The Amedio Fishers

by Jason Zavoda
Sent to The GreyTalk List 9 July 2001
In my campaign, Bards, Skalds and Minstrels are fairly widespread across the Flanaess. They are sources for information, but much of what they convey is in the form of stories or song or poetry. I'm no poet, or lyricist so I normally convert Earthly songs and poems for Oerthly use.
Here is one such song/poem. It is translated from the native language of the dwellers of the Amedio Jungle who live along the edge of the Azure Sea. Silvertongue the Bard first sang this at the Low Seas Tavern in Greyhawk's River Quarter several years ago. Since then it has become popular among sailors from Jeklea Bay to the Solnor Ocean.
The Amedio Fishers Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light, The Wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night. Come, let us gather our nets from the shore, and set our catamarans free, To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea! No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the seagull's call, The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all. What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives? He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives. Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent of the mango grove, And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moons with the sound of the voices we love; But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee; Row, brothers, row to the azure of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea. "The Coromandel Fishers" By Sarojini Naidu (with trivial alterations)
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