Lake Kea
- Location
- South-eastern Anock, the plains region at the heart of Aropria
- Outflow
- The Bevar River, running north and south from it
- At Its Centre
- Whioma, a protected resort island
- Known For
- Bioluminescence — the whole lake glows after dark
- Danger
- Shelev in the deep water. Nobody walks the bank at night
- Depends On It
- Irrigation for hundreds of miles, year-round fish, and most of the region's freight
Lake Kea is the largest body of water in Anock and the reason the region around it is the most populated on the continent. It is also the subject of more legends and tall tales than anywhere else in Aropria, and an unusual number of them turn out to be true.
At night the lake glows. Bioluminescent plants and animals fill its waters, glowing seaweed washes up along the shores, and fishermen pull a dozen varieties of eel out of it.
Children living around it are taught very young not to go near the water after dark.
What lives in it
The night-time rule is not superstition. Shelev hunt the deep water of Lake Kea — nocturnal, twenty to thirty metres in length, and in the habit of luring prey to the waterline with a lit tentacle-tip before dragging it under. They rest on the bottom during the day.
People are taken from the shoreline. That is documented, and it is why the bank is empty at night.
What it is worth
Despite that, the lake is indispensable. The streams and rivers running in and out of it irrigate farms for hundreds of miles. Its fish — however strange some of them look — feed the region all year. And its still water carries cargo far faster and more safely than the roads around it, which are troubled by Arak, bandits and burglars in roughly equal measure.
Whioma
At the centre of the lake sits Whioma, an island kept as close to natural as its owners can manage. It holds two settlements and nothing else — the resort and the Whioma Institute of Research — joined by a dock and a handful of strictly maintained trails.
The wealthy come in spring and summer, when the giant flowers bloom. So do flocks of tiny jewel-toned birds that feed on any living creature they can reach, hunting from dusk until dawn, which is why visitors are indoors before dark here too.
Researchers come for the flora and fauna, and for a pool of congruence deep within the island that very few people know about. The island's regular unexplained happenings are generally blamed on it, though nobody can say for certain.
Downstream
The Bevar River runs north and south out of the lake.
East of the lake, where Anock gives way to the Wildlands, its water has seeped into the ground and made a marshland of the Wildlands' northern edge. The congruence-heavy water is held to be the reason that marsh births the creatures it does, and very few who go into those swamps come out.