The Silk River

I may have been innexperienced, but it was the best journey of my life. The crew I was with was fantastic, the captain was understanding and paid well, and our cargo was worth a fortune yet we didn't see a single pirate the whole journey there and back.
Then I saw the gates of the Silk River. The "Gate of the Rising Sun" the captain said when he saw the look on on my face and with a knowing smile.
The gates looked like a dragon would struggle to fly over them, so tall that they might scrape the clouds themselves. The cannons nestled in their fortifications glistened with ornate decoration amongst the stark white stone it all was built from. I couldn't even see where the walls ended, and the doors would of smashed the house I grew up in, or any house I've ever seen now that I think about it, flat if they came off their hinges and chains.
Grand is the only word that truly described it.

-Perseverance Samuels, Lebarallian sailor

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A colossal, man-made, canal that cuts through the heart of the Land of Jet and Jade from west to east.

A pre-War of the Wyrms structure, the Silk River was seemingly an experiment by the Old Empire in logistics, magical construction, and urban planning, to see if it was feasible to deploy this sort of structure in other places as well. So much so, it's construction seemingly relied on fairly mundane construction methods, bar simple magics to move materials and extend their lifespan, and as such the maintenance of the Silk River is fairly easy and cost-effective.
Thousands of ships ply the waters of the canal daily, and they come from all over the world to purchase and trade goods in equal measure. The Gate of the Rising Sun in the west welcomes them all with open arms. So much so that the western gate has not been shut in two hundred years. On the other hand and end, the Gate of the Setting Sun has not been open in nearly one thousand years, and no one knows for certain why, bar the gates defenders who are regularly heard fighting someone or something on the walls far side. Popular guesses include some War of the Wyrms era terror experiment or some foreign nation that has been at war with them for an amount of time longer than many nations have existed. A few swear on the fact that they've heard earth-shaking roars from the other side and painting an image of massive creatures attempting to breach the wall.

Alternative Names

The Gold Highway, Thousand Leagues of Untold Wealth.

Type

Canal