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Romps and Reconstruction in Loka: Steam, Magic, and Mysteries in the Frozen Wasteland.

The akhu are a tribe of rat-like pasu who spend their entire lives far underground, mining for metals and ore to build and maintain the machines that allow them to survive. Having lived for centuries without contact with the surface, few if any akhu believe it even exists as anything more than a sort of afterlife, where their (or ‘breath’) return to and dwell after death. Akhu are seldom prone to dwell on such matters, however, as most are content to focus on their duties and jobs, whether they be in the mines, maintaining the machines, farming mushrooms, hunting for meat or any of the score of jobs needed to keep life going in the underground.

Akhu population is artificially kept at a limit below five thousand, due mostly to the limits of food stocks and the difficulty of cultivating underground, not to mention the amount of space required for a large population. Akhu primarily subsist on mushrooms, lichen and other cave fungus, supplemented with whatever meat the hunting parties are able to bring back - most often cave lizards and spiders, which in some areas are known to grow as large as two feet in diameter. Other species which the akhu are aware of include ghost knives, which resemble foot-tall, pale white mantis-like creatures that move almost silently and always travel in packs; shadows-that-hunger, large hairless bat-like creatures with poisonous stingers on their long tails; and daggermouths, long and lanky solitary hunters that resemble a cross between a large lizard and a hunting cat. All of these species are considered delicacies to the akhu, especially given the difficulty in hunting them.

Akhu have no military force, mainly due to having no knowledge of any other tribe, culture or society that they would need to defend themselves from. Law enforcement is carried out by the foremen of the different mining teams, guildmasters of the various trades and, at the top, the Head Foreman and his or her council.

Akhu have no magical traditions, and indeed, no knowledge or understanding of magic at all; given their deep-rooted affinity for stone and metal, if one were able to learn to master it, he would undoubtedly do very well with earth magic.

Akhu tend to be fairly skilled with simple machinery, such as cranks and pumps, with the occasional clockwork mechanism thrown in here and there. Akhu engineers know of combustion engines in theory and diagrams, but seldom if ever construct such things given the risk of polluting the limited air supply. Most complex devices created by the akhu are powered by electricity, often in the form of batteries charged by generators, which in turn are charged by hydro- or thermodynamics (underground rivers and thermals from magma flows), or by dynamo-style handcranks.