Clinker

"Clinker" is the demotic name for a trio of species of large saltwater toads found in various concentrations on various islands in the Sea of Jars. A fourth species is attested in historical sources but appears to be extinct. They are an esteemed delicacy in some of the Eleven Cities surrounding the sea, with their rarity contrbuting to their reputation, though in other cities the idea of eatng toads is widely mocked.    

General information

  Clinkers have rough, spiny skins noted for being permanently oily due to their continuous secretion of a jelly-like oil thought to protect their amphibian skins from salt water. They live around the edges of mudflats and estuaries and spend most of ther time using their broad, webbed feet to dig in the mud for small shellfish, which they grind open with a battery of flat, strong teeth.   Clinkers reproduce by laying clutches of eggs, which they leave on the surface of the mud at low tide. When the eggs hatch they produce black tadpoles about the sze of a human little finger. These tadpoles swim in the tide for a period of a moon or so before undergoing a metamorphosis into an adult toad over a few days. Thereafter the ravenously hungry toad will consume several times its own weight in shellfish as it rapidly grows to around the size of a balled human fist.   At rest, a clinker is typically caked in sandy mud mixed with its insulating oil, which gves them a uniform brown colour. In fact, clinkers have brightly coloured skins. Three colours are known to exist - a dark spinach green, mustard yellow, and raspberry pink. Historical sources attest that sea-blue clinkers used to exist, but none have been found for several generations and they are believed to be extinct. In any case, the covering of mud makes clinkers hard to spot, and their colour is seldom apparent until the animal has been caught and cleaned.  

Economic signifcance

  The flesh of clinkers is considered rich fare in the cities of Tyros, Dyqamay and Elpaloz, where it is typically pickled and served cold in small cutlets. The best meat is in the legs and is valued for its rich, salty flavour. Pink clinkers are thought to have the most succulent flesh, with yellow clinkers somewhat less esteemed and green often regarded as bland and sold cheaply as by-catch by fishers going after the other vareties. Blue clinkers were said to be the most delicious of all, but also the rarest, and their extinction is often attribted to overfishing.   In other cities the idea of eating frogs is generally seen as an unpleasant eccentricity. In Chogyos in particular it is considered vulgar and symptomatic of limited intelligence.   Clinkers do not do well in captivity; attempts to set up breeding programs consistently fail. Fishers therfore must visit the uninhabited islands where the frogs live and either hunt them or set up crab-pots for them (they have a reputation for being dismally unintelligent animals prone to such traps). Because all clinkers initially look the same colour, exactly what each crab-pot will contain is seldom apparent until the catch is brought ashore, washed and killed.   When taking on fresh water on uninhabted islands, Sailors on the Sea of Jars tend to regard clinkers as an esteemed finge beneft - a delicacy to be enjoyed on the first day back at sea after a supply stop. Sailors typically poach their clinkers and eat them hot rather than pickling them. Widespread folkloric consensus has it that a sailor is obliged to share any green or yellow clinkers he finds with his ship-mates, but that anyone lucky enough to find a pink one is entitled to keep it entrely to himself. Sailors are thought to have created the name clinker, which is thought to be a reference to clinker-built sailing ships.  

Thaumatological signficance

  The sailor's song Lucky Aleqod tells of a young sailor who finds a blue clinker and is about to kill it when it speaks to him. Over the course of the next several years sailor and frog become close friends and Aleqod learns many magical secrets about the sea before a cruel Chogyan captain kills the anmal and forces the boy to eat his friend.    Blue clinkers appear in several pieces of pre-Wesmodian art depicting either Zargyod or Morogyad. The interpretation of this motif is widely disputed.