Lexicon:Modern/Wallach
| Wallach | |
|---|---|
| Stage | Modern CLT |
| Pronunciation | /ˈwa.ɬax/ |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Etymology | from Middle walāxē, from Proto walak |
| Related words | Ireis, Dorath, Brosdh, Eldershore |
Wallach — the flooded-field beast. The only draft animal that will work standing water.
Notes
Heavy, slow, and enormously strong, with wide splayed hooves that spread its weight across mud a Dorath would sink in. It stands half-submerged for hours without complaint and prefers to. Poor at shedding heat, which is why it wallows whenever it is not working and why nobody has made a success of it in the north. Eldershore’s Ireis is grown in standing water and nothing else can enter the fields. The Wallach plows them, harrows them, and hauls the cut crop out on sledges, and without it the southern staple would be a hand-worked crop and a great deal scarcer than it is. Placid to the point of appearing slow-witted, which it is not. It knows a field, knows the turn at the end of a row, and will finish one without being asked. Found in small numbers in the wet lowlands below Clearhold, where the same crop is grown, and almost nowhere else. A Wallach in a northern city is a curiosity and generally an unhappy one.