Loch Laern

The Basics

The single most prominent terrain feature in the entire basin is, of course, Loch Laern, which predates the Basin and is named after the Kellen Goddess Laernan. What most people alive today are not aware of is the fact that Loch Laern is today about 30% larger than it was before the “God’s Teeth” spell was cast.  Changes to the lay of the land caused the lake to expand, flooding a number of important Kellen towns and holy sites, which goes a long way toward explaining why they were relatively hostile to the interlopers when the two groups first met.
Currently, more than fifty percent of the human population of the Basin lives within 1 day of the Loch. It’s just pivotal to the survival of humanity in the Basin.

Political Situation

Water is life. The Loch is everything. Control of the Loch is everything. In every way that matters, the Loch and the territories that surround it are central to politics and political calculation in the Basin.

Prominent People & Places

Sky Island

When the Eye fell, something amazing and miraculous happened in the Loch. An island rose out of its normally calm waters and then…the island kept rising. It now sits some 1200 feet above the waters of the Loch, hovering.
It is apparently surrounded by some type of protective dome which reflects sunlight, making it shine like a star during the day.
So far, numerous attempts have been made to gain access to the floating island, but all of the attempts made so far have met with failure. From the exterior of the dome, a large expanse of water can be seen, with the actual island beyond that.
Up close, the floating island looks something like an ice cream cone made with a sugar cone. A jagged, pointed bottom where the land was ripped up from the lakebed and hurled into the sky, and the dome representing a scoop of ice cream on top. What secrets the “Sky Island” holds is anyone’s guess.
Disturbingly, “Sky Island” has recently started to blink in and out of existence. Some days it appears and others, it’s just…gone. Currently, it has been gone for about three months and none know if or when it will return.

The Calcetti Formation

This is a weird phenomenon that occurs on the Loch, named after one Captain Calcetti, who was the first to fall victim to it.
Sometimes, an unaccountably thick fog rises up, about where the dragon emblem appears on the map.
Ships that try to travel through the fog almost always vanish, and so far, only one ship has ever returned. Captain Calcetti, commanding The harbor galley ‘Misfit,’ which had been missing a total of eight years.
On his return, the Captain was quite mad, and kept ranting about islands of emerald death filled with all manner of fantastical creatures, which is nonsense of course, because nothing like that exists anywhere in the Loch…

Others

Too many to name. The Loch gives life to the whole of the Basin, so it is (literally and figuratively) at the center of everything.
It’s supposedly the grave of a goddess. It has cool mysteries surrounding it. It has been the source of incredible joys and sorrows. The possibilities are endless and who doesn’t want to be the first to crack the mysteries of Sky Island and the Calcetti formation?

Plot Threads

It would be difficult to make the Sky Island an entire campaign, but it would be a fabulous multi-session high level adventure! The Calcetti Formation, however, could easily be an entire campaign…

Marked DM’s Eyes Only!

This is a little known detail about the Basin but one well worth keeping under your hat to pull out if your players begin exploring the fundamental nature of the world. When the “God’s Teeth” spell was cast, it also kind of helped the Nilroggi, and it created a natural deep drainage system that keeps the Basin from flooding. The mountains weren’t just ripped wholesale out of the ground (well, except in the area around the Crevasse of Sorrows), but rather, bits of earth were pulled from all over the Basin.
This simultaneously gave the Nilroggi several natural cave systems to retreat into to rebuild their numbers, but it also created a natural drainage system and deep aquifer for the Basin. All that glorious water from the mountain runoff enters the Loch, and then, filters down into the channels deep in the earth, created when the spell was cast.

Type
Landmark
Population
More than half of the Basin's population
Held By
None
Bordering
The Kingdom of Fraine
Norlund
and The Council of Seven all border the Loch.