Dredging
Below the Underbelly, worn stone steps run down to the black canal: the River Stairs. Here vampires drag the water for what the city has lost. Dredging is not a profession; anyone can do it from the Dredging page.
Every cast trains your Dredging Skill (up to 100), which brings up better finds. Each cast also gives your coven 1 Devotion.
• Coins: gold.
• Leeches: a reagent for Alchemists' blood potions and dyes.
• Canal eels: familiar food (three make an Eel Pie).
• Drowned silver: Jewelcrafters recut it.
• The drowned: Spirit Dust for the Soul Harvesters.
• Familiars: if you own one, a wild amphibian or parasite may take the line. Win it in a capture battle (see Familiars).
• Keepsakes: 24 lost things, each with its story, kept in your Keepsakes collection. At most three keepsake rolls a day. Find them all for the title Mudlark of the Underbelly.
• Something very rare, once in a lifetime, for the title Ring-bearer.
At Dredging Skill 5 you meet Ruskin, an old canal rat with opinions. After that he turns up now and then (more often at night) and stays a few casts. Once you have caught all four terrapins he offers to join you: a bound familiar with a look all his own, and the title Ruskin's Apprentice.
Casting
Each cast costs 1 Action. Aim along the canal, let the hook sink and reel in your haul; a quick haul makes 10 casts at once. Watch the water for signs: a cast close to one makes what it shows about six times likelier.Every cast trains your Dredging Skill (up to 100), which brings up better finds. Each cast also gives your coven 1 Devotion.
What comes up
• Silt: rubbish, and now and then an odd fish.• Coins: gold.
• Leeches: a reagent for Alchemists' blood potions and dyes.
• Canal eels: familiar food (three make an Eel Pie).
• Drowned silver: Jewelcrafters recut it.
• The drowned: Spirit Dust for the Soul Harvesters.
• Familiars: if you own one, a wild amphibian or parasite may take the line. Win it in a capture battle (see Familiars).
• Keepsakes: 24 lost things, each with its story, kept in your Keepsakes collection. At most three keepsake rolls a day. Find them all for the title Mudlark of the Underbelly.
• Something very rare, once in a lifetime, for the title Ring-bearer.
Tools
Everyone dredges with a grapnel that never wears out. Crafters make better rigs for the davit, each good for a few hundred casts: the Armorsmiths' Drag Net (more leeches and eels), the Weaponsmiths' Weighted Line (more silver, Keepsakes and familiars, fewer snags) and the Alchemists' Pressure Lantern, which burns after dark and makes Keepsakes and familiars likelier.The terrapins and Ruskin
Four old Drain Terrapins (Turner, Rossetti, Millais and Waterhouse) live in the canal. They take the line more often after dark, and each must be won in a capture battle.At Dredging Skill 5 you meet Ruskin, an old canal rat with opinions. After that he turns up now and then (more often at night) and stays a few casts. Once you have caught all four terrapins he offers to join you: a bound familiar with a look all his own, and the title Ruskin's Apprentice.