The Writhing River
"Fecund and poisonous, where serpents clog the waterways and the Wanting Way plunges through regions of untrammelled terror."[1]
The Writhing River is a great river of poisonous serpents that flows through Parabola.
The Pilgrim Road
"Between hither and there, however, are many insidious marches. This is disputed land, and in Parabola, everyone has a claim. The Writhing River courses thick with serpents, a much-contested section of the great Parabolan road: the Wanting Way."[2]
The Writhing River is the largest and most well known branch of the Wanting Way, the great Parabolan pilgrim road. It is said that anyone that travels through dreams with a driving need will find themselves along the River eventually.[3] The venom produced by the serpents that form the River creates clouds of toxic vapors that hang in the air around it, and can prove dangerous to anyone without suitable protection.[4][5] Being directly injected with the venom can also cause addictive sensations and show visions of jaundiced cities, lit by multiple red suns.[6][7]
As other great rivers do, the Writhing River has its own tributaries. Some of these lesser rivers can be found quite close to the real world; one flows near the cellars of Hunter's Keep.[8]
Notable Landmarks
"The Writhing River is the largest branch of the great pilgrim route: the Wanting Way. It is a broad river of running serpents, clouded in envenomed mists. Oracles, mountebanks, pilgrims, traveller's inns, false saints and sundered shrines speckle both sides of its banks."[9]
As it lies along the Wanting Way, the banks and towheads of the Writhing River are filled with many shrines, oracles and other travel destinations, for instance:
- The Entanglement of Glass, where the Fingerkings torture and tempt captured cats.[10][11]
- The Enshrinement of Waters, a red-stone temple dedicated to the Satrap of Shallows.[12][13]
- The Labyrinth of Cathedrals, where the Gregorian cries of the tatterdemalion bats can always be heard.[14]
- The Frowning Sepulchres, where the Tomb-Colonists dream of their ancestral tombs.[15]
- The Menhir-Bridge, built from coruscating menhirs inscribed from the inside with Correspondence sigils.[16]
- The Temple of the Outflung Rose, where rose petals fall like rain in honor of a certain bloody power.[17]
- The Poisoned Oracle, a master in the arts of war and poisons, who lives in a reflection of the Sere Palace.[18]
- The Oracle of Glaziers, who lives deep beneath the Wanting Way within in a labyrinth of stained glass. She is an expert on the matter of dream-reflections.[19]
- The Place that was White and Gold, a great lake that holds the final moments of the Fourth City within its depths.[20][21]
- The Root of Need, a system of caves located deep beneath the Mountains of the Mind, and known as the source of the Writhing River.[22][23] The Yearning Custodian, the first winner of the Marvellous, can also be found here, willing to consecrate the cards of any new players arriving at his humble abode.[24]
References
