Name: Laug Inlet
Location: Just south and west of the Yraso Mountains, in the northwest corner of Ash-Akul, among the Northern Wastes.
Climate: Frozen during the winter months, even in the summer a breeze off the mountains will coat Laug Inlet with a thin scum of salty ice. For most creatures, a fall into the bitter waters will result in hypothermia and death within seconds, even in the height of summer.
Physical Features: A roughly rectangular chunk bitten out of Ash-Akul by the A’el Sea, Laug Inlet offers little protection from the angry pounding of sea-storms and wind.
Flora and Fauna: Thin, scraggly growths of hardy seaweed occasionally manage to take a footing in the rocky bottom of the Inlet, but nothing else. Large, blue-gray fish abound in the arctic waters, and are food for the seal, walrus, orca and narwhal that visit seasonally. The whales also eat the seals and walrus.
Known Dangers: Freezing, being mistaken for a seal or walrus by a whale, and the ice scrag.
Ethnicity/Race: Whether the orca and narwhal that frequent these waters are intelligent is debatable, as they are loath to let anyone or anything get close enough to find out. Although most aquatic races cannot survive the bitter chill, trolls dwell beneath the frozen waves. Resembling a cross between a marine scrag and an ice troll - and as a result of this resemblance commonly called ‘ice scrag’ - they feed primarily off of careless shore-dwellers, fish, seal, walrus and whales.
Language: The language of whale-song is debatable, and the trolls speak a language of their own. Unlike the ice trolls of the Yraso Mountains, rare ice scrags actually learn a version of common, trading with the residents of Margrim.
Resources: Fish, whales, salvage from the wreckage of any vessels unfortunate enough to sink in the glacial waters.
Special Facts: Most of the land-dwelling races that surround Laug Inlet whisper and tell tales of a great troll city beneath the restless waves, built from the wreckage of sunken ships and the bones of countless whales, with gates and palaces made from the ivory tusks of narwhals. They say that each year, old whales come to die at the hands of the trolls that live there - that the city of the ice trolls is a whale graveyard. None of this is anything more than the product of fancy and greed, but very few are the adventurers brave - or foolish - enough to venture into the depths to find out. And even fewer are those who return to scoff at the tales. Come to think of it, none of them have ever returned.
