Fish on! [Open]

[meat_mooks]

The Kohaku River ran diagonally through most of the City, past Central Park, winding its way between Castle Wyvern and the Bathhouse and Awesome World, and finally ending somewhere in Escherville. Its pristine waters would therefore be an excellent vehicle through which to introduce a convenient new source of protein.

Or so Tarrant reasoned when he began the project. Now, about a third of the way through, the fry he'd introduced into the river earlier (or at least the ones that survived notice by the native carp) were growing rapidly, establishing themselves and their territories.

[The river is open for fishing! The fish species Tarrant is aiming for are the following:

• ayu/sweetfish
• trout
• bass
• catfish
• whiting
• croaker
• freshwater eel
• minnows and an assortment of small prey fish

They are not all exactly like their Earth analogues, and some may come from alien fish species with unusual colors, fin shapes, habits, or other physical attributes. With every successive generation, however, they will become more and more like their target species in behavior and appearance, barring a few changes to make them better adapted for life in this particular habitat.

Feel free to mess around in the river, fish, or bug Tarrant.]

Comments

[zouichi]

"...You mean a mother? The woman who gave birth to you?" At least, Zouichi was assuming Volanz had a mother. For all he knew, trolls budded.

"That sounds like a pretty dismal existence. Didn't you have any hobbies? Or something else you wanted to do besides join the fleet?"

[thebestoffense]

Volanz shook his head. "No, the mother grub doesn't actually take care of us?" he said. "She just kind of lays all the eggs? Don't humans have lusii?" That was a weird idea. Volanz knew about some animals that only had, like... one grub at a time and had to protect it while it was small and weak, but that seemed like a really inefficient system to him. Certainly not something an intelligent species would have.

He watched the fish cautiously reappearing from the many nooks and crannies they'd fled to.

"Well, I guess liked making things. Out of clay and stuff, I was pretty okay at it? But it's not something you can do with your life. I didn't really have anything that I was good enough at to not be a soldier, really."

[zouichi]

Mother grub?

"Oh, you're an oviparous species. No, human mothers carry their children inside their bodies. After they're born, their parents usually raise them until they're old enough to take care of themselves. I have no idea what a lusus is, though. A surrogate mother?"

Zouichi placed a fingertip against the surface of the water; one particularly curious fish came right up to him and nibbled at it.

"So you're an amateur sculptor? Maybe you should pursue that while you're here. I've found it gets a little monotonous if you don't have something to do with your free time." He shrugged a little. "I was good at fighting, so I didn't have any qualms about doing it. But before I came here, it never really occurred to me that doing something else was an option."

[thebestoffense]

"Oviparous" was a word that was a bit beyond Volanz, but he was going to guess it was about eggs. "Well, I guess?" he replied. "After you hatch out you basically make a cocoon and when you pupate and crawl out of it, if you survive the brood caverns, your lusus finds you and you go live together until you're old enough to do adult things. Provided nothing like... unusually horrible happens." Not that living with a lusus was all sunshine and rainbows anyway. Volanz was keenly aware, for instance, that one of his friends had a lusus that did little but demand food.

Speaking of food, he smiled at the fish. They got hungry, too.
"Well I don't really know if I was any good at it," he backpedaled. "I mean," he added, "I guess I'd like to keep up with it? I just haven't really looked into the resources I'd need lately I suppose."

Now that he was thinking about it, it would be fun to do that again... He looked along the bank of the river. "Sometimes clay shows up along water bodies?" That was actually a statement, not a question, but this was Volanz.

[zouichi]

"That is... very different from the human life cycle," Zouichi said, a little taken aback. "Humans never spin cocoons or pupate. They merely grow for some number of years. At approximately thirteen years of age, they start developing into reproductive maturity." What a nice clinical explanation for an extremely messy process.

He smiled a little. "So you might be able to find yourself some clay to work with. Even if you don't think you're any good, though, I'd be interested to see one of your sculptures sometime. If you don't mind, of course."