Every Dredge Aberration (2023), Part 16

Every Dredge Aberration (2023), Part 16

Feral Lizardfish

Encyclopedia #169

Aberrant form of lizardfish

Description:

A bipedal body burgeons with primitive limbs, preparing for an ascent.

Comment: …Is there really anything else worth saying?

How to catch: These awful, awful things share the frigid waters with the rest of the new region’s fish. I’d recommend using the rod to seek them out over the dinky little net offered by the merchants, for reasons I hope I made clear in the last segment.

Bulbous Toothfish

Encyclopedia #170

Aberrant form of toothfish

Description:

Vessels feed a distended, fluid-filled body. A shadow stirs inside.

Comment: I do hate that “Is this where pale graspers come from?” was the most optimistic line of thought I initially ran down at the first sight of this poor host. A trophy sized specimen can be caught nearing 7 feet long, that passenger is not to be assumed as some ignorable little cuttlefish. Horrible things have grown from smaller seeds. Listen, at least in my view, that bastard mystery spawn of the stars is a thing to fear in implication. Relieve these poor fish of their burden, and the seas of these invading strangers, and do it without guilt.

How to catch: This is a rod-only catch of the icey waters.

Grisly Shark

Encyclopedia #171

Aberrant form of goblin shark

Description:

Errant teeth push through failing skin. A single mouth is not enough.

Comment: But can the other mouths also do this?

How to catch: For time spent catching these, they can be a decent money maker for those still in the process of exploring the Reach. Rod them up from those dark, chilly depths where found.

Pale Grasper

Encyclopedia #172

Aberrant form of colossal squid

Description:

Hands of ice reach upward, a sharp hoarfrost blooming across whatever they touch.

Comment: Enormous, eldritch, iconic… the largest and most infamous of the catchable stock under that ice. My theory runs that these colossal agents work on behalf of the great sleeping master, patchworking and keeping the flows knit together, even in these warmer waters where otherwise impossible.

How to catch: For most, this is the very last aberration, at least within the Pale Reach, they will obtain. They are a net-only catch that is only awarded to the patient and/or the lucky, to the chagrin of many a fisherman around the ice. Requiring 11 slots of cargo space, they are completely ignored by the brittle net, requiring you to have otherwise completed your exploration and tasks in the Pale Reach before even thinking about trawling one of these up. You’ll know the appropriate equipment when you find it. Colossal squid are already an uncommon sight, and their twisted brethren much more so. This is why I advise attaching as much other equipment known to raise the chances of grotesque catches as can fit to help the odds. At a whopping $500-$625 per specimen, you’ll think your time well compensated for at first. Not to burst any bubbles on that front, but do keep in mind that their incredible size rounds their base value-per-slot as around $45.45. This is a relatively high price for a fish, but it is still narrowly beat by the cleft mouth shark’s $45.83 per slot base price.

Fallen Stars

Encyclopedia #173

Aberrant form of sea stars

Description:

An assembly of asteroids, conjoined in the dark. Finger-like roots stretch down through the substrate.

Comment: How many more will they send down? Less and less, Dredge gives me a world where I can look up at the great expanse beyond the ground and sea, and call it “the heavens”. There are things below us we were never meant to disturb, just as the things above should know not to disturb us. How many rungs exist on this great ladder?

How to catch: Taking only 2 slots and readily found anywhere in The Reach plentiful in life and measuring at over 50 meters deep, you shouldn’t have to do much waiting to get your hands on sea stars with your crab pots.

King’s Wreath

Encyclopedia #174

Aberrant form of King Crab

Description:

A clockwork crown of claws. A cycle of succession in the deep.

Comment: You know, it’s almost disappointing that there were no new paints to be found from scouring the Pale Reach. I would have found the slate-grey of these mutated crabs to be a nice addition to the pigments available in Little Marrow, fittingly cold and sleek. I guess a full grotesque collection will be keepsake enough for tackling these new abominations. To date, the King’s Wreath makes the final entry in the encyclopedia its throne.

How to catch: Like the above, this is another quarry meant for the pot. Same depth and biome, just keep in mind that they take up a 2x2 square of space when selecting your traps. I still personally use the maw of the deep for all of my crab fishing, and I carried that habit unchanged to the new area.

*coughs * aHEM…

It’s not “if GIR had a gun” it’s “if it ever occurred to GIR to use the city-leveling arsenal he already possesses outside of brief threats in duty mode”

To anyone in here thinking that Zim would try to wrestle away a glock from GIR, the show itself has several moments of the exact opposite happening, in fact: Zim trying to upgrade GIR’s military capabilities only for the little guy to immediately disarm himself in favor of nonsense like filling his jet thrusters with tuna fish. GIR is violent and dangerous not in a “toddler wielding a gun” sense but in a “toddler putting every small animal or strange object it finds in its mouth” sense. And in the case of GIR “getting a gun” as in gaining the motivation and competence to actually those devices on Zim or any other character in the show, we had “GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff”, and thankfully the series survived it.

Zim, GIR, and Minimoose all have weapons practically stitched into them that could probably vaporize you in an instant, stuff that would put any Earth arsenal to shame. What they don’t have is the competence to wield them well.

[Image ID: A book next to a significantly larger book. The first book is labelled “Invader Zim”. The second is labelled “Invader Zim if GIR had a gun”. A small section of the second book’s pages are shaded blue and the rest is shaded red. There’s a colour code guide at the bottom, showing that the small blue section represents “conquering the Earth” and the big red section represents “trying to get the gun off GIR”. End ID]

Dib idly humming Flibba Dibba Hoinka Smeedge (it’s still stuck in his head from the whole Florpus adventure) at the Skool and Zim groaning when he recognizes the tune. Shouts at him to cut it out immediately. Turns out at some point that song was basically the space equivalent of “Friday” or “What Does the Fox Say” and he could never stand it. The lyrics are also absurdly vulgar in another language.

Yknow when you watch IZ again binge style it’s really funny looking at how quickly Dib’s main victory layout pivoted from “capture the alien” to “expose the alien” to “just keep foiling his attempts to destroy the world while still looking for a lucky opportunity to go back on the offense” like it would be really sad if he didn’t still have all of the confident swagger of a 12 year old boy who thinks he’s the protagonist despite it all. But seriously it’s also funny. Because that would be literally any of us as soon as we realized Zim is damn near impossible to actually apprehend. Like credit to Dib for once because my game plan would have switched to outright assassination by season 2, since it’s seemingly more feasible to straight up kill an Irken than to try and incapacitate one. And killing one seems like the kind of difficulty that would have had me dead or hiding in a bunker by season 3.