On the Nature of the Kamal

Like other races of Akavir, the Kamal are a mysterious race that has had limited contact with Tamriel. We know next to nothing about them; only what this passage from Mysterious Akavir includes:

Kamal is “Snow Hell”. Demons live there, armies of them. Every summer they thaw out and invade Tang Mo, but the brave monkey-folk always drive them away.

While this is enigmatic to say the least, it gives us some idea of the savagery of the inhabitants. As “demons” is rather ambiguous, I’d like to propose that the Kamal are a race of fearsome amphibian-men, who live in the far north of Akavir. Stick with me. I have several lines of reasoning here.

The first has to do with another passage from Mysterious Akavir, which states that the continent is a land of beast-folk, with no men living there. (There have been many discussions about the nature of the men of Akavir, which I’d prefer not to get into right now.) So that means that the Kamal should be some kind of beast-folk, rather that the non-descriptive “demons”, which I associate more with residents of Oblivion. Something I noticed while reading an excellent recent post on the relationship between the Saxhleel and the Tsaesci by IceFireWarden was that the other three races of Akavir seem to have a parallel in one of the beast races of Tamriel. Reptilian Argonians echo snakelike Tsaesci, simian Tang-Mo seem closely related to the Imga, and the Tiger Men of Ka Po’Tun have many characteristics in common with the Khajiit, at least superficially. I’m going on the assumption that each of these pairs comes from the same “spoke” of creation, of the original 12. Anyway. This leaves the Kamal with a possible counterpart in either the Lilmothiit, the vulpine folk of Black Marsh, or the Sload, unpleasant amphibious creatures native to Thras. It has been hinted that the Lilmothiit are closely related to the Khajiit, which I believe ties them into the same spoke of creation. This leaves the Sload. The Sload have been described as corpulent individuals with little regard for anything but themselves. They do not feel emotions as the other races do, and have no compunctions about betraying or destroying others that get in their way.

So now we have a race that seems to be a reasonable “counterpart” to the Kamal. The Sload are depicted as slug-men, but I believe that they are more similar to amphibians like salamanders or frogs. For one, they are amphibious (half of their kingdom is under water), and their life-cycle includes several distinct stages, which are similar to the tadpole and adult forms of frogs. This seems to indicate that the Kamal would be strange amphibians, perhaps with a similar attitude to the Sload. The Kamal are known to have few qualms about attacking other nations seemingly for no reason; the yearly invasions of Tang Mo and the invasion of Tamriel seem to support this. This is similar to the Sload’s lack of concern for other races.

My last point has to do with a creature from our own world, the wood frog. This animal lives in northern areas, and is known to hibernate by literally freezing solid for the winter, due to a process that limits the amount of ice that forms inside their bodies. Every spring they thaw out again and resume life as normal, and can continue this cycle for several years. This seems extremely similar to the annual freezing and summer thaw of the Kamal, when they arise from their frozen hibernation and launch an invasion against the Tang Mo. It also shows that amphibians are more than capable of surviving in cold climates.

To sum up (and also to TL;DR), the Kamal are a race of amphibians who are a parallel race to the Sload, and freeze for the winter similar to the Wood Frog of North America.

I’d like to thank you all for reading, and I’d love to hear your opinions and ideas!