THE CHRONICLES OF INTHANDONIA; Part 4, The Wizard Wars River Queen After a week of ambling along Ragu the Shaman awoke us early this morning and hurried us through a brief breakfast and back to the trail. The sun was barely above the horizon when we suddenly burst out onto a muddy riverbank lined with reeds. There were layers of fog drifting across the waters like the wraiths of failed clouds. Some distance away, over the slowly drifting current, huge trees soared above the morning river mist on the far banks. Beyond that a single giant tree of staggering proportions loomed against the cloud wracked dawn sky, its upper limbs disappearing into the damp bottom of a lumbering cumulus. This arboreal colossus deceived the eye in the dawn’s drifting vapours, its sheer scale baffling the senses. My cybernetic sensors reported that the tree was home to three separate villages of humans, all living amidst the towering branches. Between us and the monster tree flowed the Great River, Essalor Tymorg, the Great Mother. The longest waterway in the world with its headwaters reaching into southern Kaania the Tymorg, also called the Mab, eventually collected every drop of moisture that flowed down the eastern flanks of the Inha’sosul and carried them south via the Great Chasm at last to the sea beside the wondrous technopolis of Mabtillig. The Tymorg River was a name out of legends to a wandering Darthanian Wizard like me. It was navigable over much of its length yet after so long an emersion in the natural world of the jungle the sight of a steamer was still something of a visual shock to me. Paddlewheelers were a popular way to get about on Essalor Tymorg. This one was clearly steam driven, an early propulsion technology out of the foundries of Mabtillig. Even to one trained in the arcane such as I the synchronicity of the steamers appearance just as our party of four arrived at the riverbank was enough to evoke a wry smile. Of course it was also the moment that the carefully un-smug Shaman said, “Ah look. A boat! Just in time too”. He turned to me with a mischievous glint in his eye and went on, “It’s a good thing we didn’t rush through the jungle otherwise we’d have had to wait until now for the boat to arrive. With all these bugs and mosquitoes we would have been eaten alive! Remember that Bolter. Right place right time right thing”. I happily conceded the point to him. I’m not a hateful man but if there is anything I really dislike its bugs that bite. Midges, sandflies, mossies, they’re all bloodsuckers and I hate bloodsuckers. Had we rushed here as I had wanted we would have been stuck here for days on this silty shoreline with nothing to do but wait and spin insect repelling spells. I had just resigned myself to following Ragu’s advice and proceeding slowly when the old man looked at me and said, “Come on Bolter, we can’t dawdle around, we must hurry as quickly as we can”. (From the Journal of Bolgaradol Smekter) """"""""" Steamer modeled using trueSpce.