The lake at the heart of Xi'ivrach territory, a crescent-shaped body of water cradled in a mountain valley, its western shore rising into the Sunset Mountains, its eastern shore home to the city of Jeh Bli.
The name means "still eye" in the Xi'ivrach tongue, and the description fits. Kro Nymos is deep, cold, and unnervingly calm. Even when wind tears through the valley, the lake's surface barely ripples. The orcs have lived on its shores for centuries; they've never seen it freeze, never seen it flood, never seen it change level by more than a hand's width.
The Water
The lake is fed by snowmelt from the Sunset Mountains, a dozen streams cascading down the western slopes, pooling in Kro Nymos, with no visible outlet. The water should be rising. It isn't. The orcs assume it drains through underground channels, flowing toward the ocean through caves beneath the mountains.
The water is drinkable but tastes faintly of metal and something else, something the orcs describe as "the taste before lightning." Fish thrive in the lake: silver-scaled trout, bottom-dwelling catfish with whiskers like rope, and the armored kro-zheth that the orcs prize for their dense, oily flesh. The fishing is good. It's always been good. The lake provides.
At depth, the water turns black. Not dark, black. Divers report losing all sense of up and down, of seeing nothing, of feeling the water change temperature erratically. Most don't dive deep. The ones who've gone past fifty feet describe hearing sounds: clicks, tones, something that might be voices speaking a language made of echoes.
The orcs don't dive anymore. They fish from the surface and don't ask what lives below.
The Crescent Shore
The lake curves around a central ridge of submerged rock, creating two arms of water that reach toward the mountains. The city of Jeh Bli occupies the southern shore, built on a natural harbor where the water is shallow enough to wade.
The northern arm is avoided. The water there is deeper, colder, and the fish won't enter it. The northern shore is bare rock, polished smooth by something other than waves, great curved surfaces that look almost deliberate, almost carved. The orcs call it Kro Gheth, "the still side," and treat it as sacred ground. No hunting, no fishing, no building.
Once a year, on the longest night, the shamans paddle across to the northern shore and spend the night there alone. They don't discuss what happens. They come back quieter, more thoughtful, occasionally marked by pale scars that weren't there before.
The Island
A single island rises from the lake's center, a spire of volcanic rock about two hundred feet across, covered in dense vegetation that shouldn't survive at this altitude. The orcs call it Ghural-Kro, "the eye's pupil," and they don't land there.
From shore, the island looks unremarkable: trees, scrub, the occasional bird circling above. But boats that approach too closely find the water resisting them with neither current nor wind, just a sense of pushing back that gets stronger the closer they get. Swimmers report the same thing, and worse: the feeling of something watching them from below, of vast attention turning their direction.
The shamans say Ghural-Kro is where the lake thinks. This is not meant as metaphor.
Whatever bargain the Xi'ivrach struck to live here, the island is part of it. They feed it, not with sacrifice, exactly, but with offerings: carved bone, worked metal, occasionally something alive. They row out as close as the water allows and throw their gifts toward the shore.
The offerings sink. They never wash up again.