The Vortek is the Emerald Coast's main trade river. It falls out of the interior highlands below the Tambrielle passes and runs east through the jungle to the sea at Garum, where it empties into the Gulf of Tears. Almost everything the interior sends to the coast moves on it. The goods that cross the Tambrielle passes finish the journey as cargo on flatboats riding the Vortek down to Garum's wharves, where the port loads them onto ships for New Chimea and the wider sea.
The river is not a clean road, though. Two days above Garum it drops through a mile of broken cataract where no loaded boat can pass, and every cargo has to come off the water and go overland around the falls before it can be re-floated. Whoever holds that portage holds the trade. Because the coast holds nothing for long, the crossing changes hands by the season; at present it is worked by a loose crew of river-pilots who take a cut of everything carried past the falls and drown anyone who tries to slip by without paying.