Portage Road (Torrune)

Torrune’s Portage Road is, as its name suggests, the roadway used to portage goods around the Helvander Cataracts from Torrune up to Sillport or vice-versa. It runs roughly five miles, southeast to northwest, from the Portage Gate of Torrune’s Low City up to the main eastern gate of Sillport. For most of this distance, it runs directly along the north bank of the Helvander and thus overlooks the cataracts, although in some places it curves away from the river shore and cuts through the wooded terrain beyond.
Although only a few miles long, the Portage Road is one of the most important roadways in the whole League, since it enables river-borne trade to bypass the unnavigable cataracts on its way up or down the Helvander. It is almost perpetually crowded with countless carts, wagons, pack animals, drovers, teamsters, and porters, carrying huge quantities of every imaginable goods in both directions. To avoid hopeless jams, the roadway is double-wide and paved with enormous limestone slabs, with regular upkeep at the Archon’s expense. Nevertheless it is typically noisy, congested, and chaotic. Rainy weather makes it twice as bad. In principle, traffic from Sillport to Torrune is supposed to keep to the left side of the road and opposing traffic to the right, but this is scarcely obeyed except when a squadron of the Archon’s guards are on hand to beat and curse the crowds into compliance.