River Styx
Ervenian Era, 1051 AB
The River Styx, is the black artery of oath and loss, a navigable, living current that ferries souls, treaties and memories between the Lower Planes, exacting a price in recollection for every trespass it permits.
The Styx is the River of Oaths as much as oblivion: words sworn upon its banks bind like geas, and fares are often paid not with coin but with obols of memory, rystallized recollections minted from the river itself. Breaking a sworn Styx-oath causes the river to “collect”, stealing a memory named in the oath or dragging the oathbreaker toward its nearest reach.
Course through the Planes
The Styx links the bellies and backdoors of the Lower Planes, rarely touching anything wholesomeThe Ferries
Marraenoloths
Neutral-evil “pilots of passage”, honoring the Letter of Hire above all. They prefer payment in obols of memory but will take souls, secrets, or bound contracts. Once hired, they deliver; what arrives may not be what you wanted.Devils’ harbormasters
In Avernus, Stygia, and Nessus, infernal customs demand manifests of intent; false entries risk confiscation (and “audit” by erinyes).Yugoloth charters
On Gehenna/Hades legs, privateer letters grant temporary protection under Concordant Admiralty, break the flag’s terms and the river claims your navigator’s memory for a year and a day.Geography
What the water is. The Styx is not water; it’s unanchored Genius suspended in Time, which flows from the Pool of the Fickle Present through the lower planes, like a razor-edged silt. Skin contact scours what you know of yourself; deep immersion gnaws at what remains.
Why souls forget. The Styx doesn’t erase at random - It balances ledgers. It lifts identity from trespassers so it can carry souls and treaties without bias. What it takes pools as “lethean silt” in deep eddies and in the Black Ice of Ocanthus, where lost memories sometimes fossilize.
History
Primordial provenance. Planar sages argue (and the marraenoloths slyly refuse to clarify) that the Styx was spoken into being when the Words of Creation uttered a Word of Separation during the first ordering of the Outer Planes, severing memory from meaning so that judgment could be impartial. Nyx’s shadow cooled that utterance; Ixtaar’s first glare scorched it; the result ran liquid and black: the Styx.
Trait Type |
Description |
|---|---|
| Gravity | As host plane; falls, climbs, and “sideways flow” obey local gravity |
| Time | As host plane; |
| Shape & Size | Infinite |
| Morphic Traits | As host plane; |
| Elemental Energy | None Dominant |
| Alignment | As host Plane; |
| Magic | memory, mind-affecting, compulsion, divination (scrying/legend lore)] effects are enhanced when drawing upon the Styx; teleportation across the current, and water spells are unreliable, often shunted to a random nearby mooring unless keyed with a river-name. Protection from evil dampens incidental whispers but doesn’t negate contact effects. |
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