These Ichthyophagi subsist on what their name is derived from, — fish. Yet only a few of them fish out in the deep, for boats to do it with are scarce, and the art of fishing is unknown. Generally speaking, they are indebted for their fish to the ebb-tide. To take advantage of it, they make for themselves nets which are mostly two stadia in length. These they weave from the bark of the palm-tree, twisting the fibres like flax, Now when the sea retires from the land, the parts left dry are generally found to be without fish, while the hollows, which of course retain some water, swarm with them. The fish are generally small, though some are of considerable size: these they catch with their nets. The more delicate kinds they eat raw as soon as they are taken out of the water, but the large and coarser kinds they dry in the sun, and when sufficiently dried grind into a sort of flour, from which they make bread. They bake also cakes from this flour. The cattle, as well as the men, eat the dry fish, for there are no meadows in the country, nor grass at all. But in many parts they fish also for crabs and oysters and mussels. Natural salt is found in the land [...] from these they make oil. Some of the tribes inhabit desolate tracts which are so utterly sterile that they bear neither trees nor even wild fruits. These poor wretches have nothing but fish to live on. A few of them, however, sow some part of their land, and use the produce to eat for zest along with their fish, which forms the staple of their diet. The better classes build houses of whale-bone, which they collect from the carcasses of whales cast ashore, and use instead of wood. The doors are formed of the broadest bones they can find. The poorer members, who form the great majority of the population, construct their, houses with the backbones of fish.
-Arrian, The Indica
O Commander of the faithful!
It's a land where the plains are stony;
Where water is scanty;
Where the fruits are unsavory;
Where men are known for treachery;
Where plenty is unknown;
Where virtue is held of little account;
And where evil is dominant.
A large army is less for there;
And a less army is use less there;
The land beyond it, is even worse
-Messenger to the Caliph 'Umar,
quoted in The History of the Prophets and Kings by al-Tabari
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| The coast of modern-day Makran, in southern Iran |
On the far southern littoral of the Enlightened Empire, where the mountains slope almost suddenly into the salt-flats and scorching beaches by the southern sea, dwell the Fish-Eaters. This nation of subject barbarians are the southernmost subjects of the most enlightened King of Kings, living in a land second only to the Kavir-e Bozorg in terms of heat and oppressive sunlight, and thus the most distant from civilized habits like farming, honest trade, bricklaying, slavery, and misogyny. Constantly living on the brink, there is no time for Fish-Eaters to care for such things. As the geographers of the First City describe, the Fish-Eaters are so called because their blighted land cannot grow any meaningful crop, and so the people there rely on fishing, even grinding dried fish into flour and building houses out of the bones of sea serpents, whales, and sharks. Even the few domesticated animals they (occasionally) keep feed on fish, and the flesh of dogs and scrawny cows from the littoral regions of Mahestan have a repugnant oily quality and rotten smell even when freshly killed.
Since the Fish-Eaters are well known for their vagaries and treachery, the office of satrap of Mahestan has been left intentionally vacant for several generations (he would, naturally, be too vulnerable to bribes, coercions, and assassinations by his own benighted subjects) -- instead, terrible Mahestan is de facto governed by the policeman-general of Parch (the closest thing to a city along the coast), the constantly cycling-out Sub-satrap of Lesser Mountain Passes (an administrative position that seems to only exist to punish those who fall out of favor in court), and the Middle Herbad Over the Eternal Flame of Chelonis. The temple at Chelonis is a fully-stocked temple of Truth, complete with an Eternal Flame that is constantly at the brink of going out due to the region's lack of forests for good fuel. This Flame was lit under the auspices of a temple faction which had preeminence under a previous Shahanshah, and which had a broader conception of which nations were truly good and eligible for religious virtue. They wished to redeem the immorality of the Fish-Eaters by introducing the light of Truth to their midst; now, a few generations later, the priesthood has changed its orientation and finds the Eternal Flame out on the edge of the sea to be a liability in a swarm of barbarians that Truth disdains. This sputtering Eternal Flame is fueled by turtle shells and charcoal made from the bark of sickly date palms.
Anyways, the majority of the Fish-Eaters have always been disinterested by the Eternal Flame at Chelonis. For one, they do not make fire themselves, and have no respect for it. The sun itself is half of Truth, for them. It dries their catch, after all! On the other hand, its heat is half of the Lie. To the Fish-Eaters, the sun is a malfeasance, a duplicitous god that gives with the same hand he takes with. No, the only thing that can be trusted is the Sea. The Sea is a distant but ever-present mother, who they are constantly taking from, accruing a beautiful debt they can never repay. The Fish-Eaters have no boat-making culture of their own, and view the surface of the wine dark sea as the skin of their own mother, who should never be cut or injured. They shoot down diving birds, and would also shoot at every single sailor that crossed their stretch of coast were it not for the policeman-general at Parch. They especially distrust Froglings, in their fly-powered dhows. A sailor that leaves the sea is, after a certain length of time, forgiven as a gift of hospitality. The scars from his ship's rudder heal over, and he can be forgiven, at least until he sets out to sea again. They sacrifice elaborate scrimshaw effigies of children and dogs in burying rituals on the beach, letting the tide come in and take away the sympathetic magic of whatever they wish kept safe.
They also disdain the Eternal Flame at Chelonis because the area around it is inhabited by their sworn enemies, the Turtle-Eaters.
In the angle of Carmania are the Chelonophagi, who cover their cabins with the shells of turtles, and live upon their flesh...
-Pliny the Elder, Natural History Book VI, Chapter 28
The Turtle-Eaters are identical in all respects to the Fish-Eaters, at least as far as those from the rest of the Enlightened Empire can tell, other than that the one builds huts of fish bones and the other of turtle shells. They get into shouting matches that quickly escalate to brawls practically on sight.
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| An Ichthyophagus, from (I believe) the edition of Wonders of the East bound in the Beowulf manuscript (Nowell codex, Anglo-Saxon, circa 1000 CE) |
CHARACTER BACKGROUND: FISH-EATER
Fish-Eater (fish-skin loincloth, net, short knife, near-encyclopedic knowledge of southern sea fishes, lack of upper class niceties, a scrimshaw effigy)
What does my scrimshaw effigy depict?
Roll 1d12:
1: A whale caught in a net
2: A baby strangling a bird
3: A man eating a fish eating a turtle
4: A sumptuously dressed dog-headed man with a spear through his chest
5: A mother holding a fish like a child
6: An eel all tied up in knots
7: A mer-man with fish's tails for feet, holding a date palm in one hand
8: A mother with multiple breasts, a fish suckling on each one
9: A fat woman with an oyster shell for a head
10: A sea serpent holding a sleeping man in its mouth
11: A dugong with a metaphorical map of the world carved on its back
12: A crab with a human face
Fish-Eaters, in any King of Kings game I run, are inevitably foreigners to wherever the game is taking place (although a game set in Mahestan could be interesting!). It'd be a neat line of thought to have to think over both how your Fish-Eater character got to wherever the game is set, as well as how they entered into their character class. A magic-using priest trained at the Temple of Chelonis, or perhaps someone initiated into local sea-mysteries; fighters and thieves seem like easier bets given the reputation of the region, but if making a Fish-Eater fighter it could be worth asking, if your fighter character had military experience, in what war was this distant province conscripted into? The Kingdom of the Southern Dog-Headed Men is right next door (keep an eye out for a future post about them), so maybe a Fish-Eater character had to face off against dapper cannibal kings and their retinues and, having spent so long away from the sea, feels unable to return home. OSR games might not encourage the development of deep character backstories, but this sort of thing is always an interesting avenue to connect characters in with the rest of a living world :)
Actually ngl an all fish eater campaign set in Mahestan would kinda go hard
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