Mystery of the Lake

It has been a little while since I wrote anything for my system-free setting Stillwater.  So I put together a map focusing on the lake itself.

The Tlast stream flows into Stillwater lake and there is mysteriously no outflow from the lake visible to the residents of the village.  The locals feel that the south end of the lake is bottomless. Weighted lines dropped in the lake do not seem to touch bottom. On my map I have set the lake depth to 150 feet at its deepest point. But Gamemasters can decide on their own.

Stillwater Lake area GM Map

At the deepest point of the lake porous limestone allows the lake to drain slowly into an underground cavern and then out through the Calinor Abyss before emerging into daylight again as the Darkwash River. Locals are completely unaware of this fact. Villagers and explorers in the area think that the Lake is bottomless and will never fill up.

Fisherman from the village of Stillwater stick to the shallow water at the north end of the lake. The fish are plentiful in the shallow waters and to their mind, strangely absent in the south end. Also there have been a half dozen sightings of a lake monster in the south end of the lake.

One fisherman and his boat went missing just over a year ago after he set out for the south end of the lake. No trace was ever found. Not even debris from his boat.

The road south to the Wildlands and the village of Yarrow follows the lake until the south end when it passes up a hillside to the west before continuing further south. This is not a well travelled road. There is some traffic of traders coming from the Wildlands.

I have decided not to create statistics for the Stillwater Lake Monster (despite the temptation to do so). I did provide a hint of its look in the image in the post. It could be only tall tales, a green dragon that likes to swim in the lake or a giant serpent. Personally I lean toward giant serpent.

It is an easy adventure hook. Players could be hired to kill the Lake Monster after it attacks some fishermen from the village. A sage or wizard could pay the characters to retrieve a rare component from the Lake Monster (“bring me the spleen of the creature of the lake”).

Best not to fish in the deep water