Weird waddled up to the camp, his shirt's long sleeves tied together in a makeshift basket, carrying a load of stinky fish. His pants were hanging up to dry where he had been surveying soil and sand banks, forcing him into his hot black-rubber hazard suit. A small resource cache had been created to help organize things, and his approach with 50lbs of dead fish of varying sizes attracted some attention.
"Dems be CARP lad!" One of the haulers dressed in blue fisherdwarf attire commented. "Ye be daft catchin carp son! 'Ems be fish es what eats YE!"
"Fish and electricity don't mix." He said flatly, garnering a blank confused stare. "If you want a demonstration, i'd be glad to show you, but you'l get to haul em up. I JUST cleaned this shirt. I wasn't expecting to have to kill some fish to get some laundry done."
"Ye mean ye didn't go fishin?" Asked the fisherdwarf clearly confused. "I don ken..."
Weird just smiled at him.
"I was doing laundry, and the carp decided that I looked tasty. I let the boney bastards know their mistake, that's all. Since we're short on food, I thought I'd bring them in."
"Aye.. good cal tha'... do ye think ye could do what'er ye did again? I'd love tuh see is."
Weird rolled his eyes. He'd never get to work making bricks this way... but if they cleared all the carnivorous fish out of the river, he could work unmolested, so maybe it wasn't all bad.
"Sure. Get some friends to carry the nasty shits, and I'll zap some more fish for ya."
The fisherdwarf put 2 fingers in his beared mouth, and wistled loudly, causing a momentary lapse in the mumuring babble of the refugee center. "Lolot, Ducim! Get yer lard-lazy arses o'er 'ere! Dere be fish te clean!"
Weird shook his head. Even in an emergency, some things never changed. Lazy fisherdwarves were a staple of the universe, apparently.
"Noh', about catchin more fish.." the bearded old fool prattled.
Weird cloed his eyes to conceal his rolling them. "Follow me..." he sighed, throwing the fish-stink saturated pigtail shirt over his gleaming metal clad shoulder.
Heading back down to the river edge, where Peepers had found a nice quiet spot to hide in the rushes after gorging himself on raw fish, weird unsocketed the heavy rubber right glove of the suit, and replaced it with the enchanted pigtail one.
"Watch this." He smiled, before pointing upstream, and letting out a violent blast of crackling, high-voltage current into the waterway. As the loud bang subsided, pretty much every fish in the river floated to the top in either death or extreme shock. The fisher dwarf's eyes went wide.
"Dat be CHEATIN!" He croaked incredulously, as the slow moving stream of fish floated by.
"Better get crackin..." weird chided. "You'll never live down failing to catch a dead fish."
The old fart smiled in a broad snaggle-toothed grin. "Aye lad! At I wouldn't!"
Weird resumed the laborious task of washing the filth out of his clothes, as his nameless companion whistled that deafening monotone note again, and bellowed back up toward the camp. "Lolot, Ducim, get yer skeever arses daown 'ere right naow! An brin a wheel barra'!"
There was an incomprehensible retort, but weird saw the two clearly displeased fishery workers put the shakedown on a hauler pushing one of the few handcarts that had been outside when the disaster had struck. Most likely the carts had been used ferrying materials to Erics perimter defense construction projects, now being used to ferry goods around the campground. The two figures waddled into view, pushing their comandeered trolley down the path, pausing momentarily to gawk at the dead and floundering fish bobbing listlessly in the water's slow current.
"Say wat ye will, but 'avin a wizard around taint all bad, ye see!" Shouted the snaggletoothed fisherdwarf. "Done a weeks fishin in just a few shakes! Seen it meself! Naow, hel' me get de scaly barstards, afore dey all float away!"
The two newcomers looked at each other, at the fish, then at weird incredulously, but at a scowl from who was clearly their workgang's boss, they snapped to, wading out into the now totally safe water, chucking fish up onto the bank, and piling them into the cart. Weird chuckled to himself, watching the spectacle, then commenced digging into the claybank just a few meters up from the river where it had been exposed, digging uphill at an angle into the bank.
"Naow what ye doin lad?" Asked the fisherboss, flopping a rather large molly up onto the groaning wooden cart.
"Making a makeshift kiln." He said between grunts, as he lobbed big chunks of clay downhill out of the hole. "We need pots and bricks. Fat lot of good getting those all dressed and cleaned will be with nothing to put them in to keep the vermin off."
"Aye... sat be true..."
He kept digging.
"Ye need anyone te help wit dat? Me drinkin partner rikosh be one o' em potter types... I could ask I'm te get daown 'ere ifin ye want..." offered the clearly pleased fisher, as fish continued to get thrown up the bank.
"That would help a lot..." said weird tiredly. This bank was made from old, decayed volcanic slurry. It would fire to a nice high temperature ware. Far better than the weathered feldsparic claybank further down. That would only give low strength earthenware. Good enough for bricks, but not for good pots.
"Aye. We'll be doin at den.." murmured the fisher between huffs and puffs. There was a veritable mountain of fish piling up around the cart. They were emptying the river before they all floated a way, even if there was no way the cart could hold it all. As long as they got those things up, cleaned, and smoked before they went rancid in the damnable sun, he didn't care.
Weird nodded approvingly at him, and kept at his hard work digging out the firing chamber of the primitive anagama style kiln.