without being asked to and will cross a ford that gives a Vaelith pause. Where the Dorath hauls freight between cities, the Brosdh does everything else. It pulls the smallholder’s cart, the peddler’s wagon, the brewer’s dray and the night-soil barrel, and it turns the mill wheel in half the villages in the Known World. A city street has one Dorath team on it and thirty Brosdh. Placid, and stubborn past all argument. A Brosdh that has decided against a thing has decided, and generations of carters have made their peace with this. Regional lines differ in size and coat rather than in kind. The heavy Forgegate sort is nearly a small Dorath; the Eldershore line is leaner and better in wet ground. Native to Teraell, domesticated after the fall.

Plates of dermal bone lie beneath the hide across the shoulders and rump, which is most of why a Brosdh shrugs off work that would injure a softer animal.