Fragments from the Vault #025: Expedition (The Angler's Promise)

The sea is to sailor as desert is to pilgrim...

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Game: Dredge

Location: Beyond the Marrows

More information: Places | Dredge Wiki | Fandom

Greater Marrow. Photo credit: FetchQuester

Research Outpost, Stellar Basin. 0500 hours. 

The lighthouse keeper, guardian of sea shanties and shanty towns, has a bounty on my head. Not one to deal with devils yet so taken with ill-fortune that I am loathe to quarrel, we reach an accord: I will captain the Aberration - an old research vessel - and scry the caverns of therianthropic sea gods for lost relics.

"Go," she whispers, "And tell me what you see." 

We steer southwest on the cusp of sunrise.

Tipped off by ice floes, I watch as ctenophores ride beneath leaden engines in an upswelling of currents lapping the trawler. We skim past the volutes of corals and fleshed-out cataracts of narwhals, the fleets of trilobites and subarctic naves as the forge of the earth buckles and groans.

I know what I must do.

"Will you accept an angler's promise?" I ask the Unseeing Mother. 

The skies rumble in affirmation.

I tune the longwave as the auster scathes the prow and chokes the rafters. Lightning rappels downward, crackling the salt; clad in my wetsuit, I cast my net and dive into the frothy churn to kiss the hadal depths.

Sojourns (left to right): Old Fortress, oil spill, the Twisted Strand, the Lighthouse Keeper, corals, Greater Marrow, the Pale Reach, the Iron Rig, the Devil's Spine, the Stellar Basin, and Ingfell.

Photo credit: FetchQuester

- Lucy A.

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Sources: 

Dredge (Blacksalt Games/Team17); fandom.com

*Dedicated to those lost at sea. A special thanks to Evi, Rashika, Shannon, and Super for their artistic guidance.