Lake Pantai

Thousands of years ago, this vast artificial lake was called the Pantai Lowlands, and was home to Senge tribesmen. Later, the Xha’en Agretor clan settled here and founded a vast and powerful city-state along the Pantai River that rivaled the growing influence of Xha’ahan. The cunning Xha’en ended Agretor’s ascendancy by damming the Pantai, flooding the lowlands and transforming the region into what was redubbed Lake Pantai. Now, the cities of Xha’ahan, Aphapor, and Tsadar rise from the shores of the lake, with regular water travel between them. In addition to submerging the troublesome city-state, the dam also wrought untold havoc on the local environment and caused droughts across the Plains of Xha and required the construction of a vast canal and aqueduct network to bring water to Xha’en farms. These difficult days are long past, and the battered ecosystem has readjusted to the new reality — the Xha’en themselves even take fish from the lake, and the tamed South Pantai River is a major travel route through the central provinces of the Hegemony.
As an entirely artificial construction, the lake is free of many natural hazards of the region, and its economic importance has grown over the centuries. There is one major exception to the lake’s relative placidity however, for the death of Agretor has never fully vanished from Xha’en memory. Many tragic tales have been told of the last days of the Agretor, and of the Senge tribesfolk displaced by the Pantai’s flooding — despite the Hegemony’s official focus on the glories of the dam’s construction and its significance as a symbol of Xha’en superiority. Some tales claim that the city still exists in the depths of Lake Pantai, inhabited by the shades of its old inhabitants who still relive their lives as their resentment and rage at the Xha’en festers and grows. Stories of phantoms, shades, mysterious mists, and even cannibalistic undead rising from the waters of Lake Pantai are told in hushed whispers, and invariably silenced by government bureaucrats. Yet the tales persist, and one day they may actually prove true.

Type

Lake