Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

The Art of Fishing

After wandering around for a short time, I found my quarry standing at the edge of a dock. Nafis had seen better days and was looking a little haggard, but as I approached, he looked up and smiled. With a twinkle in his eye, he told me how his fishing days were over, but if I really wanted to learn the secrets of the art, he would go ahead and teach me.

You'd be amazed at what you can pull out of the water!

As he continued talking, it quickly became clear that he (and apparently everyone else in the small village) lived in fear of the Sultan and refused to teach me until I returned to him with a fishing license. Fortunately, a local trader by the name of Emel Hadiyah had a ready supply and sold one to me for only a few silvers. Rather than paying for permission to fish, I would have preferred to introduce the local Sultan to the tender affections my abomination pet could bestow, but that simply wasn't to be. Perhaps another day? One can certainly hope.

With license in hand, I made my way back to Nafis in hopes of gleaning what wisdom I could from the words he would impart to me about the art of fishing. Wasting no time, he dove into my lessons at a pace I'm ashamed to admit I had trouble keeping up with. There were many words he referenced that I had little understanding of. I was quick to take copious notes and have been gracious enough to simplify them into terms far more accessible to the minds of land-locked mortals. In time, I have faith the terms he used that day will seem as second nature and cause me no more confusion than my first set of spells does today, but until then, the use of such unfamiliar words serves no other purpose than to confuse and frustrate.

The first thing Nafis began explaining was the preferred tools of a fisherman. While a spear or rod could be used (though he never explained how), a rod and reel would prove far more effective. The fact that I had no instruments with which to attempt to follow his words seemed to bother him not at all, though it was quickly driving me to the brink of sanity. I'm not sure whether it was his own memory that eventually spurred him into finally giving me a rod and reel or the slow swirling of bones that began flowing around me as my patience wore frighteningly thin. In either case, once I had the aforementioned fishing implements to examine in detail, Nafis' words slowing began making more sense (minus the nautical jargon of course).

Next in his explanation came the topic of bait. Again, rather than giving me some to examine right off, Nafis insisted that I listen to his long winded explanations before seeing fit to grant me a handful of worms. I'm not sure whether Nafis had rarely had the chance to deal with one of my race or not, but as the temperature around us rapidly dropped in direct correlation to my mounting temper, I think he quickly understood that I found his jokes of girls and squeamishness unamusing to say the least. Fortunately for him, his knowledge was worth far more than his death at this point and I was in little mood to pry the answers from his undead soul. The undead may be unable to lie, but they're staggeringly stupid and gaining any useful information from them is a long and arduous ordeal.