The Lemurian River
The Lemurian River, formerly known as the Moonshine River, is a unique beauty of nature. The city of Lemuria was founded on its mouth and named after it sometime before the Empire had been split up into Provinces. When the Hyacinth Province came to be, Lemuria was named as its capital without hesitation, however. It boasted some of the greatest distilleries on the continent already, at that point, and pulled in such a massive profit for the Empire in exports, that there was simply no question in the matter.
A large portion of this is thanks to the river itself. It is a phenomenal wonder of nature and hence attracts countless wealthy travellers all year round. It only made sense that the biggest of the countless settlements that based themselves along the river would be one on the coast, with vast trade-route access. Along with being a spectacle, however, the river is also a natural source of high-grade alcohol. A discovery made by the pair of inventors the river was later named after, Lera and Mur, quite drastically changed the significance of the river.
Ecosystem
At the source, in the White Forest, a special type of algae evolved to grow and survive during the incredibly harsh winter conditions. It could produce tiny amounts of heat, enough to melt some of the ice around it and absorb the moisture. The glacier it settled in, however, was formed by tributaries that started and passed through large salt caves, so often parts of this algae would be killed off by massive quantities of salt in the moisture it collected.
When the algae are disturbed, it produces a bioluminescent chemical that causes it to glow blue, a byproduct of the heat they produce to melt the ice. As this is invisible during the daytime, it was assumed that this was caused by moonlight, hence the name the Moonshine River. As the glacier melts, in the Summer, the Lemurian River gets far wider and the dead algae are dragged downstream.
Localized Phenomena
The river is filled with algae that glow when agitated, killed off by salt. Lera and Mur, a pair of enthusiasts, discovered that the algae had been fermented by massive salt caves in the White Forest by the time it flowed downstream in Summer. The river came to be named after them, along with the city this river flowed through, and the name Moonshine was given to the gloriously rare alcohol they produced from their experimentation. This alcohol was very low concentration, due to both the inconsistency of the fermentation and the size of the river, but when properly treated, it could be distilled down to a pure alcohol mixture, which received the previous name of the river. This alcohol was revered both for its strength and flavours, as well as the traces of bioluminescent chemicals that caused it to glow when poured into a glass.
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