This poor fellow is only seven years old. His life began in a hatchery pond as a golfball sized egg which hatched into a tadpole eating the algae and table scraps dropped in while dodging the bladefish which were kept in said ponds to cull the sickly. After two years he grew arms and legs and crawled out as a half meter long morphling which was collected by the Household staff and taken to the nursery. There he and his myriad brothers competed with each other, learning how to speak, how to use tools and how to obey commands. Those which excelled got extra food by the attendants, those who failed to measure up were culled. By his forth year he had been assigned to work in the house's farms where he worked from sunrise to sunset planting, harvesting, cleaning, digging, moving, threshing, chopping, tending to livestock, carrying and helping out with construction projects drying out in the sun and subsisting on a meager diet of thin soup made from grain, vegetables, the occasional chunk of fish and the flesh of those of his brothers which expired one way or another. For every one like him which crawled out of the pond fifteen of his brothers had been eliminated from life. Now he faces the final challenge of his youth, a trial by fire.





Wars are common on his continent between the various Queendoms. In their fuedal structure each of the Noble Houses is required to raise forces to fight in said wars. While each house will retain it's seasoned veterans the bulk of their army is composed of Juvenile fodder in the last year or so before final physical maturation. They are issued basic weapons (in this fellows case a spear, a simple mace with a cast iron head and an old wooden shield), armor (a simple iron chest piece and helmet) and gear (a ceramic canteen and some sandals) and are marched off to fight each other. If they fight and survive for six battles (only retreating when the order is given), fight in three battles that are won or slay an enemy veteran warrior they are elevated into adult members of their houses and with that escape from the horrors of their childhood. Adults have names rather than batch numbers. Adults can not be casually killed by their superiors (execution can only be administered for a specific crime or by order of the House's Matriarch with the approval of three of her direct subordinates or the Queen herself). Adults are not worked to death and are actually paid for their work. There is also the prospect of passing their genes on to the next generation, first as males which can fertilize the clutches of other houses and after their final metamorphosis around 30 as females laying clutches of eggs of their own and the authority that females of their species wield. Possibly even aspiring to House Matriarch Status. Those that flee are outcasts that live a short mean life being hunted down by their former fellows. Unlike human feudal levies salamander fodder usually has good morale, for they know that they have everything to gain through victory and only death in defeat.

