Lake

Basic Information

A lake is a body of water, completely surrounded by land with no direct connection to the world ocean. A lake may be salt or fresh water - and may even be ephemeral, coming and going depending on the time of year.

To add to the confusion, many lakes are described as seas¹, ponds² or by some other name such as 'mere' or 'water'. An ephemeral lake may be a swamp at certain times of year, or even just open ground.

Lakes are usually very important to the societies that live around them, serving as a source of food, water and transport - the Sea of Galilee³ - should be familiar to us all, as should the Dead Sea (actually a salt lake) which despite being dead (as the name implies) serves as a salt mine for the whole region.

List of Noteworthy Lakes

Real World Lakes

• Crater Lake
• Grand Lake (Colorado)
• Gurudongmar Lake
• Khecheopalri Lake
• Lake Tsongmo
• Lake Manasarovar
• Manimahesh Lake
• Pushkar Lake
• Ronkonkoma Lake
• Salton Sea
• Suraj Tal
• Taos Pueblo
• Zuni Salt Lake

Mythological Lakes

Fictional Lakes

Sources

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia entry

Game and Story Use

Footnotes

1. for which they'd actually need to be connected to the world ocean

2. like a lake, only smaller - the actual cutoff depends on who you ask

3. A prime example of the "lake mislabelled' syndrome