#dredge spoilers (?)

[solarockk]

Dredge implied lore? in my hermitcraft fanart? its more likely then what you might think eye

[non-plutonian-druid]

So heres the thing about Dredge.

I think its a huge missed opportunity that the main character is the husband and not the wife.

the backstory doesnt come out fully until the end, but when it does, what you learn is this:

some amount of time ago, the player character was married. over the course of the game, you pick up notes from a woman, and at the end you learn that she was your wife.

*was*, because Cthulhu ate her.

you were a fisherman, and obsessed with the ocean, and she was not. you were superstitious, and she was not. And one day, she messed up and did something unlucky, and then she was lost at sea one night when she was on your boat.

it fucks you up so bad that you lose all your memory and end the world trying to save her.

so, obviously you're torn up about her, but also, it kinda didn't have anything to do with you. She fucked up and she got got. whoops! Oh well. It also didn't change very much about you: you're still a superstitious fisherman obsessed with the sea, except you're sad now.

But if you were the wife? If he died instead?

you were happily newlywed, but if you had one issue with your husband, it was that he was too married to the sea. He was too obsessed with fishing. He liked his boat too much, and he had all these sailor superstitions that you don't take seriously.

then one day, you ignore his superstitions. and a horrible eldritch force that you've never even dreamed of KILLS HIM.

your husband is DEAD and it is YOUR FAULT.

and it breaks you. So much that you take his boat, set sail, and spend your life at sea. Just like him. Embroiled in superstition and ocean magic. Just like him. Just like your least favorite parts about him. and you spend the rest of your life trying to undo the horrible thing you did, and only ever manage to end the world.

wouldn't that be so much fun?

[eel-ectricity]

The Book of The Deep is in your hands.

[whaile]

There is only one thing left to do. Throw me back.

please play the spooky fishing game

[nek-ros]

I LOVE FISH

[vieramars]

TMA + TMAGP fan cast but it's all Dredge characters

Lena

Gwen

Trevor Herbert

Melanie

Maxwell Rayner

Elias

[ms-scarletwings]

Aberrant Fish

Updated November 2024

The first hint many an angler will get of the dark, insidious secrets these waters hold,

and yet, they are the first thing to be accepted as only another flavor of mundane.

The game text calls them grotesque. The fishmonger calls them corrupted. You get to call them a bonus. Rather than fear and revile them, tradesmen will pay a shiny extra penny to add them into their stock. They are gestured to and spoken of, but never truly elaborated on by the townsfolk. They have probably been here long before most of them, and so will be here long after they are gone. They were certainly here before you. Maybe you don’t need their answers, and yet if you are like me, you still witlessly question and keep dredging for more.

Like many things pulled from those cursed depths, they whisper flecks of madness from an impossible voice. What messages do they carry, and what forces do they play vessel to? Are they the lingering embers from a long-extinguished calamity, or are they harbingers of the next one to come?

I believe we have already seen signs of fire with our own eyes- impossible, great beasts that prowl the four (now five) coasts, the dying cult, gibbering fog…. That damned book. These tortured creatures are but another form of the same smoke.

To the question of where they came from, if your fisherman pokes around enough and braves the darkness, he may have already found a response in one of the many obelisks scattered around the map. Specifically, I refer to this.

This would suggest the aberrants themselves are what leaked in through the cracks that the largest of all monsters wants to rend apart? Not entirely, but in part. For the researcher at the Stellar Basin came to her own conclusion I want to factor in.

Her words give credence to the possibility that it is actually those greater beasts themselves at the heart of the corruption. I think she was half onto something, because what if these twisted forms, both large and small, were blooms along the same set of festering roots?

The more dark stones you disturb in the frenzy of your own madness, the more you learn about the age before your arrival, about the islands, and especially about their current guardians. The Mindsuckers- carrion puppet masters given a home, the Basin creature- a spore that miraculously survived its dive to the abyss, and the Serpent- lifeless stone made animate and malicious, all had their creation remembered in great detail by the obelisks. Some hints point that their emergence was rather recent, relative to even more powerful beings, such as the leviathan.

Maybe there are even more unseen horrors far below, blessedly out of our reach, for now. My view is that the malformed beasts are the aimless children of such unfathomable things waiting beyond the veil. With them came its influence, and its corruption, and from them it continues to spread to all life surrounding. The smaller rifts were always a transformative disease upon the harbor’s fish, but with the rise of the new monsters, the sickness runs farther and less avoidably than ever. Whether these aberrant spawn are a gift to the worthy, or another deceptive evil that leads to madness remains left to be seen.

I have given a spotlight to each of these fascinating specimens at the back of Dredge’s encyclopedia, including those found in the Pale Reach and Iron Rig expansions, for further comment, ponderance, and appreciation.

[#104-109]

[#110-115]

[#116-122]

[#123-129]

[#130-135]

[#136-141]

[#142-148]

[#149-154]

[#155-159]

[#160-164]

[#165-168]

[#169-172]

[#173-180]

[#181-187]

[#188-194]

[#195-198]

[#199-202]

[#203-207]

[#208-212]

[#213-218]

[#219-224]

[#225-229]

[#230]

[Bonus I. Night Angler]

[Bonus II. Serpent]

[Bonus III. Basin Creature] (WIP)

[Bonus IV. Mindsuckers] (WIP)

[Bonus V. Unseeing Mother] (WIP)

[Bonus VI. “Narwhal”] (WIP)

[Bonus VII. Gleaming Goliath] (WIP)

[eldritchgray]

I just want it to be known that I think the little eyeball guys are really cute actually

[the-monochrome-jester]

“Silver and crimson! The book - covered in her blood!”

Throw it back

[artbysupercres]

...what happened to the previous fisherman?

Finished playing through Dredge and I absolutely loved it from start to finish. I cannot recommend it more highly.

[emiplayzmc]

Hmmmmmm this dialogue option seems familiar...

[sorelymisinken]

Dredge might as be called Dread sometimes

So anyway...

[plural-headcanons]

the Player character / The Collector from Dredge are a plural system!

[tealmaskmybeloved]

hii so i just noticed you mentioned where he shows up? so uh you can ignore that last ask & maybe share what your fave fish is? or any of your fave abberations?

HEHEGEHEHEHEHEHEHE

My favorite non-aberrated fish is likely the Scarlet Prawn

Skrunkly lil guy I love him

My favorite aberrated fish are a tie between the All Seeing Cod and a new fish that's in the Iron Rig (which is kind of spoilery if you know the story, I'll tag it as spoilers just in case)

(The new fish will be under the cut)

This guy is called the Deep Form

This guy is a secret fish, and it took me like a lot of saving and resetting to get. Now he lives in my storage locker.

You have to do a lot stuff to get him (so when you get Aberrated Bait at the beginning of the Iron Rig HOLD ON TO IT)

[whaile]

that's it. that's the game

[rukafais]

could i have gotten the ability to fish for these zones by less eldritch-worshipping means? sure, yeah

but that's not what makes it fun