The Dragonfly Derby

Piper Dewdrop knows exactly how she looks, and she would like you to know it too. Seven and a half inches of iridescent wings, freckles and lavender-blonde curls, she flies through the crowded streets of Coral Bay as if the whole festival were held in her honor, and she wears her petals, pearls and borrowed buttons the way a queen wears a crown: as decoration, because she is worth decorating.

Her vanity is the cheerful kind. She loves being looked at, and she makes sure of it: the slow landing in the brightest patch of lamplight, the twirl at exactly the right moment, the room going quiet as she passes. An admiring glance never catches her off guard, because she arranged it. If someone blushes, she wins, and she keeps score.

Beneath the preening is a sharp eye and a brave heart. Shiny things draw her, and in Coral Bay shiny things lead to trouble: smuggled goods, secrets tucked into pretty pockets, someone being used who should not be. Once Piper catches the glint of something wrong, she follows it all the way down, dragging allies behind her and looking fabulous the entire time. Her older sister Pippa is the one who drinks; Piper is the one who has never once been seen at less than her best.

The Blackwake Union — known throughout Three Rivers simply as Blackwake — is a rising criminal syndicate controlling much of the city’s hidden water-based trade and smuggling activity. While larger organizations like the Ashen Accord dominate overland routes and established black markets, Blackwake built its power through mastery of the rivers themselves: hidden canals, flooded tunnels, forgotten docks, marsh inlets, sewer outlets, and nighttime river traffic invisible to ordinary authorities.

Born from rivermen, smugglers, dock laborers, ferrymen, and abandoned undercity districts, Blackwake developed into a fiercely territorial organization deeply tied to the waterways surrounding Three Rivers. The rivers are not merely trade routes to them — they are identity, livelihood, protection, and power. Their members navigate currents, tides, flood channels, and hidden passages with unmatched skill, allowing them to move contraband, people, information, and stolen goods through routes larger syndicates struggle to control.

Unlike the polished professionalism of the Ashen Accord, Blackwake maintains a rougher, more localized culture built around loyalty, survival, and shared hardship. Many poorer river districts quietly tolerate or even support the syndicate due to the protection, coin, and opportunity it provides where the city government has failed.

Blackwake’s influence remains mostly regional for now, but tensions with the Ashen Accord continue to escalate as the Union tightens its grip on the waterways feeding Three Rivers. Increasingly, the Accord controls the roads? while Blackwake controls what flows beneath them.