The Tamar River

The Tamar was once truly the King of Rivers, they say. Wild and raucous, prone to fits of murderous pique when disrespected and extravagant generosity when pleased. They say the temple where the Citadel now stands was dedicated to it, and the priests unfailing obeisance won the fishers and herders who lived off its bounty a life of ease and comfort. They say the regent of some petty kingdom or failing empire wished to make himself a king in truth, grander than any before him. He hired Lusselan Condottieri to bolster his armies with their guns and conquered those herders and fishers up and down the rivers path. When the priests of the temple stood against him and demanded he free his subjects, he cast them down and invited Illyric architects to build a grand palace where their temple once stood. And they say when the Tamar sought vengeance for the death of its followers, he truly knew fear-and he made damning oaths and sold the future of people like so much linen, and so eighty-one Belthayan warlocks bound the River's Heart in chains of blood and iron, and broke its spirit with swords of brass and fire. And they presented the king with a bound and broken god, and he ruled with all its power for the rest of his days. And, they say-a very few of them, half-taught alchemists with carved into their hearts, and mad mystics with river-stained skin-that when that king's grandson found himself warring with those Condottieri, and entrapped by the secret workings of those architects, he called upon the Tamar to save him. And, caught between two unbreakable commands written in its heart, the river was torn asunder. Its soul sank to the deepest riverbed and began to rot, just as the city has.

Geography

One of the major river networks of the continent, the Tamar river system has been a vital conduit of trade and cultural diffusion since at least the beginning of recorded history, and its flood plains have formed the heartland of at least a dozen different major kingdoms and empires. It has numerous discharges, of course, but Abhari is the mot famous, largely because it's the only one known to come with a good harbor and habitable land around it. The specific branch that comes to the city is much lessened by several tributaries breaking off, is generally just under two thirds of a mile across.

Fauna & Flora

By the time the river reaches Abhari, any mundane breed of fish or fowl is long dead-or at least, the ones that stayed mundane are. Just inside the outskirts of the city, the aetherically charged industrial waste from the few truly modern factories Abhari boasts pour into the Tamar-something that's been known to have thoroughly unpleasant effects on any living creature exposed to it (or anything close enough to living for government work, really). The presence of a small community of rogue fleshcrafters in what is now called Moltgraf (too dangerous for the Carabinieri, not worth the effort of the Garrison, and useful for the great and good to have around, in a pinch) on the river's edge certainly doesn't help matters. No one has ever completed an ecology of the modern Tamar-or published one, at any rate-but the common wisdom is that swimming is a rather unpleasant form of suicide, and travelling in a boat without a reinforced hull and men with spears or pikes only marginally less so.

Natural Resources

For the vast majority of its span, the Tamar provides clean, potable water and a quick but remarkably steady current, and the soil irrigated by its waters are almost universally fertile. This...ceases to be true as the river reaches Abhari. Untreated sewage and the runoff of modern industry pursued without restraint are not exactly good for the water's quality to begin with, and the various foul substances dumped by the fleshcrafters and cults who lair by the river's edge certainly do not help matters. The waters are so toxic, in fact, that they become a perverse resource of their own-certain of the more wild and brutal gangs of the Riverside slums are led by (generally self-taught) alchemists who refine the waters into scintilating inks and deeply addictive-and toxic-hallucinogens. The Chandri Desoi- a deeply esoteric cult that bases itself in the by now ancient floating shantytown colloquially known as the Fleet-meanwhile claim the patronage of the dead god whose bound corpse is the true cause of the corruption-and for their trouble, are the only ones anyone has known to dive into the Tamar and come up with lost treasures instead of a fulfilled death wish.

Type

River

Location under

Abhari

Included Organizations