Worldbuilding Weekend Prompt #169 - River Crossings

Welcome to the next in an ongoing series of writing prompts in the Worldbuilding community !

I'm aiming to post one of these each Sunday. They aren't a replacement for the excellent daily prompts from @worldbuilding they're just an extra opportunity if you have a writing itch you want to scratch. 😀

Image generated by AI in Wombo.art

The prompt this week is - River Crossings

Places where rivers can be crossed have always been incredibly important, and created some of the most amazing stories and legends. London was created because it was the site of the first (and for long time lowest) bridge that could be built over the Thames. River crossings control trade routes, and control of the crossings in turn has led to conflict and epic battles; the Battle of Tollense (the earliest for which there is significant archaeological evidence), the legend of Horatius and his companions holding the bridge against the Etruscans at Rome, Stamford Bridge, the Berezina and Arnhem, all of these and more have been moments of high drama. But river crossings also generate myth and legend, like the troll under the bridge and the three billy-goats gruff.

Tell me a story about a river crossing from your fantasy or sci-fi setting ! Is it a humble ford, or a majestic triumph of architecture ? How has it developed over the years ? Why is it where it is, and what trade crosses it ? Who controls it, and what dramatic or legendary events have happened there ?

Just to add a bit of spice to things, the two entries I most like (and are linked in comments to this post, so I can find them !) that are posted by midnight (GMT) next Saturday will each get a prize of one Hive SBI.

This link will take you to the FAQ where you can read more about Hive SBI - it's a project I thoroughly support because it gives both the donor and winner a steady trickle of passive income paid out in the form of upvotes on posts.

Guidelines

I stole these guidelines straight from @worldbuilding prompts (I hope that's okay !), I couldn't have written them any better myself....

• Prompt replies may be anything! Art, game assets, stories, worldbuilding details, fake wiki entries, maps... whatever you want to create!
• Please ensure you reply to this post with a link to your reply
• Posting in or cross-posting to the Worldbuilding community is highly encouraged
• Use the hashtag #worldbuilding
• Prompt replies can be any length.
• AI images to illustrate your posts are fine, as long as they are credited to whichever software you used to make them
• Posts using AI to create the text are not acceptable; these prompts (and community) are a way to expand and have fun with human imagination, and I firmly believe AI will never be able to replicate the human spark.

Some other neat communities for writing that you might want to check out are:

• Freewriters
• Scholar and Scribe
• Tabletop / DND
• The Ink Well

It can be a lot of fun to mix and match our prompts with some of these other community prompts.

People who have asked to be tagged;
@sherah

If you'd like to be tagged in on these prompts, let me know and I'll happily add you 🙂