The next morning after everyone was awake an odd air hungover camp. No one wanted to take the lead. Sure everyone agreed the night before that it was for the best for them to move along and find a town, preferably a larger one so it would be easier to either get a new shield or repair Alaric’s old one. But in actuality they were lost. As such they had no real clue where to go to find civilization. It wasn’t a true loss, as they still had the normal landmarks around them.
Because of them being lost, no one wanted to be the one who made the choice, not knowing if their choice would be a poor one. Leading to more pain, or even death in the group.
“Ah damn it.” Alaric cursed. “Fine, if no one is going to step up and pick a direction, I guess I will be the one to do so.” Alaric stood up and shouldered his pack just walking in a straight line into the brush.
The rest of the group just stood there watching Alaric make his way through the undergrowth, not truly watching Alaric though. As the underbrush that Alaric walked into was actually just as tall if not taller that he was.
The other three stood there looking at each other. Eventually Bjorn shrugged and said. “At least he had the good sense to follow the water, we are bound to run into something eventually.” As he was finishing his statement he also shouldered his considerably smaller, but not much lighter pocket, Bjorn started after Alaric.
“You dummies.” Meira called out. “At least follow closer to the stream, the underbrush is less dense over there.” Lowering her tone she looked at Tayla. “Sometimes I wonder if men even think at all before they act. Those two definitely don’t.”
As she was finishing speaking there was a loud splashing sound followed by a string of curses. “Everyone watch out there is a small creek running through the underbrush that is surprisingly deep.” Everything fell quiet for a few seconds, the only sounds were of Bjorn also pushing his way through the underbrush. “Hey Bjorn, do you mind giving me a hand? My foot seems to be stuck under this demandable log.”
Meira and Tayla just shook their heads. “Men.” they both intoned.
The first few days after leaving their small makeshift campsite were relatively peaceful. They made slow, but definite progress forwards as they crunched their way through the underbrush that followed the stream. Their slow progress was due to the fact that the stream didn’t follow the easiest path, it liked to meander and twist it’s way through the landscape making its way generally downhill though. At one point Bjorn was pretty sure he saw the water flow uphill though. When he put the idea to the other three they came back with one answer. “Magic.” Even with the slow progress they still traversed over 10 to 15 miles a day before stopping for the night. By the end of the first three days the stream couldn’t entirely be called that, as the stream had now widened leading to a small river 4 feet across that had plenty of water traveling through it.
Intuiting that the bigger the waterway grew the higher chance they had to run into people they followed the river. It was almost a week after they made their way leaving their camp before they came across any signs of life. As there were clear signs that wood had been either harvested or cleared away alongside the embankment of either side of the river. By now the river had widened even further, making it almost 40 to 50 feet across. And from where they stood they weren’t entirely convinced that it would be safe to cross anytime soon.
It was the morning of the 8th day since setting out that they actually saw their first person. Well to be entirely fair, too many people. As a large flat bottomed boat floated lazily down the river from a larger fork that merged with the existing river. When they called out to the people on the boat the passengers just politely waved before continuing their journey down river.
As it turned out that one boat was only the first one they came across, seeing two to three boats lazily running down river, or having teams of people on either side of the boat with large wooden sticks in their hands, as they slowly made their way back up river. The entire thing was oddly satisfying to watch.
They stood there and watched as the teams of pushers would take their long wooden sticks, planting them into the soft mud of the river. Once they were inserted the entire group would strain against their wooden poles until the large barges would start to move under them. Once the ponderous crafts started to move the pusher’s job became substantially easier.
Luckily for the ones doing the pushing the river was wide enough that it was rather a slow moving river, leading to easy jobs just walking their way from bow to stern, over and over. Over the course of a few days they saw only a handful of boats. There were two large flat bottom barges used for transporting large quantities of goods. There was just the one boat with the passengers. And there were two smaller vessels which by the look of them, and the nets draped over the back, the last two boats were most likely fishing boats.
Each time they saw a boat they tried to flag it down, and each time that they tried they were ignored, or just waved at as the boats continued their trek. The most people they saw were 11 people on one boat, it was the largest boat they had seen overall. They had 5 on each side walking the length of the boat with their poles, and one person standing on a raised platform, who looked to be steering the boat.
Not ones to be daunted by them being continually ignored, the small group kept moving on. Even though they spent most of every day walking, their progress along the river was slow. This time it wasn’t so much to do with the lazy and weird ways that rivers moved, no it was them coming across smaller rivers that met up with the one they were following. Even though the rivers were smaller, they were by no means small.
Each time they came across a new river they would either need to try and cross it right there, meaning their clothes would get soaked. Or they had to follow the river upstream to find a better place to make their way across. Sometimes they found fallen trees, other times it was a nice shallow part of the river, they even came across a simple, rickety rope bridge spanning the water.
It was the sixth boat that gave them luck in the end. As they saw a boat slowly making its way down the river they tried to flag the boat down. At the stern there was a single old elf who was working the rudder. Upon seeing their waving hands he started to angle the boat towards their side of the river bank.
As he neared he called out. “Oi there! Are you in need of a ride?”
Tayla was the one to respond. “That we do, if you were willing to give us one that would be greatly appreciated.”
“I might be able to, as long as you aren’t trying to take my boat from me, I hate bandits. My last crew had the thought to take my boat from me.”
Alaric laughed. “That is a sentiment I can agree with, can’t stand bandits.”
“Alright you seem nice enough, I’ll bring the bow of my boat near the bank, you’ll have to do the rest yourself.” During this entire exchange the boat had been floating lazily down river getting closer and closer to level with the group. True to this word the old elf was able to angle his vessel towards the shore and lightly bump into the side of the river. “Quickly now, before we drift too far apart.”
Leaping into action all four of them made it onto the boat fairly easily. Once everyone was on board the old elf once again angled the boat out back into the deeper parts of the river. The boat they found themselves on was a relatively small boat around 40 feet from bow to stern. The deck they were now standing on was filled with wooden crates two to three feet across.
As they were navigating back to deeper waters the elf started speaking. “Well now that you are on my ship I think proper introductions are in order. I am Jeb, and you are?”
That last question wasn’t directed at anyone in particular so Bjorn jumped in. “Hi, I am Bjorn. The dwarf is Alaric. Meira is the elf. Which leaves Tayla being the tiefling. We are pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Pleasures mine. You all are an odd looking bunch, what brings you out here? And why are you on the banks of the Hafbourg?”
“Hafbourg?” Asked Alaric. “Is that the name of the river we are on?” The old elf nodded. “As to what brought us out here. We started traveling west out of Vanta, going straight into the Summergate woods. We got tired of the city life, you know how it is. When you have a need to move, nothing will ever satisfy that need except for traveling.”
“Aye aye, aye aye.” Said Jeb. “I understand that all too well, after all it is hard to stay in one place when you have a boat. After all, when the water starts to move you, it is foolish to fight the tide.”
“True words master Jeb.” Said Meira.
Jeb scrunched his nose at Meira’s words. “Jeb will do just nicely, and I’ll thank you for using it.”
Bowing her head slightly. “Sorry, Jeb, it’s just my parents raised me a certain way, and it never hurts to be polite.”
Jeb’s face softened at her words, “Aye, that is true. Sorry, I’ve just been on edge lately. What with my crew trying to mutiny me.”
Tayla picked up the line of questions. “That is the second time you have said that now, has there been trouble on the water lately for you?”
“Oh, has there been. I was just coming from up river less than a week ago when the new crew I picked up in Pram decided they would be better at running my ship than I would be. Little did they know, I actually helped build this beauty. As such I know all of her dirty little secrets. Needless to say their attempted mutiny didn’t work out so well for them, and they ended up in the river.”
Jeb stopped in his tale to give a hearty laugh at that before he continued. “As such I didn’t let them back up on the boat, so they had no choice but to swim back to shore. The last I saw of them they were on the beach looking like drowned rats. Serves them right if you ask me, trying to take a man’s livelihood from him.” Jeb’s tone made a drastic change from jovial to very stern. “Now don’t get any funny ideas, I can promise you that no matter how good your plan is, if you try to take my boat from me you will end up with the same fate as the other 3 that tried to take it from me.”
Raising her hands, Meira made to speak, but Tayla beat her to it. “Trust us, we have no wish to take your boat from you. We are just glad to not be shoving our way through the fronds on the side of the river. We have been at it for almost two weeks now. I can speak for all of us here and say we are glad to be moving without having to walk there ourselves.” Tayla dropped her heavy pack down to the deck of the ship with a heavy clunk.
“That is too true.” Said Jeb with a chuckle. “I have spent more than my fair share pushing through the underbrush along the river. I understand you all too well. Honestly me stopping to pick you up wasn’t fully altruistic. Although I am quite the captain, it will still be hard to bring it into port at Blackrock Bay all by myself. So once I saw all of you on the bank back there I figured you might be helpful.”
A look of puzzlement crossed Alaric’s face. “I have never heard of Blackrock Bay.”
“I don’t entirely know why they called it a bay, as it isn’t a bay at all. There are two major rivers that make their way through Escar. One is the Hafbourg river. The other is Sandbourg. Where they meet is Blackrock bay. As to why they call it Blackrock, that will be quite obvious when we get there.”
“How far out are we from Blackrock bay?” Asked Bjorn.
“If we keep up this speed, we should be there in 4 or 5 days. That being said, if any of you have any sailing, or boating experience we should get there sooner. As it stands I either drop anchor, or beach myself at night, that way I can prepare my dinner, and get a little shut eye.”
Looking around at the prospective sailors all Jeb got was shaken heads. “Well no worries, we can still teach you. That being said, no matter what we do, we will be stopping for night every time. We could probably keep going at night, but with the meandering path of the river I don’t think we should do so. You never know when the ground will change, or if there is a log just under the surface for us to get caught up on. Anyways, go on, there is a small cabin in the front of the ship, go ahead and get settled in, I have a feeling that you will be riding with me for at least a few days. That is if you are wanting to go to Blackrock bay, although with where you were heading it seems like that is your only choice.”
“Blackrock bay sounds just what we were looking for.” Bjorn said honestly. “To tell you the truth we didn’t really have much of a plan going forwards, we were just kind of wondering. We met some trouble with an arrowhead toad a few days back and our gear is a little worse for wear.”
To emphasize Bjorn’s words Alaric pulled off his shield and held it up for Jeb to inspect. As he did so his eyes got increasingly large. “By the look of these holes that arrowhead toad must have been quite a large one.” He gave the group another speculative look. “You know, if the four of you could kill a fully grown Arrowhead toad I am not actually convinced I could get you off my ship. But you seem decent folk, no need for me to worry I guess. Go get yourself settled in, and if any of you want to learn how to drive a boat come back over and I’ll give you a bit of a lesson.”
They made their way forward on the deck of the boat picking their way through the forest of crates. When they made it to the front there was a small covered area. The deck of the boat was sunken under the covered area making it so the wooden roof was only 2 feet over the deck of the boat. There were a set of steps leading down into the small crew area. The crew area was a 4 feet wide, 6 feet long, by 5 feet high rectangle. Built into the walls on either side of the rectangle were small bunks filled with small pads that would make sleeping almost bearable, but not by much, as they would be sleeping on polished wood.
“Well, it ain’t much, but it is still better than walking.” Meira commented as she set her pack down before going inside and taking a look around.
“You know, I am all for trusting this old elf, but I still think we should still do our rotation of keeping watch.” Alaric said.
“I agree.” Said Tayla. “It was awfully nice for him to take us in and let us get a ride to Blackrock bay. But that doesn’t mean we need to completely trust him.”
After they were all settled and figured out the logistics of how they were going to keep watch Bjorn was curious, so we went up on deck and started looking about. The entire boat was 47 feet long to be exact, according to Jeb, and 12 and a half feet wide. It was a river boat, made to only survive in those conditions. Jeb was very proud of his boat, as he said so himself multiple times. The construction of the boat was reinforced at the bow of the ship to help it survive anything that it could run into while traversing the water. With a shallow keel it made it perfect for traversing either the larger rivers like the Hafbourg, or any of the other countless smaller rivers. As long as the river was wide enough to accommodate the ship it could traverse waters around 3 feet deep without issues.
As it turned out Jeb didn’t ever really shut up. He was true to his word, although his definition of a bit of a lesson differed greatly from what Bjorn’s definition would be. It was surprising how knowledgeable the old elf was. That was if you could keep him on track, Jeb seemed to have a bit of a habit to wander with his lessons. He would talk for around a minute about something that was important to sailing, then he would wander off for up to half an hour talking about this or that, or telling a story.
Jeb had been sailing ever since he was a boy, his father owned a merchant fleet on the coast before a series of bad luck and poor decisions picked Jeb’s fathers fleet apart. Some boats were lost to sea, others to monsters from the deep. A few he had to sell off to help alleviate his business from hemorrhaging money. The rest of his ships were seized by Escar to help in their war with Cronkrum, a goblin country to the north of Escar. Where the rest of the ships were lost, they were used for troops and goods transport. Over the course of the war they were either lost to the goblins or sunk by them.
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To call Cronkrum a kingdom is a bit of a stretch. Goblin society is mostly governed by the strongest goblin, they are normally a fierce, combative race. They are prolific breeders so their population is always a problem. The best thing at keeping the goblin population in check is ironically goblins themselves. A goblin settlement is a rough place to live, there is a lot of stealing, fighting, and murder that happens. Mostly goblin society is dominated by one strong goblin, who takes control and then the rest kind of fall in line. At least the best they can.
The entire space from the Restless volcano to the glistening sea was infested by goblins. Escar and Laolin came together to try and fight against goblins and eradicate them. But the war didn’t go in either side's favor. The goblin king, at least that is what he called himself, is strong enough that he was able to force a large portion of the goblins to fight for him. Hundreds of thousands of goblins made their way to the border between Laolin, Escar, and Cronkrum to fight for supremacy. The war still continues to this day, but neither side has been able to gain enough of an advantage to win out. The combined forces of Escar and Laolin are stronger as a whole. The goblins have taken an approach of quantity of quality, the endless waves of goblins make it hard to push into their territory.
The war between the three countries was only one of the topics that Jeb covered. It took a while but eventually Bjorn learned how to keep Jeb’s babble on topic. As such Bjorn gained a new skill.
Congratulations you have gained the skill: Sailing, somehow. Through the incessant babble of a geriatric elf you have gleaned enough information to start to understand the workings of a ship, and how it interacts with the flow of water. You have started down the path that many have learned is the easiest and often most efficient form to transport goods long distances. Why carry heavy stuff when you can have water do that for you?
Once Bjorn gained the skill of sailing it was easier for him to keep Jeb on track as the elf just kept on with his speech. None of the others had any interest in listening to Jeb and trying to learn how to sail, at least when it was Jeb that was teaching them how to do so. As such they left him alone on the back of the ship and they spent all of their time either down in the cabin or sitting out in the sun on the deck of the ship.
A little annoyed at his traitorous friends Bjorn didn’t mind too much as he listened to Jeb. There were many things about the Eld and the history of the planet that Bjorn didn’t know. Jeb was more than willing to fill in. Luckily for Bjorn he didn’t have to ask many questions to get the man to speak, in all honesty he didn’t even get the chance to ask many questions, as the elf often ignored the questions and just kept monologuing about this and that. He was a font of knowledge, and he wasn’t afraid to share his knowledge. It was arguable if the shared knowledge actually was knowledge, or if it was speculation, but either way Bjorn didn’t mind.
It wasn’t until the third day that they were on the boat before Jeb let Bjorn have a hand at the tiller. Which didn’t last long, around 30 seconds after Jeb relinquished control on the tiller he took it back from Bjorn. Citing some excuse to take it back for a while. Over the course of the day he would let Bjorn have control a handful of times. Each time he let Bjorn steer the ship longer and longer. By the end of the third day he let him control the ship for around 3 minutes at a time.
Near the end of the fourth day Jeb let Bjorn have control for around 15 minutes at a time before taking it back. The entire process of steering the ship down this slow river was surprisingly easy, it was nice and slow in the middle and the water picked up speed near the edges so it naturally guided itself towards the middle of the river.
Over the four days they came across other vessels, mostly fishing boats or hauling boats like the one Jeb had. There was one large obvious warship that they passed. It was a good sight larger than all of the ships that they passed, and from where they sat lower on the water they could see large weapons set onto the deck of the ship. On the back they had a catapult built into it. At the bow there was a large ballista that looked to shoot bolts at least several feet long. There were also a few smaller ballista built into the sides of the ship that could swivel and could shoot all along the side of the ship.
As the day went on, on the fourth day the banks of the river around them started to rise, as if the river had once flown there and over time cut a large gouge in the land around them. Towards evening the banks of the ground surrounding the river were over 50 feet above them in height. As the suns were starting to near the horizon a large black object could start to be seen off in the distance.
“Yep, that is Blackrock Bay.” Said Jeb. “I suspect we will be there by nightfall, the river is starting to narrow, and as such the water is picking up speed.”
Jeb’s prediction came true. As the suns made their way behind the horizon the large black mound started to light up with small lights. As they neared the mound true darkness was starting to settle over the land, tonight was surprisingly devoid of light as none of the moons had made it into the sky yet. What wasn’t devoid of light was the land ahead of them. The river seemed to cut straight through the large stone outcropping. On either side of the river large pools of water were either cut into the stone or had naturally worn away creating large pools of slow water.
Inside the pools docks were built and ships were moored. The docks were filled with light as large lights affixed to the large stone walls angled downward to give plenty of light to those on the docks. Also sporadically affixed to the dock itself there were lanterns that were producing less strong light.
Angling them towards the northern side of the river Jeb was aiming for the docks that had more space in between each dock. “Alright Bjorn, I need you to go to the bow of the ship and take the rope there, when I bring it in close I need you to leap across to the dock and use the rope to tie us off. We can adjust later. Tie it off just how I told you to do so.”
Nodding Bjorn moved to the bow, with how little light there was aboard the ship Bjorn cast his simple light spell and set the light to float right above the bow of the ship. Jeb didn’t make a comment for once about anything, keeping his mouth shut at seeing Bjorn cast light magic. Finding the rope Bjorn hefted it and readied himself to jump across and find the nearest mooring post.
Once they were near Bjorn jumped across to the dock and quickly found the nearest mooring post. Deftly he tied the mooring line off, to hopefully keep the ship in place. Once that line was in place Alaric took another rope from the port side of the boat and tied it off just as the other one was to the bow of the ship. Then he threw the new rope to Bjorn, and quickly joined him on the dock. They made their way to the front of the dock and found another mooring post. Wrapping the line around the post once Alaric grabbed the line on the free end of the post and Bjorn the rope. Heaving together they slowly pulled the ship into the dock until the previous rope was tight. It was then a laborious process of tying off the rope that they used to hold the ship in place, moving their backup rope to a different post, and then going back to the rope at the front of dock and starting all over again.
In the end it took over 15 minutes of work to get the bow of the ship to the front of the dock and tie it off, then they tied the back of the ship off to the dock. Only then did Jeb relax and make his way onto the dock.
“I’m surprised, I expect to see the dock master. Oh well, I guess we will have to talk to him in the morning.”
At the end of Jeb's sentence the large flood lights extinguished themselves sinking the harbor into partial darkness. The lamps spaced periodically out across the dock did plenty to allow them to see, just not enough to see everything.
“Those lights are the reason I am surprised, normally when the lights come on it is bright enough to wake her up, I guess not tonight though.”
“Jeb, why did they turn off?”
“Oh that, there is something that allows them to sense when boats are approaching, when they get near enough the lights turn themselves on. Once the boat has safely made it to port, or continued onwards the lights turn themselves off. It is some sort of magic that is above my head honestly. You should ask Bjorn, he might know. I saw him do some light magic there, there might be some overlap.”
Shaking his head more for Jeb’s benefit than the group's benefit, as they already knew all of his magical capabilities for light magic. “I don’t know enough to even try to replicate that effect. I am very interested in how it all works, I guess I'll have to settle for asking around later. Do you mind if we stay on the boat tonight Jeb? It is dark enough that I think it would be best that we search for other accommodations in town tomorrow.”
“Of course you are welcome to stay, I don’t think I could have gotten us to dock without you two.” Jeb indicated both Bjorn and Alaric. Jeb fell into an uncharacteristically silence. Bjorn was just about to ask him what was up when Jeb spoke up again. “You know if you guys want I would be willing to give you a job aboard my boat. With my mutinous crew I am going to need a few more hands to help out around here. Bjorn, you seemed to come to sailing naturally, it would be a pleasure if you decided to stay on. I would pay you of course, that is if you were willing to do so.” Jeb started to look around between everyone hopefully.
Everyone shared a glance, no one gave a hint one way or the other. Tayla was the one who conveyed her thoughts first, by giving an imperceptible shake of her head to all but Bjorn and Meira.
“I’m sorry Jeb, I appreciate your offer but I think we will have to decline.” Meira said.
Jeb looked a little crestfallen at the rejection, but not giving up hope he turned to Bjorn. “If I can’t get everyone to stay, how about you Bjorn? You seem interested in sailing, and I will even make you my first mate. I promise I will treat you fairly and pay you generously. What do you say?”
Shaking his head, Bjorn gave his reply. “I’m sorry Jeb, but I can’t leave my friends behind, we have been through too much, besides we count on each other for more than just our friendship.”
“I get it.” Jeb said sounded dejected. “You can’t split the party, it is a damn shame though. Well no need to dwell on it, I’ll take care of everything else here, you all go get some shut eye, I expect you will have a lot you need to take care of tomorrow.”
Giving Jeb their thanks they made their way to bed taking their normal shifts of watch. In the morning they were awoken to the sound of crates being moved around. Grabbing their gear they made their way back on deck where 8 men were on board all grabbing and hauling boxes around. Jeb stood at the helm of the ship talking to a man who had an official look to him. The man was dressed in some sort of fancy uniform and had an obnoxiously large hat on his head. They made their way through the boxes heading for Jeb.
As they approached Jeb noticed them and his face lit up, before falling a little. “I suppose that is you off then.”
“Unless you want us to stick around and help off load the crates.” Bjorn said.
“No, I appreciate it, but no. That is what the dock hands are for, they load and unload any goods off of the boats that put to dock. Thank you for your company.” Jeb said as he came down off of the raised platform and stuck out his hand for everyone to shake.
“You know Jeb, I never asked, what do you have in the crates?” Bjorn asked.
A collective groan escaped the lips of the other three. “It’s no big secret, it is mostly food and bolts of cloth. You know I actually got the grain over two weeks ago up near Abbotsford…”
As Jeb started into his tirade Meira, Alaric, and Tayla all started to take slow steps away from Jeb, as they did so Meira reached out and grabbed ahold of Bjorn’s hand gently pulling him away. “You know this sure is interesting Jeb, but I think it is best that we go, we have a lot to do today as it is.”
Once Meira finished speaking her gentle pull turned into a full bodied pull. Chuckling to himself Bjorn allowed himself to be pulled away as they made their way away from Jeb, who for his part didn’t even seem to notice the lack of the friends as he turned his attention onto the official standing next to him.
“I will not have you making us stand there listening to Jeb for hours again.” Tayla said as she got behind Bjorn and pushed him from behind.
They made their way onto the docks, which now in daylight they could tell was situated into a natural cavern in the middle of the rocks. On one side of the cave a set of wide stairs had been cut into the cave leading up. From where they stood they got a good view of the other side of the river, which at this point was around 50 feet across. The other side of the river looked similar to the one they were docked at, the only difference was that the wharf had smaller spaces to accommodate more fishing vessels.
They could also see that the river had cut a line right through the center of the surrounding stone. The river had made a 60 foot tall tunnel that ran straight through the interior of the surrounding rock. 40 feet above the water a large stone structure had been built; it had large stone pillars that ran down into the water at regular intervals. The pillars were connected by large stone arches and above those a large stone wall had been built. Above the stone structure was open sky.
“What do you think those are used for?” Asked Meira.
“Maybe it is used to help defend the port.” Speculated Tayla.
“Maybe, but why is it so wide, and there doesn’t seem to be any parapets or anything at the top of the structure.” Alaric said.
Bjorn started walking backwards while facing his friends, making his way to the stairs. “I bet if we take those stairs we will be able to find out.”
They made their way up the stairs which went up around 40 feet before leveling off and ting into a tunnel. The interior of the tunnel was lit up by small orbs that had been affixed to the ceiling which gave off a gentle white glow bathing the black stone around them, giving the tunnel a surprisingly welcoming feel. On one end of the tunnel led to a natural light, which came from the direction that would be back towards the river. The other end led to another set of stairs making its way up.
Not waiting for the party Bjorn started walking towards the light. The tunnel widened as he went, which ended in the open air. In front of them was a large channel which water coursed through flowing downhill. When Jeb said that Blackrock Bay was where the two rivers met, he meant it literally. The Hafbourg ran east to west across the Summergate, while Sandbourg ran north south, and where the two rivers met was in the middle of Blackrock Bay.
Sandbourg had over the years cut the large ebony stone outcropping in half right down the middle. With Sandbourg eventually cutting into the starting point of the Hafbourg. The structure in front of them had been built to stop the Sandbourg from pouring into the Hafbourg. Avoiding two different ecological disasters. The first one being that the now combined flow of both rivers would cause major flooding down river from the Hafbourg. The second is with Sandbourg’s loss of flow the area where the river ran originally would slowly shrivel up and die from a lack of water that normally made its way down it.
Where they stood they could make their way across the channel that spanned the Hafbourg or turn away and make their way to another set of docks carved into the rock. This upper section of the river had two different sets of docks carved into it. One upstream and one downstream of the bridge spanning the cavern below.
Making his way towards the bridge Bjorn stopped at the apex of the tunnel and just stood there and took the sight. Everywhere they looked there was quite the sight to behold, one way they could see boats slowly making their way through the river below them. On another they could see boats making their way along the channel with (one of the suns) casting a weird color onto the water, which was sparkling. Looking up they could see myriad bridges spanning the large gap in between rock walls, which were pitted. It was exactly the type of thing he expected to see in a magical world.
“It's really something to behold isn't it?” Meria asked.
Bjorn turned and saw her in her usual form fitting clothes as she leaned against the stone railing of the bridge they stood on. The light shining on her platinum blonde hair. The soft early morning light made her skin glow. He had been so enamored by his surroundings, that he had missed the most stunning sight of all. Meira. There was only one word that flashed through Bjorn's mind. “Beautiful.”
The moment stretched into two, then three, and then 5 seconds. Then the moment passed as Meira turned to him. “Bjorn, are you okay?” She asked with a slightly worried expression on her face.
“Yeah, yes I am.” Bjorn said. “Sorry, I got lost there for a second.”
“Well I hope whatever you got lost in was worth it.”
“It was.” He replied simply.
That was when Alaric and Tayla walked over from where they had been looking over the railing a small distance off.
“Hey, do you guys want to find our way to the surface so we can take a look at the town from up there?” Alaric asked.
“Sure.” Bjorn replied.
They made their way back towards the stairs going up. They took them and the pathway forked a few other times each time they took the stairs leading upwards. As long as they stuck to the ideology that they would eventually hit the surface if they took the stairs, it was only a matter of time before that came true. As they made their way onto the ground level of Blackrock Bay. They were greeted by the sight of a bustling city built entirely out of the same black stone that the city was built upon.
They stopped a few different people to get directions to the chasm cutting the city in half. Almost each time they did so the locals were more than willing to direct the 4 towards it. There was only one time where the man they stopped got angry at them and swore at them before bustling off.
The sight from the top of the chasm looking down was just as impressive of a sight as it was from the bottom looking up. At the top of the chasm a mid chest level stone railing had been built to stop anyone from tumbling down. Unfortunately for Alaric he wasn’t able to see over. He could see forwards just fine, but down was an issue that neither Meira or Tayla had. Meira was roughly the same height as Bjorn, and Tayla was only a few inches shorter. To rectify the issue Alaric jumped up clasping the railing with both hands and pulling the upper half of his torso onto the railing while his feet dangled uselessly below him, making him look surprisingly like a toddler.
Once everyone was done gawking at the vista they found Alaric started. “Well I think we shouldn’t dally around here, let' see if we can find someone to fix my shield.”
Not even waiting for a response he turned and walked off. Shrugging they followed after the dwarf. Less than 30 seconds in, Alaric had led them into an alleyway, swearing he made his way back out, ignoring the snickering coming from his friends. As such the four made their way into the city.