River Bend is a pair of caves on the Hill Islands where the RedWell Creek emerges from the hillside. The river cave itself is usually completely submerged where it breaks out of the hillside (except during particularly dry seasons), but a second cave leads into the hill and to a small bridge over the small underground river.

Although it sees little use anymore, there was a time when the Hill Islands were not as secure as they are now, and the caves were dug out to include storage areas for local villages and at other times staging areas for small military actions that had to remain covert.

River Bend was drawn by hand in a single draft in The Oak King, a handcrafted mapping book. It was drawn using a very cheap 0.7mm gel pen that works poorly on most of my other papers, but that works incredibly well on the commercial barkpaper of this book.

If you like the River Bend and maps like it, check out Dyson’s Delves, a book of similar maps and adventures.