Fish was the one forbidden flesh of Uzda. Although all other animals could be legally prepared and consumed (though most Uzdans limited themselves to goat, mutton, pork, beef, and rabbit), fish were protected by state law as well as by religious law and social taboo.

In Unconquered Orin to the North, however, the inhabitants survived almost exclusively on a diet of fish and bread dumplings. The Orinite book trade depended on the constant production and sale of new literature on fishing and fish, spanning every discipline from instructions for fishing, fiction about fishing, recipes for fish-based meals, philosophical treatises on fishing, relgious devotional texts on fishing, and, most abundantly, field guides and scientific works on different species of fish, their behaviors, and their habitats.

A well-developed palate in an Orinite could distinguish not only bottom-feeder species from top-feeders, but also whether the fish was male or female, how long since it had last mated, and what season it was born in, and its individual temperament. (Orinites claimed to sense a faint extra tanginess in docile fish, who restrain their impulses and build up desires.) Fish preparation in Orin ranged from the massively popular fish-and-dumplings, which could be prepared by even the dullest Orinite, to ornate platters of thinly sliced raw fish served sprinkled with sea water and eaten in front of a tank of live fishes.

Religious Orinists claimed an affinity for fish due to the simpleness of their hearts, which only have two chambers, and the fineness of their bones. Small fish were prized for their beautiful skeletons and the gentleness required to strip the flesh from them without breaking their ribs. One popular Orinist meditation practice involved waking at dawn, catching a small fish with a simple lure, killing him swiftly, pulling out the heart, whole, and watching it slowly stop beating as one skins and eats the raw flesh carefully without breaking the bones. While completing this meditation, the Orinist recites:

Thank you, fish, for waking me.

Thank you, fish, for employing me.

Thank you, fish, for dying for me.

Thank you, fish, for living for me.

Thank you, fish, for disrobing for me.

Thank you, fish, for nourishing me.

In Uzda, however, Orinist fish-worship was deemed disgusting and backward. Eating the flesh of mammals and birds was a sign not only of an advanced society, but also a theological certainty about the superiority of humans. The Uzdan prejudice about Orinist "fisholatry" was that it was based on a fear that Orinites were not biologically distinguishable from mammals and avians, with their four-chambered hearts, and that only an Uzdan, born to abstract reason and social hierarchy and focus, could comfortably eat something so physically similar. Eventually, the sense that fish was a low and dirty food led to the codification of anti-fish laws by Drevis IV, after the widespread publication of Beasts of the World, in which the chapter on fish demonstrated not only the filthiness of their habits, but also the degraded properties of their simple flesh.

In the Frontier Towns, local customs allowed for the consumption of flesh whenever the Embryonic Police were not near. Heretical inclusion of fish among the edible meats for Uzdans was common in these isolated areas, and their dissent mostly remained quiet. One exception was the death by Bright Thirst of Yorree-Angles, a pro-fish-consumption evangelist of the Last Period.

Frontier Towns

Unconquered Orin

Orinism

Beasts of the World

Yorree-Angles

Embryonic Police

Heretical Sects of Uzda