What the River Owes: Prologue

The River Stir in Spring. The color of manure, swollen from rain and runoff, an odor of rotten vegetation, and thick with heavy debris floating on it or just beneath the brown-green water.

Jost convinced his young friend, Janderke, to go fishing. Janderke owned a small row boat and often took it out on the River Stir for a small fee. Many locals in Tauer on the river would hand over a few pennies for time fishing.

Janderke stood a half head taller than his elder Jost. Besides fishing, the both of them had something in common: formerly rich, and dead, relatives. But Jost had made his living fishing for more years than he cared to count and a small inheritance just made what accounted for his small vices more accessible.

The day was cloudy and the dark clouds to the east suggested a lot of rain upstream. Thunder could be distantly heard. Janderke rowed the boat out to “trunks," a collection of just above the surface rotting tree trunks downstream of the docks of Tauer. The “trunks" were studiously avoided by river traffic, but fishermen like Jost knew the best catches were hiding among the trunks themselves.

The first line was thrown, then with a flash of lightning and a sharp crack of thunder the rain started. “I think that struck the tall pine over by oldman Ostland's lease," Janderke shouted over the rain. Both huddled under their cloaks, closed their packs which held almost everything they owned. Rarely did you leave anything of value at home if you didn't have someone at home to keep an honest thief, honest.

The downpour left water rapidly collecting in the boat. The shore was barely visible through the heavy rain. “Let's get to the ‘Hoof' and dry, this rain is ruining any catch. I've got some coin for ale and food if you'll join me," shouted Jost as he threw another bailing bucket overboard. Janderke nodded almost imperceptibly beneath his soaked cloak and grabbed the oars. He expertly turned the boat with a few short strokes as Jost pulled his line in.

Jost never registered the crash before he was in the water, thrown from the row boat as a large tree, branches and mud wrapped rootball, from upstream careened off a submerged trunk and into the row boat's bow. The current of the River Stir even close to shore would pull most under to never be found downstream. Janderke looked over his shoulder to catch sight of Jost just above the water but rapidly pulling away from the row boat in the current. He had seen enough men drown on the River Stir to know that Jost's clothing, cloak, and boots would surely drag even a strong swimmer under in this current without quick action. Janderke knew Jost could swim. Many citizens of the Empire who made a living on the water had a better than passing ability, including himself. The tree's heavy rootball had cracked a board or two on the bow. With skill belying the boy's age, Janderke turned the boat downstream, reducing the amount of water pouring into the row boat from the damage left by the tree. Janderke blinked and unproductively tried to keep the rain out of his eyes. Jost was gone. Then, over the din of the rain, he heard a faint shout. Janderke pulled quickly on the oars and toward the shouting. Again. Again. The shout soon revealed Jost bobbing in the rolling current.

***

Jost lay on the floor of the boat, exhausted.

The current of the Stir had swept him away from shore and into deeper water. Janderke's arrival was surely guided by Manann and Taal, gods well known to Jost. Maybe Faustmann, a Manann priest Jost befriended working the River Stir a score of years ago, still prayed for him all these years later. Janderke didn't pull Jost out of the river so much as rowed ahead and let Jost come to the row boat in the current. It allowed for Jost to reach not just for an oar but the whole side of the boat at the same time. Arms out reached caught both an oar and the side of the boat almost at the same time. Secured physically, Janderke grabbed Jost by the collar and hauled him onto the boat.

In the nine hours fighting the swollen Stir, Jost and Janderke largely shouted to each other over the rain and noise of a river fighting the shackles of its shore line. It gave time for Jost to think about how long he had been a fisherman and his experiences on the largest rivers of the Empire.

In a moment of calm and respite from the rain he told the young Janderke he had forgotten the name of the village in Wissenland he was from; he suspected he could find his way to that village in a pinch. They, together with his mother and brother, were poorer than dirt. His father had gone missing “on the other side of the wood," hence his surname. Jost didn't know if his mother or brother used it, but he took it after he left the village.  Jost plied his skill as a fisherman on the River Soll out of the foothills of the Grey Mountains. Soon he was in Nuln, and as soon as possible on a fishing boat trading on the River Reik. Fishing on the Reik has its problems but the largest is the lack of fish. The fishing boat tacked out of Kemperbad up the River Stir for a couple of months. The fishing on the Stir was much better and the towns bought their daily hauls on the docks. They stopped in Tauer and Jost stayed when the river boat left to travel further east still.

Janderke traded Jost with his own story. His ailing mother, and a younger brother, “smarter than me to be sure!" he would add, lived in Tauer proper. He bought the boat with an inheritance, practiced handling it daily selling time to fisherman, or just men that fished to put food on the table. If the men were in the fields, the wives would do the fishing. Jost listened and realized Janderke was naive and unaware of lust or the distractions of women that filled loneliness. Rowing left him with strong, thick back muscles that, on first glance, appeared to be a slouch until he stood up straight; Jost could see this would catch the eyes of many women and girls in Tauer. Janderke said he was keen on a young village girl named Kirstin. Janderke was known in the local Sigmar temple for his singing voice. “It is nothing special," Janderke added. “Though Kirstin likes it."

Janderke, slouched over the oars, sat up straight and made a few strained rows to pull closer to the shore. The swollen, rolling, and fast current of the river had exhausted them both. Before the rain had stopped Jost was certain they had passed Krugenheim. The new fire lights from lanterns on the East Road that ran along the shore were certainly the gate lamps of the Inn of the Strutting Cock. It would have been 3 or more winters since Jost had been this far west on the East Road to Gersdorf. Jost pulled himself up as Janderke ran the boat onto a muddy embankment.

They both pulled the boat into some riverside laurels and turned it upside down to dry. Janderke inspected the damage. “Aye, it's not too bad, but a carpenter and smith will be needed," he said.

“The Cock will have both for coaches," Jost said. “I'll spend my last coin to pay you back for fishing me from the river. And I'll have to save a penny or three for Manann next time I should see Faustmann too." Jost wouldn't say Faustmann's name again lest Janderke ask too many questions.

“Let's get dry by the Cock's fires." Soaked to the skin, Jost led Janderke the half mile from where they hid the row boat to the walled coaching inn of the Strutting Cock. They almost ran to the front gate; walking in the dark on the East Road along the shore of the River Stir bisecting the Great Forest was a fool's endeavor. The Great Forest hid greenskins, wolfriders, and beastmen stragglers from the Chaos hordes that besieged Middenheim far in the north. Jost used the heavy knocker on the closed gates of the Strutting Cock. With a scrape of metal on metal and a loud clunk of a bolt a face appeared in the pass hole on the heavy oaken door. Janderke looked pleading, but Jost stood straight, knowing their waterlogged and exhausted state was hard to hide. Jost watched the man's eyes dart between them and make a rapid assessment of them both. The pass hole closed as quickly as it opened, without a word spoken, and the heavy postern door in the gates opened to allow them both to pass into the courtyard of the Inn of the Strutting Cock.

Endnotes

This prologue was a narrative setup to introduce Jost and Janderke and established how they ended up at the coaching inn in the rain, exhausted and wet. The next installments will be narratively driven with table-top roleplaying mechanics with endnotes on all dice rolls and the outcomes that were written too.