Bateau de la Mort

Bateau de la Mort, the Ferryman’s skiff, is the vessel used to carry the newly deceased from the shores of the Clarkwoods Literary Universe and into the depths of the Undercurrent.

Though only one boat is built by the sister goddesses at the start of each iteration of reality, the strange flow of time on The River Without End eventually fills each version of the universe with countless copies of the skiff.

And countless Ferrymen to pilot them.

Design

The craft is understated and austere, apart from the figureheads at the bow: a pair of women turned away from each other, who some believe to be the sister goddesses of The Old Faith.

The wooden hull is painted a rusty red, which time and the River have worn away in places. It is built from the same species of tree—the Hellfire Pine—as the time-traveling pub known throughout the cosmos as The Strumpet’s Sister. And so, even if the paint were all to chip away, there is nothing in existence which could destroy this thing.

Nothing short of a Calamity, that is.

The middle of the vessel is equipped with two bench seats, enough room for four human-sized individuals to sit side by side.

No one is quite sure why there are seats, given that the ship’s intended cargo is a pile of bodies, but the Ferryman has never answered when asked that question.

In contrast to the middle, the bow and the stern are kept empty—the bow for the bodies, the stern for the Ferryman to steer from.