Denytur Mesa Shield Lake

Place

Place Name:

Denytur Mesa Shield Lake

Biome:

Shield Lake

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

The Denytur Mesa Shield Lake is well, a lake. However, the area of this lake is a whopping thirty thousand square kilometers. Its clear aquamarine water is one of the greatest wonders that Taerel has to offer. Even better, all of this water is fresh and fit for both zu’aan and kin’toni consumption. However, something that’s more interesting is the land around the lake itself. The Mesa Shield Lake lies surrounded by hills from all sides. There are four of them in total, one shielding the lake from the North, another from the West, a third from the East, and the last from the South.

This geographic layout has made the Denytur area a really attractive place to control for kin’toni, if you view it from a strategic and tactical point of view. These four hills make up what is called the Mesa Shield because they, much like the name suggests, shield the lake from invaders from all sides. The hills themselves are fairly tall, some would maybe even mistake them for mountains, even though the weather throughout the Mesa Shield is much warmer than in the mountains that occupy the North. One thing that makes them clearly stand out as hills though, is the fact that they’re covered with a forest so dense that sometimes you can’t see anything through the trees.

This has made the Mesa Shield Lake very isolated from other regions of Taerel, because the forest is simply such a pain to get through. However, there are a couple of clear paths towards the area, most of them South of the lake since that’s where the fewest trees are. Kin’toni myths claim that the four hills are in reality four giants who were slain by a god, and that the lake is a pool of their lifeblood that trickled down over time. Tightly packed trees aren’t the only reason the shield of hills is so effective. Fields of incredibly tall grass adorn the four hills, making the Mesa Shield Lake a completely isolated region.

This has granted the zu’aan clans the ability to thrive and prosper without faraway kin’toni clans threatening their presence. This has even caused the zu’aan to give the grass a special name: senuul, meaning “protector” in their language. Another thing that makes the area so great for zu’aan is the abundance of natural resources. Stone is literally everywhere you set your eyes on, and metal isn’t buried that far beneath the ground. This has allowed the zu’aan to create an isolated, self-sustained city. Wood is plentiful and can be found anywhere in the hills, same with stone and iron.

What else do you need for building a fort and equipping your military with skillfully crafted weapons? Copper, bronze and silver can also be dug up in the Mesa Shield with relatively low effort, so all of the needs that zu’aan have are sure to be met, and that’s not even taking the near-infinite body of freshwater next to them in consideration.

Plants

One cannot talk about the Mesa Shield Lake without talking about senuul, the two-meter-tall grass that grows on the hills around it and surrounds the region completely like a living wall. Senuul has so many more uses than just preventing outside from discovering the area on the other side and keeping the Mesa Shield isolated. This grass seems to be something that animals really love, and wandering lo’tu regularly come to the area to graze. Some other wild species do the same thing. The amount of things that both the zu’aan and kin’toni clans use this grass for is too large to count.

It can be used in fishing rods (which are the most reliable tools to get food when living near a gigantic lake) due to its insane bendiness, sewn together to create long-lasting clothing, and even woven together into blankets and carpets. The lake houses flora of its own, algae to be more precise. The seaweed that grows on the bottom of this lake is massive, some of the plants reach up to fifty meters in height, as if they were thin underwater trees. The kin’toni and zu’aan living by the lake use them for a variety of purposes.

Sometimes the algae is burned and used as fuel for fires, other times it’s cooked and sprinkled into food to spice up the flavour. The most common plant under the water is named the kap’ela, a type of algae that tends to produce huge, dense forests of itself on the bottom of the lake. Growing to immense sizes, sometimes one may see entire fields of it poking out of the water. The most common species of tree that can be found growing on the four hills around the lake is the ilasi. It’s a pale tree with inky black patches on its bark. The ilasi are stretchy and small in circumference.

Which makes them quite easy for the kin’toni and zu’aan to chop down. Obviously, the ilasi trees have dozens of uses, timber being the notable one. The zu’aan refuse to construct buildings out of wood, paranoid about the possibility of them burning down under an invasion, but the kin’toni don’t care and build their houses and huts out of this tree’s wood. Algae are not the only aquatic plants inhabiting the lake. Zi’fil are emerald-coloured flowers with leaves that float on water, allowing the flower itself to remain above the surface.

Their beauty is something that makes them special to the zu’aan in the Mesa Shield Fort, so much so that the city’s flag is a zi’fil on a background of bright sapphire. These plants, if properly processed, can be used to make the green dye that’s used for the majority of the kin’toni and zu’aan clothing in order to beautify it. Zi’fil aren’t flowers exclusive to the Denytur Mesa Shield Lake though, a sizeable number of them can be found further towards the East in the Achceros Pastureland. It’s very likely that they were brought East by travelers who wanted to grow these magnificent plants in their home regions.

Animals

The lo’tu that can be found almost over the entirety of Taerel wander here as well, feeding on the senuul that grows around the Mesa Shield. The kin’toni living near the lake have found out that it’s possible to tame lo’tu, and that due to their extreme endurance and agility, they make for amazing beasts of burden. Despite being aware of how to domesticate them, the lake’s kin’toni clans haven’t really used them for a lot. The Denytur Mesa Shield is a region closed off from the rest of Taerel, so trading with other clans isn’t something commonly done here, for which the lo’tu would be excellent.

The Mesa Shield Lake is home for a few dozen species of fish. Istusal are small fish that travel in flocks of hundreds, sometimes blotting out the water completely with their scaly bodies. If one of these flocks managed to stumble into a fishing net, there’s no doubt that a feast will be due in the zu’aan fortress. Each istusal is about five to ten centimetres long, and only a few centimetres wide. These fish have tiny bones that break very easily on impact, so it’s not uncommon to see the entire fish get shoved into the mouth of a hungry zu’aan.

Another type of fish occupying the lake is the artena. This is a carnivorous species of fish with razor-sharp teeth that can chop the body of an istusal in half with a single bite. Naturally, the istusal is the main source of nutrition for the artena, though sometimes the latter will go for larger, riskier prey, such as the spiky lu’rat. Artena themselves can grow to almost-absurd sizes, with the biggest artena found being 62 centimetres in length. The lu’rat though, are medium-sized crustaceans who stroll about the very bottom of the Mesa Shield Lake.

Self-defense is something those creatures seem to value highly, as they are armed with powerful pincers that serve as tools for both catching smaller fish and protecting themselves from the lake’s most savage predators. The lu’rat also possess tough, spiky shells that they can retract their fleshier body parts into. Therefore, the correct way to kill a lu’rat is to flip one on its back, leaving the vulnerable belly of the lu’rat completely unprotected. Since they live at the very bottom, a fisherman actually catching a lu’rat is considered to be a special occasion and a sign of good luck to come among the zu’aan.

Why? Because even though there is little meat on them compared to the artena or even a bunch of istusal, they taste great and are extremely difficult to find. Someone reeling a lu’rat in clearly has fortune of their side already, so it seems natural to the zu’aan that they would only get more and more of such blessings. The right way to ensnare one is to watch for movement in the sand of the shallower parts of the lake, and quickly dive down with a spear to impale the creature.

Historical Timeline of Ages

Age Name	Dates	Controller
Stone Age	Before 1E 0	Unknown
Copper Age	1E 1–1E 2200	Unknown
Bronze Age	1E 2200–1E 4400	Unknown
Iron Age	2E 0–2E 700	Unknown
Ancient Age	2E 700–2E 2200	Unknown
Middle Age	3E 0–3E 2050	Unknown
Early Modern Age	3E 2050–3E 2600	Unknown
Industrial Age	3E 2600–3E 2700	Unknown
Machine Age	3E 2700–3E 2800	Unknown
Atomic Age	3E 2800–3E 2850	Unknown
Space Age	3E 2850–3E 2875	Unknown
Information Age	3E 2875–3E 2900	Unknown
Genetic Age	3E 2950–3E 3000	Unknown
Awakening Age	3E 3000–3E 3415	Unknown
Twilight Age	4E 0–4E 500	Cheaid’y Tribal Zu'Aan

Place

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Denytur Mesa Shield Lake

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This article is written by piggytheastro. Copyright 2026 piggytheastro. All rights reserved.