Pale River

The Pale River gleams like diluted moon-milk, heavy with dissolved lime. It bores through basalt and limestone, scalloping walls into honeycomb sponge rock and hanging curtains of calcite that ring like bells under the current. Vast travertine steps thunder into bubble-domes where air collects and pilots breathe; then the river plunges as whispering siphons into black sumps before erupting again as white gorges veined with quartz. Near the Water border, the current goes glass-clear and cold; toward Ooze it warms and grows silty, the pillars fattening into slick, greenish flows.  

Notable Locations

Headspring Gate

Mirror-smooth pool under a vault of blue crystal; marid Wardens of the Wake set the tide bells.  

Travertine Cascades

Seven broad white steps; azer-run quench-stairs draw heat from metal without cooling the water.  

White Gorge

A roaring slot canyon through marble; quartz lightning flickers in the walls when the Reversal starts.  

Pearl Locks

Engineered by pech, these step-locks skim oolite pearls from the flow into tax baskets automatically.  

Dolomite Keep

A dao fort grown from pale stone, bristling with magnet winches and debt-scales.  

Sighing Dome

A vast air-vault; every exhale answers back. Shrine of safe passage tended by triton choristers.  

Seven Siphons

Parallel plunges into the deep; choose wrong and you surface in the Grey Throat under mephit hospitality.  

Drowned Bazaar

A travertine shelf that floods and dries with the tide; when dry, it’s market that when wet, smugglers run.  

Travel and Access

Pressure Locks and Sluice Holds

Step-chambers ease shifts between domes and sumps; unpermitted teleports and phase entries pin here under anti-drift sigils.  

Bubble Barges

Stone-hulled craft with air-vaults ride the flow; pilots read ripple-script etched by eddies along the walls.  

Karst Ways:

Dry side-galleries for mule-trams and earthglide escorts parallel the water in dangerous reaches.  

Planar Gates

• Headspring Gate
  A shimmering mouth where the river is born and bring to the Elemental Plane of Water; tides there set the great Reversal (see phenomena).
• Grey Throat
  A silting side-flow with mud mephit control posts which brins to the Ooze.

 

Inhabitants

Marids, tritons, water weirds and elementals ride and ward the current; dao toll-wardens, xorn weighers, and pech brace-crews keep the stone honest; galeb duhr serve as dock judges. Native fauna includes blind cave eels, stone-fin carp, chalk crayfish, and lantern algae. Hazards and hunters: oozes (grey/ochre), ropers lurking above air-domes, chuuls in still pockets, and the rare aboleth syndicate near the deep sumps. Mud and ooze mephits skulk at the Grey Throat; mercane and azer traders appear on scheduled convoys.

Planar Reversal

With the Water-tide, the current slows, stills, then runs backward for a bell, locks groan, eddies swap, stranded boats lift free (or not).  

Flash Lithification

Anything kept motionless in certain eddy-lanes accretes stone in minutes; ropes, boots, even wounds glaze with calcite.  

Karst Chorus

Singing or thunder booms carry far; a tapped code on travertine can be heard three bends downstream.  

Porosity Shift

Rock ahead may soften to sponge for a heartbeat, then harden—great for escape, fatal if you’re halfway through.  

Pearl Rain

Oolitic pearls tumble during spates; lucky pilots net them for trade, unlucky ones slip on them like bearings.  

Silt Sleep

In Ooze-leaning reaches, fine mud lulls the unmasked, saves against magical drowsing while in turbidity.