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#414 The River Bank

Age: Born With Death

Hidden or Lost?: Hidden

History: The most famous ferryman to cart souls across the Styx, the river separating the land of the living and the darkness beyond, is kindly Charon. But across the world, across every culture, there are other avatars of the Crossing. Psychopomps that go by a million names but who all exact a price for their services. For some, a simple coin will do, while others require the accumulated wealth of lifetimes. Yet no matter the price, the boatmens’ take always flows downstream to be collected in the mythic treasury known as the River Bank.

Located at the ethereal delta where the River Styx joins the Eternal Sea, the River Bank was born in a primordial age when the fabled waters first separated life and what lies beyond. The dark, endless halls of the River Bank are stacked high with piles of coins from every age and location imaginable. The deep vaults of the bank hold unique objects of power, scepters that can shape reality, words that can stop time, or crowns that can hold dominion over the stars. An eternity’s worth of tolls.

All of these payments are watched over by the White-Eyed Ghouls, revenant bodies of those who attempted to dodge payment to the ferryman and were drowned in the maddening waters of the Styx as punishment. Animated by the resentment of their eternal fate, the mute zombies forever troll the shallow shoals at the river’s edge, collecting the payments that have been passed down river by each avatar.

Directing and controlling the ghouls is the manager of the River Bank, a primordial power known as the Exchequer. This ancient presence often takes the form of a miserly business agent, a vaguely humanoid accumulation of wood and coins filling their garb of office, whether that’s a business suit or merchant’s robes. The Exchequer stalks the halls of the River Bank, forever tallying and weighing the goods in its care. It is only said to leave the River Bank on the rare occasion that a psychopomp on the Styx decides to act above their station and withhold their payments. In such events the ferrymen are hunted relentlessly and obliterated totally by the Exchequer’s power.

Given the infinite wealth held in the Riverbank, some foolish artists and thieves have attempted to rob the eternal storehouse. But those who were even able to reach the River Bank have simply been made into another White-Eyed Ghoul.

Some believe that one day, the River Bank will become full and the accumulated payments will fund the creation of a permanent bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead. But until that fabled day, the price to cross must still be paid.


 

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