Thats Right Bitches I Found A New Game To Get Obsessed With - Tumblr Posts

Addendum: Close Encounters of the Piscine kind

I bear news of startling implication, as have many other watchers of the peculiar, for what was once a hesitant speculation has come to pass as prophecy.

It is happening. The corruption of marine life has finally been confirmed to be on the rise, spread beyond what once we assumed were its contained boundaries, and even with it, arrives the infamous Marrows miasma. From one wonder of the world, now these grotesque creatures are finding themselves visitor to another- the Blue Hole tourist destination; a craterous lagoon gaining renown for its own rumored mysteries and for being home to a global headquarters of exotic dining.

There is still no answer to whether the crimson fog is what induces the mutagenic infection to take hold, or if the fog itself is a product of the rift-spawn’s presence. All we can be certain of is that the fog does indeed signify the arrival of these tenacious breeds. At least, as of yet, the weather anomaly has been noted to not bring any significant risk to boats and ports it passes over, other than the decreased visibility. Compared to what has been noted of its qualities closer to its source, it appears that crimson fog is of no special concern this far away from the Marrow Islands. A previous disappearance of a cargo vessel around Blue hole has also been confirmed as not associated with any red fog event. Nonetheless, local advisory already warns mariners and swimmers of lingering in the coastal fog after dark, and more than a couple wirlpool incidents have been correlated with it.

Yet, just as in their home waters, the fog signals a warning for most to avoid, and an exciting trail for some to follow. Merchants and devotees of a fledgling religious movement are flocking to the atoll in their interest for the tainted fish, and to sate their demand, more brave fishermen have risen to the task of harvesting specimens. Amazingly, new reports have even come in from some who were fearless enough to spearfish for these aberrations. For the very first time now, we have up face to face sightings with living aberrants! Never-before-seen details about some of their wild behavior and ferociousness is, and longer a matter of conjecture, thanks to anonymous accounts from the Blue Hole region.

[Fog Coast - Part One]

[Fog Coast - Part Two]

[Black Cliff - Part One]

[Black Cliff - Part Two]

[Jellyfish Basin - Part One]

[Jellyfish Basin - Part Two]

Aberrant Fish

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 that unfathomable thing which waits 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 will be giving a spotlight to each of these fascinating specimens at the back of Dredge’s encyclopedia, including those found in the Pale Reach, for further comment and appreciation. Updating the list below as we go along!

[#79-84]

[#85-90]

[#91-96]

[#97-102]

[#103-108]

[#109-114]

[#115-120]

[#121-126]

[#127-132]

[#133-138]

[#139-144]

[#145-150]

[#163-168]

[#169-174]

[Bonus I. Night Angler]

[Bonus II. Serpent]

[Bonus III. Basin Creature]

[Bonus IV. Mindsuckers]

[Bonus V. Unseeing Mother]

[Bonus VI. “Narwhal”]