Chance Meetings

The next morning the party can continue their journey upriver on a return boat headed for Chance, a small town located at the mouth of a small lake formed by a bulge in the river near a tributary river flowing into the Flushing from the east. With the flat plain in this area, the merging of the rivers caused the formation of a long lake nearly five miles long. Stretching to nearly two miles in places, the edges are protected by a ring of trees that hug the edges of the lake.
The boat takes you upriver into the town at the northern edge of the lake and the town of Chance. From here, the party will need to either charter some kind of transportation to continue upriver across the lake, or wait for a weekly barge that travels from one end of the lake to the other carrying large volumes of supplies and trade goods.
There is a much larger town on the southern edge of the lake where the river connects to Aron's Bowl. That town is pretty much the northern outpost of the settled area at the base of Deadfall, the cliffs dropping from the Upper Valley to the Lower Valley. This area is where the greatest growth has taken place in the last few years, with the rough, territorial lawlessness of the Upper Valley giving way to the organization of small farming communities scattered along the river and spreading back from it toward the mountains in the distance.
The farming valley spreads about 50 miles from Deadfall to the head of the lake, where Krithik River rushes down from the east. This forms something of a boundary with the wilderness. The river is a quick moving torrent that tumbles down out of the high eastern peaks, cutting across the plain in a fairly direct path to the Flushing River. East of the lake, the land is low, and frequently floods, particularly in the spring-time. With the swell of spring melt, the lake nearly doubles in width, mostly to the east as it overflows its banks. The rest of the year, the area is marshy and swampy until late August into September, when the dryness of high summer finally dries the land out and pinches the lake down to barely river width.
There is no western road, as the western mountains rise sharply from the riverbank. The road east swings wide around the swamps, running 40-50 miles out from the river to cut south along the foot of the eastern mountains. It also is an extremely dangerous stretch of roadway, cutting through wild, rough forests and across barren stretches of exposed ridge, covered in loose scree.
Trade in and out of Aron's Bowl therefore mostly travels across the lake. The lake is unfortunately fairly shallow, making it difficult to navigate at times. Hence, a weekly barge and mercenary boatmen. All of which can be found in the town of Chance at the northern edge of the lake.