River Vesper

The River Vesper was a river in the Vast that ran from the Earthspur Mountains to the Dragon Reach.

Geography
The River Vesper began in the Earthspur Mountains and descended through the High Country down a long series of heavy waterfalls and rocky cascades. Here the waters were cold and clear.

The town of King's Reach marked the highest navigable point on the river. Afterwards, the Vesper was wide, slow, and generally calm. It lay in a broad, gradually sloping river valley as it ran by the Troll Mountains, and also left floodplains. These lands made for fertile farmland. The river had several tributaries.

The River Vesper could be forded at Viperstongue Ford. As this coincided with the Viperstongue pass through the mountains, it was a strategic crossing.

The river emptied into the Dragon Reach in a wide delta, called the Vespermouth. In high summer, its banks turned into fields of stinking mud, producing clams and worms. The city of Calaunt, formerly a village known as "Vespermouth", sat at the mouth of the Vesper.

Activities
The Vesper was a major trade route for goods exported from the Vast. However, it also offered off-road travel for orcs, thieves, and adventurers trying to avoid notice without getting lost. Some also sailed up the river to raid inland settlements.

Treasure
An occasional curious sight on the Vesper was a collection of ioun stones hovering above the water. Sightings were reported the full length of the river, but only began in the 1350s DR. A dozen glowing, twinkling stones were seen dancing in a slowly turning ring, some 6 feet (1.8 meters) or so above the water and moving here and there across it. The stones avoided efforts to grab them, and by 1370 DR, no one with a net, the ability to fly or a magical means of catching one was lucky enough to spot the ring. There was no known explanation for the phenomena, but a tale told in riverside taverns claimed that anyone who could grab one of the ioun stones could keep it, but was also compelled by a geas to perform some dangerous task, with a different task for each stone.

Very rarely, dwarven gold washed down the river, likely from a flooded tomb-cavern or the legendary gold-caves of the Giantspike Mountains.

Monsters
Some pirates and sailors, fearful of putting into Calaunt, believed that there were certain creatures haunting the Vesper, and that they cursed a sailor who crossed them with bad luck.

Rumors of monsters in Calaunt were helped along by occasional sightings of odd shark-like fins glimpsed moving through the mud of the Vespermouth delta, suggested to belong to a bulette.