Lake Otaran

Lake Otaran [oh-TA-ran], known locally as The Otaran (arch. Otarah), is a brackish lake or inland sea in the island of Sensatard in the Anrel Isles. It is connected to the sea by the Otaran Sound, a flooded former river valley.

The lake is economically important as a rich source of greenfish, with hundreds of species of fish and shellfish living in its nutrient rich waters. Its deep and treacherous waters are filled with rocks and shifting shoals making it dangerous to larger shipping, making the lake a barrier that isolates the southeast from the rest of Northland.

In earlier epochs the Otaran was entirely covered by a mountain glacier, which scoured out the lake bed. In modern times the glacier retreated to leave the lake behind. The hills to the southeast of the lake consist of terminal morraine, rocky debris pushed ahead of the glacier.

The Otaran is 140 km long from east to west, brackish and semi-tidal in its southern reaches, being separated from the sea by the Otaran Inlet. The waters of the inlet and the lake itself are treacherous for many months of the year, because of cross-currents flowing into the lake from the sea due to tides and wind, and out of the lake due to weight of water. The lake and its inlet can be hazardous in winter and during the storm tide season, so that although the lake is rich in greenfish, fishermen mainly harvest it from nets on the shore. Consequently the lake has a fearsome reputation. Only the Sarekéa people venture out in boats, and even then only at the northern end.

The lake is home to a population of skippers who feed on lake fish. Due to the treacherous inlet they are isolated from the sea, and so much smaller and paler than their marine cousins.

The lake is linked to the sea by the Otaran Sound, an inlet 40 km long and an average of 1.6 km wide. The sound is notorious for its shifting banks of mud and sand and its strong currents, which make it difficult to navigate. During the Little Ice Age it was spanned by a bridge, an impressive feat of engineering which linked Traste by road with Saria and the agricultural plains of the southwest. After the end of Little Ice Age the water level rose sufficiently to widen the inlet and undermine the foundations of the bridge which then collapsed, and has never been rebuilt.

This had a devastating effect on the farming economy of the south plains, since without the bridge, produce either has to be transported in light barges along the coast or across the inlet, and risk being sunk, or transported by road either to Saria where it is shipped by sea, or by wagon on the long but safe Kings Road to Traste. This long detour increases the cost of Northland produce, so that for much of the year goods imported from Trésard are much cheaper in the coastal cities, contributing to the general poverty of the kingdom.

In legend, the lake is named for Tarah, a Godwoman who used the lake to breed all the greenplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigGreen

The Green Kingdom of flora and fauna includes humans, mammals, birds, whales, greenfish, and most green plants and crops cultivated by humankind. life of the seas. This is certainly a late myth since Otaran is believed to mean “the water within land” in Atantic.

The skippers living in the lake are said to contain the souls of men and women drowned in the lake, so it is taboo so kill or even touch them.