Lake Plateau

"Aye, you be from Belyos? Part of an expedition over the plateau hey? You'll find nothing but death and pain from that, I'll tell you that for nothing, and you'll bring it back with you when you run back here. No one has ever gone up that way and gotten through, and it's been nothing but trouble for the rest of us. Call 'em stories if you want, but we folk around here know what we're talking about."

The New Empire of Belyos is almost entirely surrounded by the Edge Mountains, providing a natural and very distinctive boundary to Imperial Lands. There are few gaps in this boundary, most notably the known pass into Sakamohr, guarded by the garrison town of Enim, a pass to the west, which leads to the infested jungles on the far western coast, the Rodess Straits, and the Lake Plateau.
Located in the south-eastern corner of the Empire, the Lake Plateau should be, in principle, an easy corridor to the unexplored lands to the east, offering potential for colonisation and exploitation. The road up to the plateau is not, by relative standards, overly steep, and the weather remains mild most the year round. At the top is a wide basin valley, with a large freshwater lake in the centre that remains ice free even in the heights of winter, thanks to deep underground hot spring.
However, the Lake Plateau has a reputation for being haunted. Every expeditions to the region has turned back, telling tales of mysterious noises at night, people and animals disappearing, and strange shapes in the darkness. Perhaps worst of all, after every expedition, whatever causes these troubles follows people back, leading to villages losing livestock and grain and, worst of all, young children.
The Imperial people who live in the foothills of the plateau scoff that this has some kind of supernatural cause. Instead, they blame a purely human culture who lives in the upland areas and beyond, who wear animal skins and horns, and who view the lands and theirs and broke no trespassers. When Imperial expeditions arrive, they scare them off, then exact retribution for the offense afterwards.
The effects of the raids cannot be discounted, and the area is too remote and too large to effectively guard, so the locals allow the rumour to persist, in order to discourage further attempts at trying to pass over the plateau.

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Geography

The level of the plateau itself is about three thousand meters lower than the peaks around it, but it still sits over five thousand metres above sea level. A persistent wind blows over the plateau, getting extremely cold in the winter. Whilst there are lots of lakes and bodies of standing water, the largest, known only as Plateau Lake dominates the area, stretching almost the full width of the plateau, and most of its length too.

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Maps

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  Plateau Lake

  The region surrounding Plateau Lake and its relation to the Empire

Type

Plateau