Atezca
The unwoven: Atezca belongs to the timeline the Reweave edited out. In the rewoven reality this is River.
In Session 12, Arveth granted Father Joseph one small change in the past. The River who had lived the old version didn’t go forward with it. He stayed behind, beside a still pool at the end of a side passage off the warm cave where the party sheltered on their first night in the Dale. River saw that passage then and didn’t care where it went. Atezca did. He calls himself by a Tabaxi name, and the party calls him Still Waters.
He had lessons with a medicine man that this River never had, which may be why he kept a journal. The journal is how he reached River at all: “I kept a record of it, and apparently the records don’t get rewritten. The journals make their way to you, but nothing else.” The pages River has been finding in his own handwriting since Session 17 came from him. A tomb delver’s habit came through too: he took a rubbing of the Netherese phrase carved in the passage, “That which never was will be once again,” the way you mark a door so you can find your way back.
What He Told River
He was plain about the cause. Someone is reweaving River’s history, and “this process your friend is involved in” is “not without casualties.” Of Father Joseph: “Ours continues to sell tonics. Yours has decided to take up religion.” He doesn’t think Arveth is their ally, and River agreed. His last question was whether River trusts his doctor. River: “He’s a good guy.”
He isn’t alone at the pool. A second River sits with him, “just from yesterday,” the day of the Rethreading, and hasn’t taken a name yet. That one has a hand for cartography and magic, and he drew the map that brought the party down. River found the word for them: oxbows, bends a river cuts off that slowly fill with silt, and too many of them slow the river down. How many more before something goes wrong, they asked, and nobody knew. They are echoes, more here when River is here, and they’ll send word when they can. (Session 20)
The Promise
The bow River carries came with a promise. In Atezca’s version, he told Ragnhild he would watch over Savin. He can’t keep that from the still waters, so he asked River to. River took it as his own: “I told her I would.”