Badger's Banks (Farmland)

Daris looks at the creatures and sniffs. He crinkles his nose and scowls, it smelled similar to Ozmodais but less salty. He reaches out and plucks one of the crawdads from a bucket. The fisherman glares at him, but opts not to complain. The little creature pinches at his skin and without ceremony Daris bites it in half. The fisher man looks aghast as Daris chews the hard shell.

"You are supposed to uh, boil and deshell them first."

Daris glances at him and is forced to agree. The meat didn't taste bad, but the shell was not good. He offers the remainder to Dura so she can try it.

One of the women nearby was thinking the same thing.

"Oi, you're the orcs!" The lady was old and had leathery skin, so leathery in fact she could be mistaken for something not entirely human. However, she had a kind face and a warm smile. "You know those taste better cooked. Here, I brought you guys something!"

Daris glares at the offending vegetable. Why would anyone want to consume something that burned them? Humans were very strange. He eats the remainder of the soup avoiding the hot vegetable. Without the heat it is very tasty and flavorful. Though the broth also burns it is far milder and easier to consume. When he is finished he nods at what the man said, he would not mind working for his meal. Still swimming? He had never been taught how to do so. There were only streams on the stone plains. There was one rive large enough for the activity, but few learned how to do it. It was hard for a stone orc to learn how to swim.

"I have no complaints about working for my meal. But no I do not know how to swim."

The fisherman looked at the two up and down.

"Hmph, alright! Feel like I'm getting the raw end of the deal now. You guys get food and swimming lessons!" He joshed. "First let me explain how our farms work. See, this farm's a big cycle. You got your snails and shell fish at the bottom of the river. That'll be what your swimming for. You got your fish in the middle of the water, which you got nets and poles for, and you got the sea weed at the top. You gotta either balance yourself on those beams there..." He pointed at several long beams reaching out into the water. They appeared anchored to the bottom. "Or you gotta balance yourself on the rafts, whatever you prefer. Oh, and there are the otters. Most people don't have the heart to eat them on account'a how adorable they are, so we try to keep them away from these farms. But if they get passed our wards, well, it's a bit of an acquired taste, but Maya makes a hell of an otter stew."

He raised up his finger. His face suddenly became quite serious. "Now here's the real trick to having a successful water farm. You gotta harvest the right proportions of each thing. You catch a certain number of snails, you also gotta dredge some see weed, and grab some snails and shellfish, and catch some bony fish. Everyone keeps a careful tally of what they're harvesting, and towards the end of the first shift, during our lunch break, we all check the tallies and see what we need to compensate here and there. Sometimes if our balance is way off, we gotta call some special elemental mages to help the kelp grow faster. That's usually what gets over-harvested. Oh, and you also gotta be careful not to over harvest the younger, more fertile animals, especially the females. Gotta keep the population healthy, ya know?"

Assuming Zar'Dura and Daris'Fall were somewhat overwhelmed by the information dump, the fisherman would smile genially once again. "I know it sounds complicated, but we don't expect you guys to be perfect, so we'll let some mistakes slide. But us Badgers take a lot of pride in our work as water farmers! Anyways, you can help with whatever part you like, but if you wanna learn how to swim and go after the snails and shell fish, I'm your man!"

Granny Maya beamed. "He's my son by the way. He's a good teacher. Taught the grandkids too!"

Daris went through all the exercises with a good natured grin. The grin covered his nervousness though. It was a very odd experience being in water deep enough to swallow him. Still he performed admirably. He was a trained warrior and he treated the movements of swimming like a martial movement. Quickly and efficiently committing them to memory. When the time came to actually swim though... Well at first it seemed like he required assistance there was so much splashing. After a moment though it became clear that he was swimming just not well. Indeed as one fisherman put it: "He swims like most men drown." Still after a few minutes he began to improve.

"Hah! There you go, you got it! Now, if you really wanna help, you got some options. Only two of them actually require swimming, but it helps to know how in case you get in trouble."

He presented them with several different kinds of tools. There was a fishing hook, a large hybrid rake and claw, a net, and a basket.

"Alrighty!" The fisherman rubs his hands together in excitement. "You use the hook to go after the bony fish in the water. That's more for patient people with finesse. The rake is for gathering seaweed and bringing it on the floating ramps or the beam. Takes a lot of strength and balance, especially the rafts. Then there's the net for catching crustaceans near the river bed. You gotta be a great swimmer for that. And finally there is the basket, which you use while diving for edible snails. You gotta be able to swim, but you don't have to be quite as good. Snails aren't exactly fast prey and a lot of then are stuck to the bottom of the seaweed clusters, so they're not that deep."

After giving them basic instructions in how to actually dive, he'd let them pick whatever task they wanted. "Good luck!"