Directions to Bartertown

[Bonhumm]

Heya all.

I'm perusing through the Serpent River book and I'm unable to get a clear answer to this question:

Context: running Infected, running away from the village with Aardalea and her mother. We are running north and hope to catch a ride on a boat at Lake Vor.

I trying to find what is the best way to Bartertown.

I see 2 options:

1- Boat up to Fort Eidolon then foot/horses to Bartertown (cheapest but, in my mind, also most likely to end up ambushed)
2- Boat as far as we can.

Option 2 is the problem here: I'm unable to figure out exactly where to go:

The Serpent River seems to contradict itself a bit about the Coil River route, it says:

'Riverboats can now sail north up the Coil, then ride its underground tributaries through the mountains to the Kingdom of Throal.' which SEEMS to mean to the river run up to/inside Throal itself.

But it also says:

'At Darranis, a major caravan route winds down from the highlands out of Bartertown. In the years since the Theran War, the Darranis road has become a vital link between Throal and the Serpent River system', I fail to see why the caravan link to Darranis would be a 'vital link to Throal' if a much more direct and cheaper (boats can carry a lot more freight than horses) route through the Coil River allows direct access to Throal with boats.

So: DOES the Coil River gets 'inside' Throal or not?

Also: Do you guys know if there is anything 'wrong' with taking the Aidar river up to it's western end instead? That would seem, by far, the shortest route to Bartertown/Throal. The maps does seems to show the river ending in a mountain range but is it in the middle of nowhere or actually Throal (the city).

[Mataxes]

There are underground tributaries of the coil that run beneath the Throal mountains and are accessible to the Kingdom (at least in theory). That area, however, is the domain of the Pale Ones (and Earthroot), and without a native guide it's virtually impossible to navigate. (This route was used briefly during the siege during the first Theran war.)

Heading for Lake Vors and trying to find passage to Eidolon doesn't do much to shave time off your route if you end up going overland (Eidolon is roughly ten days overland on foot from Bartertown; Hanto is 15 according to the adventure). Passage to Eidolon from Lake Vors might be tough to find, as Lake Vors is Ishakrat territory, and Eidolon the Syrtis/Blood Wood fort to keep Ishkarat in the North Reach.

Going strictly by boat means taking the long way around -- Serpent past Eidolon, through Syrtis territory (between the Throal and Caucavic mountains), down to Lake Ban, then up to Darranis and overland to Throal. Possibly safer, though it will take about 3 weeks, and is more expensive.

[Bonhumm]

Heading for Lake Vors and trying to find passage to Eidolon doesn't do much to shave time off your route if you end up going overland (Eidolon is roughly ten days overland on foot from Bartertown; Hanto is 15 according to the adventure). Passage to Eidolon from Lake Vors might be tough to find, as Lake Vors is Ishakrat territory, and Eidolon the Syrtis/Blood Wood fort to keep Ishkarat in the North Reach.

Going strictly by boat means taking the long way around -- Serpent past Eidolon, through Syrtis territory (between the Throal and Caucavic mountains), down to Lake Ban, then up to Darranis and overland to Throal. Possibly safer, though it will take about 3 weeks, and is more expensive.

Thank you for the feedback. The land route would indeed be usually better if not from the fact that we are running away from the Grim Legion. Taking the water route would make us harder to track and to ambush.

Few more questions tho:

It was my understanding that the TRADE ships of any aropagoi where usually granted access to the entire length of the Serpent River with a few exceptions (the Serpent Book section about Ishakrat seems to say Lake Vor acess if completely forbidden but the rest of the river is available) but that other aropagoi can expect to have to pay toll (the Barsheva, that is pre-Trading Compact). Would that not mean that going past Eidolon (maybe with a search) would not be an issue (I certainly do NOT plan to take a ride on a Ishakrat warship).

After further reading, the Coil-to-Throal route seems to have been discovered only during/after the War so that is anyway not an option for us.

The big question mark here remains the Alidar river. Other than on the maps that river is referred to ONCE in the entire book.

[ChrisDDickey]

You can find a lot more about the "all riverboat" access to Throal from the adventure where it is introduced. It is in Throal Adventures for First Edition under the title "The Way Out" and the almost identical adventure for Third Edition in Shards Collection Volume Two as "Westhrall's passage".

The knowledge of and availability of these routes could reasonably vary from campaign to campaign, but I have always treated this route / these routes as smugglers routes. Only a few even know they exist, but even fewer have the detailed charts showing the exact route. The route is not without it's dangers, and there are places were a navigational or mechanical error could result in the loss of the riverboat and all cargo/passengers. Note that Westhrall's passage can still be run today, as even though some people know the routes exist, there are many people who would like to possess the detailed charts.

Even if in your campaign the underground route is widely known and traveled today, The overland route would have been established many scores of years earlier, this explaining why the overland route is still so developed, even though a "better" route has been discovered.