| Lake Mirzwe | |
|---|---|
| Area | 7,570 sq. miles |
Almost any discussion of the Sabo Jungles must focus on the central role of Lake Mirzwe, into which the vast majority of the jungle’s rivers feed before ultimately emptying into the sea via the Swakut River. The lake is more than a hundred miles across, and its shores harbor the ruins of nearly a dozen lost cities, including Bezmikufundan, capital of King Gwezi and his followers. Travel by boat is quick but almost as dangerous as direct travel through the jungles; travelers avoiding the gorillas of Bezmikufundan and other hostile or territorial tribes know that the waters conceal dangers all their own.
Isolated from outside influences and capable of supporting a far more massive ecosystem than those of its source rivers, the lake’s waters harbor animals unknown beyond its bounds. To foreign explorers, native tales of gigantic beasts with the necks of snakes and the heads of crocodiles initially sounded like fantastical inventions wrought of ignorant superstition. Yet sailors out of Red Bay fearfully confirm such monsters' reality, describing the sinuous beasts and their predatory habits within the lake and sometimes within the surrounding river systems, plucking their victims from boat or shore, dragging them below the waters and leaving behind only a ripple in the water and a spreading bloody stain within the current. Dwelling not within the waters but in the jungles immediately surrounding the lake, reptilian-toothed flightless birds known as Cobachti prowl in small packs. Incredibly quick and possessing plumage that easily blends in with the dense undergrowth, they avoid larger groups of animals or humans but are quick to prey on lone or injured travelers, whom they attack, overwhelm, and then drag off into the brush to feast upon.
At the lake’s center stands one of the most curious geological formations in the entire region, the so-called Generation Stone. This towering pinnacle of natural rock rises up steeply from a small island of rubble and collected alluvial silt, looming 300 feet above the lake’s waters and shining a brilliant white in the sun. Because of the curiously regular nature of the column’s stone, many of the jungle’s Thy Gwud tribes tell legends of it being a monument erected by giants; others proclaim it the shaft of a spear loosed by a god into the earth, causing the land to bleed with the waters that now feed the jungles.