Dregger

*Posted by : Winteroak on Mar 4, 2018, 6:27pm*

Dusk - 18th August - The Rose District - Early evening

Archibald Potter sat in the corner of the Broken Jug drinking deep from his mug of saffron flavored mead.
The tavern was one of the smallest and less opulent in the Rose district, probably because it was popular with the few patrons that could afford to cross the Northwest Bridge from the Sprawl.
The aroma of fluffy onions and cream bread reminded him that he had not eaten since yesterday. He hoped he could make a few extra coppers today and maybe even afford a juicy slab of simmered Pepper Lamb. His mouth immediately salivated at the thought of meat. Times were hard for Dreggers in Dusk.

The City Council and First Citizen Josiah Hazard had cancelled most river side construction projects for the upcoming year. Talk of building several new bridges over the Styx were now nothing more than pipe dreams and wishful thinking for the likes of Archibald. He was stuck in the same menial job he had been for all his adult life.
Dreggers were those that kept the polluted river clean of excessive detritus dump by the citizens on its waters. They kept the waters flowing, cleared blockages and avoided that the dread God of Hemophilia and Plaga roamed the streets of Dusk with more impunity than it already did.
Dreggers kept the city cleaner but no one gave two shits about the work they did.

To Archibald, the Styx was no longer a river but a cesspool of human and factory waste. It was a dirty and sickly pool of disease, virulent, that only the most hardy of souls could brave.
Or those with a little watercraeft skill like himself.
Members of the Rising Star and the Red Crew were already calling for them to strike.
They had approached those with skill like Archibald that morning by the Fell Oak Pier. The idea was to have the dockers spend the night digging, shaping, shoving and clearing away great weights of craefted water. To create a great trench dug in the river.
To have it yawn fifty or more feed across, an enormous slice of air cut out of the river water, stretching the hundred feet from one bank to the other. Narrow trenches of water were to be left at either side, and here and there along the bottom, to stop the river damming.
"FAIR WAGES NOW! they would demand and "NO RAISE, NO RIVER."

Archibald drank the last of his mead. Like the militia would ever allow them to do something like this without strenconsequences. Action such as this would not result only in a few busted heads but anyone involved especially those with watercraeft would be looking at hard time in the Black Gallows.

And anyway there weren't enough of them left for such an undertaking. Those activists were just spoiling for a fight and Archibald was too old for that kind of shit.
You'll still see the odd docker or Dregger doing it sometimes, in FellOak or Fog Bend. A whole gang of them could shape quite a bit of the river. They used to dig holes in the water down to where split cargoes lied on the bottom, so the cranes could hook them. Fucking amazing. In the past some would claim, when the Styx was still biological alive, they used it to cut trenches of air through it, then drive fish into them. They would just fly out of the flat side of the river and flop onto the ground. Brilliant...

Anyway, these days it's mostly just used to arse about, make little sculptures.
Like he did now for a bit of extra coin. Two man at the bar were looking at him. He sighed. Yes, a few dancing tiny water sculptures and maybe he could eat well tonight.