These pages chronicle my journeys through the lands of the Misty River Valley and beyond.

From the stories, you'd not know it, but I am not Riverfolk myself. In my youth, I rebel roused - sometimes literally - in faraway Thicket. In truth, it is not that far away as the crow flies, but the temperate western rainforests are all but impassable even to the most intrepid travelers.

In making my way to the valleys of the Misty River, I explored the swamplands and befriended the druids and shamans who give passage through the dark and foreboding Misty Delta, and learned something of their magicks. The river floods a great basin to your south, but hardy and hearty farmers till this fertile land, starting over every few years when the gods of the River wipe the slates clean.

But after these trials, I came upon the Central Empire's South Gate and made my way to the Markets between the Grand Towers. Here, commerce prevails and coin rules above all else - except, of course, for the River Controllers, whose motives and means are forever shrouded in secrecy. A thick smog hovers forever over the harbours and markets, providing ample cover for shady business of all types.

Beyond the Towers, and beyond the Gates, live people as varied as the lands they occupy. The cold, bluegray mountains of Tanas, known for their abundance of coal and a people as hard as the mountains they dwell in. The endless farmlands of the Carmi valley and its many kings and vassal lords. The hardscrabble tundra along the vast Inland Sea, and the fur trappers, lumberjacks, and metal miners the eek hard livings from a hostile, cold Frontier.

Few dare approach the many seas, distant and fuzzy remembrances of floods and storms of bygone eras still haunt our nightmares. But few is not none - and still the occasional outcast roams the plains beyond Tanas, towards the Stormy Seas, and still the occasional monster makes way from these lands to intrude on the relative serenity of our lands. In winter, the icemen venture south from beyond the Inland Sea, threatening both the Carmi and the Frontiersmen. Many great and terrible beasts still lurk in the Green Mountains, and deep in the mines of Tanas as well.

I have met many men from beyond this valleys as well - I myself am of Thicket and occasionally trip upon my fellow countrymen; hardy and foolhardy folks, gregarious, scratching out a living on the edges of a great, dense rainforest. Their nearest neighbours, a more rowdy and dangerous lot who settled the arid Chaparral, tending their herds of cattle and protecting them from lurks deeper in western deserts. I've ventured as far west as a great city, many weeks' travel from the North Gate, that sits in the foothills of sharp, craggy mountains the likes of which beggar belief, a city with vast mineral wealth, but so remote that the people live as nomadic hunters and sheep herders, unaware of what their riches would fetch at the Grand Towers.

In these pages, you will read a great deal about each of these and more, and I do hope that these writings will aid you in your journey. You may address any corrections to me via correspondence to:

Marcos Clemens

care of:

The Silver Oar, the West Reaches, Cairo at the South Gate.