River

River
Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Running water large enough to carry boats and to bar the way, brown in flood and clear in a dry summer. It hisses over the shoals and goes quiet in the deep pools, and its banks smell of mud, willow and wet weed. Pike and carp hold in the slow reaches, salmon and eels come and go with the seasons, and herons, otters and kingfishers live off them. Rivers are roads, borders and larders at once: towns stand on them, mills turn on them, and fords and bridges are fought over. People fear the spring flood that carries off houses, and the current that pulls a swimmer under on a warm afternoon. The Loire, wide and shallow over its shifting sandbanks, is a river of this kind.

Hear it

Adventure hooks

  1. A miller has dammed the river to drive a new mill, and the salmon no longer reach the fishing villages upstream. Both sides are hiring toughs, and the party gets an offer from each.
  2. The ferryman at the rope crossing raises his fare every day, and swears it is because the river grows wider. He is right: it gains a few paces every night, and nobody knows where the water is coming from.
  3. A barge of wine has run aground on a sandbank, and its crew are drinking the cargo while they wait for the water to rise. The owner wants it afloat before there is nothing left to float.
  4. Bodies have come down the river, one each morning, all dressed in the same blue cloth. The town upstream says it knows nothing, and has shut its gates.

What grows here

  • Bald Cypress (tree). A deciduous conifer of 10 to 40 m whose feathery needles turn copper-red and fall each autumn, its trunk ringed by woody knees rising from the roots. It once dominated the swamps and river bottoms of the southeastern United States and can live over 2,000 years. Its water-resistant wood was used for canoes, coffins and shingles. Gives: Bald Cypress Wood.
  • White Willow (tree). A fast-growing, short-lived willow of Europe, western and central Asia and North Africa, named for the silky white hairs under its narrow leaves, that grows along riverbanks, in wetlands and on floodplains. It is often pollarded for its long flexible shoots, the withies, woven into baskets. Its bark held salicin, the compound from which salicylic acid was first separated, and once tanned leather; its light, tough wood makes cricket bats and small woodwork. Gives: Willow Withies, White Willow Wood, Willow Bark.
  • Black Elder (shrub). A fast-growing deciduous shrub or small tree of Europe, western Asia and North Africa with pinnate leaves, flat sprays of scented ivory flowers in early summer and drooping clusters of black berries in autumn. It favours open, nutrient-rich ground: woodland edges, hedgerows, scrub and riverbanks. The flowers make cordials and the cooked berries jam, soup and wine, while the raw berries, leaves and bark are poisonous. Food of: Sheep. Gives: Elder Flower, Elderberries.
  • Broadleaf Cattail (herb). A wetland plant of 1.5 to 3 m with broad strap leaves and a brown sausage-shaped seed head, always in or beside shallow water. It grows across Eurasia and North America and more locally in Africa and South America, from sea level to 2,300 m. Nearly every part is edible, and its leaves thatch roofs and seat chairs. Food of: Horse. Gives: Cattail Rhizome, Cattail Leaf, Cattail Pollen.
  • Common Reed (grass). A tall wetland grass of 1.5 to 4 m, found worldwide, that forms vast reed beds in shallow fresh or brackish water, like the 1,700 km² of the Danube Delta. Its purple plumes turn grey and silky in autumn and the stems stand through the winter. It is the classic thatch of Europe. Food of: Goat. Food of: Cattle. Gives: Reed Stem, Reed Rhizome.
  • Papyrus (sedge). A tall sedge of 4 to 5 m whose triangular stems end in a green mop of thread-like rays. It forms vast pure stands in the swamps and on the lake and river margins of tropical Africa, and in deep water floats in mats that make the sudd. The Egyptians made paper, boats, mats and rope from it. Gives: Papyrus Stem, Papyrus Rhizome.

Animals

Kept here

Creatures

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

To gather

African Buffalo Hide, African Buffalo Meat, Bald Cypress Wood, Elderberries, Cattail Leaf, Cattail Pollen, Cattail Rhizome, Reed Rhizome, Reed Stem, Crocodile Glands, Eurasian Beaver Pelt, Eurasian Otter Pelt, European Badger Hair, European Badger Skin, Horsehair, Moose Hide, Nile Crocodile Egg, Papyrus Rhizome, Papyrus Stem, Red Deer Antler, Red Deer Hide, Buffalo Hide, Buffalo Milk, Willow Withies, White Willow Wood, Wild Boar Bristles, Eurasian Beaver Castoreum, Golden Eagle Feather, Green Anaconda Fat, Hippopotamus Hide, Hippopotamus Ivory, Jaguar Fang, Jaguar Pelt, Nile Crocodile Hide, Hemlock Stem, River Pearl Grit, Valerian Root, Electric Eel Gland, Sturgeon Roe

To fish

Bullfrog, Freshwater Crayfish, Harbour Scrap, Ice Char, Mirror Carp, Mud Catfish, River Mussel, River Trout, Drowned Purse, Glass Eel, Grayling, Message Bottle, Moonscale Salmon, Reed Otter, River Pike, Singing Minnow, Electric Eel, Lake Sturgeon, Marsh Crocodile, Quicksilver Carp, Sunken Reliquary

Nearby biomes

Stream, Lake, Pond, Spring

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