Tanurn Whitewater River

Place

Place Name:

Tanurn Whitewater River

Biome:

Whitewater River

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

There are a lot of rivers in Taerel, and they all have to flow somewhere. Some flow straight to the ocean. Some flow into seas. Some flow into lakes. Some flow into cities. But they also often flow into other rivers. When two rivers join in such a way it makes a larger river. The thing is, it’s possible for three rivers to merge like this. It’s possible for four. For five. How about fifteen rivers merging into one? That’s Tanurn. It’s a river as wide as a lake, and every square inch of it flows faster than a galloping rider. Yes, Tanurn is sourced by fifteen separate rivers.

And that’s not even counting the minor brooks and streams that help feed it; that’s not even counting the rivers that flow into it further along its course and make the waterfall at its end even larger. Each river that sources Tanurn, whether you count fifteen or thirty, has its own distinct history, but none of those rivers can rival the history of Tanurn in drama or scale. Along the shores of Tanurn are dozens of cities, almost a hundred of them. If these cities don’t all have at the very least a dozen waterwheels catching the flow of the Tanurn, they’re either extremely stupid or extremely poor.

Some cities have hundreds of waterwheels, built on scaffolds that run far into the flashing waters of Tanurn, each of them generating electricity. This free electricity that Tanurn used to get, and still gets, has made Tanurn one of the few places in Taerel that still has electricity. Most of the electrical devices in their cities have run down, including the generators that were supposed to generate the electricity. The people who knew how to maintain these things are probably all dead — the kin’toni clans that possess a single city on the Tanurn are probably all regretting slaying their zu’aan so quickly.

The zu’aan-controlled cities are only slightly better off, since most of their mechanics are dead anyways, and the ones that are left will struggle to even charge a simple battery or light a simple lightbulb. Still, the cities of Tanurn technically have electricity, and their citizens constantly rub it in the faces of every foreigner they meet. There is a single bridge that spans the Tanurn. All other bridge attempts have failed, and this one nearly failed as well. But it didn’t fail, and it’s stood for five centuries. There is a city built on the bridge.

It was once called Bridgetown. Now, the Serlye kin’toni clan, which completely controls it, calls it Serlye Core. This is where they store all of their ships, in enclosed docks of still water. This is where they store all of their treasure, in secure vaults of steel — vaults which in and of themselves are treasures too. The bridge of Serlye Core is heavily guarded on both ends and is nearly impossible to get into from any other direction. The city is rather long and narrow, making it inconvenient to get around, so a primitive mode of transportation involving some kind of cart was constructed.

It has two railway lines, one on both of the long sides of the city. One heads north, while the other goes south.

Plants

It’s nearly impossible for any plants to grow in the Tanurn. The water simply rushes along too quickly: to even find soil in which to grow, in such conditions, is nearly impossible. The water also has worn down all stones that once stuck up above the water, so you can’t even grow on top of those to escape the rush. Just face it: growing in the Tanurn is nearly impossible. Nearly impossible. Because the shulga flower has done it. The Shulga is a carnivorous plant. It lures in tiny fish by its bright colours and its wonderful smell, and then its stone-coloured leaves snap up.

Locking the fish inside, where they’ll be suffocated and slain. During the right times of year, a fish can approach safely, though. This is for two reasons. First, the shulga wants to lure them and other fishes into a false sense of security when they smell its scent. That’s easier if some fish have seen other fish taste the nectar that the shulga excretes. The other reason that the shulga doesn’t always snap up whatever fish comes its way, is because it needs some kind of minion willing to help it pollinate its kind. When it’s not during the pollinating seasons of the year, though, shulgas will snap away.

It takes quite the strong roots to maintain a secure hold in the rushing water of the Tanurn, and shulgas have just that — strong roots. When they’re just small seeds floating along in the stream of Tanurn, their survival depends on whether or not they get lodged in a rock somewhere. This is stupidly unlikely, but shulgas also release a stupidly large number of seeds, so the odds are that it’ll have at least one offspring that finds a new home somewhere in the river. When the seed does get lodged in a rock, it begins to grow. There’s enough energy stored in a single shulga seed for a shulga’s roots to grow about an inch into solid rock.

These roots seldom have to grow larger, but over the course of a shulga’s lifetime, it’ll grow more and more roots, and grow these roots deeper and deeper into the rock. It generally helps if the rock is soft, but shulgas don’t need soft rock to grow in. They’re already growing in the most difficult of conditions. What’s one more obstacle? shulga flowers are often the last thing one sees before departing this life, if one happens to fall into the waters of Tanurn. Their bright, various colours stand out quite a bit amidst the blueish grey world of the underwater highway, and they can bring a bit of comfort to a drowning man.

Unfortunately there are very few ways of picking shulgas, and of giving them to your daughter. It’s a theoretical possibility that one could construct a long mechanical arm designed with intense waterflow in mind, and use this arm from an anchored boat to grab one of these bright flowers. That’s a lot of work for one flower, though. But maybe it’s worth it.

Animals

There are two ways of swimming upstream the Tanurn, if you’re a fish. One way is to be strong enough. The other way is to be small enough. Both ways still require a fair amount of instinctual intelligence, and so it makes sense that the strong tartivon and the tiny tiroli are among the more intelligent fish species. Tartivons are long, long fish. Sometimes they have more than eight sets of fins, if they grow to an unusually gigantic size — and, with these fish, growing to an unusually gigantic size isn’t as unusual as it might be, if you get my meaning.

The many rows of fins have caused some men to liken the fins of Tartivons to oars, and the name has stuck. Scientists didn’t want to call them fins, in any case, for some obscure reason having to do with the minute details of biology and taxonomy. That’s why they’re usually referred to as oars. The fins serve the purpose of oars, sometimes, but the main propelling force of the Tartivon lies in its tail, which is quite the massive thing in its own right. Tartivons eat insects, and can often be seen leaping out of the flow of the Tanurn in order to catch a particularly large one.

Their favourites to eat are the murrin, which eat other insects as well. Every murrin a tartivon eats is perhaps a couple hundred more insects flying above the river tomorrow. Plus murrin taste nice in their own right. They’re just really difficult to catch, even with the high-velocity jumps in a tartivon’s toolkit. The other fish capable of swimming up the current of Tanurn is the tiroli. You take one look at these tiny fish and assume that there’s no way that they could swim upstream — but they can. They just have to swim really low to the ground, and in the slowest parts of Tanurn.

And if they’ve been around for a long time — tiroli fish can sometimes live for more than a century if they’re not eaten by Shulgas, which is quite surprising — they know every place in their stretch of the riverbed well. The main threat to a tiroli is the shulga. It’s true, the tirolis are very smart. But sometimes they’re just a little too smart for their own good. A tiroli will soon learn that shulgas eat fish and that it should not stray near the alluringly sweet nectar. But a tiroli will, as it ages, sometimes notice that there are periods of time in which the shulga will not devour the foolish fish that tries to approach it.

Eventually, as the years pass, the tiroli will notice a pattern. And then it will act on that pattern, and eat the nectar of a shulga without getting eaten in return. The tiroli will carefully remember the times of the year in which the shulga does not eat the fish that approaches it. And then, in its greed, the tiroli will begin to eat from the shulga as early as it can, before any other fish can get at it. Earlier and earlier… until it’s too early, and the ever-so-wise tiroli gets devoured as a result of its own greed.

Historical Timeline of Ages

Age Name	Dates	Controller
Stone Age	Before 1E 0	Unknown
Copper Age	1E 1–1E 2200	Unknown
Bronze Age	1E 2200–1E 4400	Unknown
Iron Age	2E 0–2E 700	Unknown
Ancient Age	2E 700–2E 2200	Unknown
Middle Age	3E 0–3E 2050	Unknown
Early Modern Age	3E 2050–3E 2600	Unknown
Industrial Age	3E 2600–3E 2700	Unknown
Machine Age	3E 2700–3E 2800	Unknown
Atomic Age	3E 2800–3E 2850	Unknown
Space Age	3E 2850–3E 2875	Unknown
Information Age	3E 2875–3E 2900	Unknown
Genetic Age	3E 2950–3E 3000	Unknown
Awakening Age	3E 3000–3E 3415	Unknown
Twilight Age	4E 0–4E 500	Serlye Kin'toni Clan

Place

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

Tanurn Whitewater River

Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

This article is written by Xerxes Worldweaver. Copyright 2026 Xerxes Worldweaver. All rights reserved.