a giant portage

In the real world, one of the things that made medeval Vikings so dangerous was the fact that these maratime raiders were not confined the coast. Their vessels were built in such a way that they could not only traverse the open waters, but could also be paddled up rivers. And even worse, they could be then be pulled out of one river, hauled overland, and then dropped into a second river. There was litterally nowhere a Viking ship couldn't reach!




Now, while there are no Vikings in the land of Vistallah, there are Rurik peoples, who are basically just a cipher for Viking culture. With one major twist. The Rurik are generally on good terms with the Elves of the Urr Empire (The Rurik raid other people, and then sell the plunder to the Empire) and so its not uncommon for a Rurik raiding party to be accompanied by a few magic-weilding Elves! And if those Elves just happen to be giant-sizing High Elves......Well, that just makes those between-river passages even easier...