Lake Bentika

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Lake Bentika is a massive freshwater inland sea on the Greater Continent, and served as the capitol city and seat of power for the Marcon Alliance during the Dynastic Period of the Mage Wars.

Dimensions

Lake Bentika is oddly-shaped and nearly 1,000 miles across at its widest point. There is a single major portion and four smaller connected lobes. Because of its shape it has several thousand miles of coastline, allowing for a great deal of trade and supplies of freshwater.

The lake is fed by two rivers originating in the Teeth of the World and forms the genesis of the Nara River.

History

The lake is named for the Benka, the sybol of ownership of the Marcons. What name it was known by in ancient times has not survived, but it is believed there were as many as eight separate lakes originally.

Sometime around the early Dynastic Period, the Marcons painstakingly reshaped the topography until the lakes formed a single massive benka, visible from the air.

During the height of the Marcon Alliance the lake, islands within it, and the shoreline were heavily populated. With the decline and fall of the empire the region was left completely abandoned for much of the Second Chaotic Period and well into the Golden Age. In the early Second Age a series of expeditions were launched to reach Lake Bentika by sea. Allegedly, adventurers from Sun's Beacon were successful in traveling by sea to the Nara River Delta and all the way to Lake Bentika. A second expedition only a century later found the Nara impassable. The Diary of Skolla Shawni recounts a visit to Bentika City.

According to the Gudersnipe Foundation, the attacks launched on the lake and the surrounding region should not have left any survivors. The entire area is today believed uninhabited.