Oaitla Salt Marsh

Place

Place Name:

Oaitla Salt Marsh

Biome:

Salt Marsh

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

Oaitla is comprised of a series of small to medium-sized islands, alternatively sandy or stony for the most part. In between all these islands are very shallow, very salty, and rather small lakes, which can be waded across by anyone with little difficulty. Palm trees are abundant and provide plenty of shade to those who desire it, but the climate of Oaitla isn’t as hot as it might be. The heat is seldom oppressive except in summer. There are a few sources of fresh water in Oaitla, but they’re rather out of the way and inconvenient to get to.

Most of them are up in some slightly mountainous terrain. Some of them are wells in far-off places. The zu’aan of Lakah have devised some means of getting the water out of the places where it is, and to the many places where they want it to be — mostly some primitive aqueducts. But these things have to be repaired rather frequently, so many carry on with the old tradition of sending the young girls out to fetch water in buckets. Farms are typically built on the few islands that have even semi-arable soil. But most people have gardens: good soil was one of the first things that the people of Oaitla had imported.

They keep this soil in boxes and pots of various sorts, which can look a bit strange, especially when the person in question is a professional gardener and has a good several dozen of these things in his backyard, all growing different plants. Just remember that even if the gardens do look strange, they are nevertheless fully serviceable vegetable producing utilities, and without them, the citizens of Oaitla would be stuck eating just fish. Lakah City was built on several islands, which were formed into a single island by the shifting of several small sand dunes into the lakes separating the islands in question.

The city has a natural moat, though the moat’s not that deep. Some less tactically-minded people might even question the use of the moat, since the walls of the city are absurdly high. Of course, the more tactically-minded people will point out that the moat is supposed to make it harder for men to pile up dirt against the walls, and that the moat fails to do this job, because of its shallowness. The same tacticians will also point out that it would take an absurd amount of dirt to create a hill high enough to climb over the wall with, so perhaps it’s not so bad after all.

The buildings inside the city have taken on a new architectural style, too, which had clearly been inspired by the Ivoro kin’toni clan’s great jump height. Towers abound in Lakah City, these days. Stronger foundations also abound because it would be a disaster if the highest tower, the home of the leader of the Ivoro clan, crashed to the ground. The foundations of the buildings have become as reinforced as possible, since people have become paranoid that the foundations are ultimately resting on shifting sands.

Plants

What kinds of vegetables do the people of Lakah City grow? As many kinds as they can. If it exists, they’ve probably tried growing it at some point, or want to try growing it at some point. Pathri are undoubtedly the most commonly grown garden plant, though its status as a vegetable is questionable. Second only to the potato is the gathutet. All other vegetables are grown mostly to personal preference; their market value compared to potatoes and gathutet is rather insignificant. Gathutet were first imported from the south three years after the market of Lakah was established.

People decided that they liked the taste of these strange, blue roots, and began gardening them in rather large quantities. It’s noted that those who eat gathutet on a regular basis are generally as healthy as those who eat other vegetables on a regular basis. Gathutet do have a bit of a strange side effect (or perhaps some would consider it a rather delightful main effect) of making one’s skin unusually shiny. Ladies who want to be posh and fashionable (both zu’aan and kin'toni among them) try to eat as many gathutet as possible — as a result, there are numerous recipes involving gathutet.

Posh ladies don’t like eating the same thing over and over now, do they? Soups, breads, desserts, sauces, salads — the posh, shiny-skinned gentry of Lakah are always looking for new recipes and better chefs. The palm trees that grow in Oaitla often have a smaller flower growing in their shade, known as khuriel. It’s a pretty plant with many flowers with many petals, and it smells nice. But don’t pick them. They smell terrible after you pick them. You have been warned. Khuriel flowers come in precisely three different colours: red, brown, and orange.

Every stalk on a khuriel plant divides into three stems, and each of these three stems has a different colour from the two others. As a result, Kkhuriel is sometimes known as the Eternal Autumn Flower. Autumn does not come to Oaitla, so this is the closest thing that the people of Lakah have to autumn. Many consider it an adequate substitute, but others long to leave the land they’ve been trapped in by the kin'toni, and see a real autumn. Some interesting vegetation grows directly in the salty lakes between all the islands in Oaitla — while you can find seaweed in some places.

Most of it has been choked out by Jelyid yla, which float atop the water’s surface and tend to absorb every last drop of the light. The seaweed can’t really do anything to stop them from spreading, either. Jelyid yla are far smaller than the other yla you can find in the world, but to compensate for this, they grow in far larger quantities. Most of the time you’ll find them in large groups which have come to be termed ‘schools’, as though they were fish. A school of Jelyid yla is no eyesore, though they do have a tendency to suddenly sprout up in the middle of favourite swimming pools, and have to be cleared out (usually into vases) every so often.

Animals

There’s a creature called the Mundragh that lives in Oaitla. It’s a reptile of some sort, since it has scales and is cold-blooded, but it also has wings. Mundraghs can’t actually fly with these wings, but they can glide extremely far distances with them. To complement these gliding abilities, mundraghs are skilled climbers, and also have a very powerful jump (though it doesn’t even come close to rivaling the jump of the Ivoro kin’toni clan). The scales of these reptiles come in all manner of colours, but are typically a colour similar in one way or another to dark red.

White is the rarest colour — but there are mundraghs that are white, that are not albinos.The back legs of a Mundragh are some of its more noticeable features. Obviously a creature would need extra-large muscles in its back legs if it was going to be a high-jumping creature, but this seems… a little excessive. Mundraghs are mostly leg. Their wings are also quite large, but when the wings are folded up and tucked away on their backs, all that’s left for the average observer to see is a pair of enormous scaly legs and a rather slim body on top of them.

These legs, however, are rather aerodynamic — though they’re enormous, they are by no means bulky. They not only lend themselves well to jumping and climbing; they also lend themselves well to running and swimming. The rest of the body is also aerodynamic. The head of a Mundragh is very long, the long mouth taking up the majority of the head size but by no means all of it. Mundraghs’ wings are attached to their arms; the arms fold up with the wings. Mundragh arms (or wings, it’s the same limb really) have four joints instead of the usual two, mostly in order to help the wings fold away compactly.

But it does have its uses when climbing, too. These arms are still mostly useless for any other purpose. They’re too slow and ungainly to catch or hold a small woodland creature. A mundragh will use its mouth to snap up prey, since its neck and jaws are much quicker than its arms. Mundraghs guard their eggs ferociously. Very ferociously. You do not want to be between a mother mundragh and her eggs. Nor do you want to be between a male Mundragh and his mate. The latter is especially dangerous, not only because male Mundraghs are stronger than female ones.

But also because the female mundragh will stay out of the fight until she’s lulled you into a false sense of security. Then she swoops in (sometimes, literally swoops in) and chomps your leg off. Baby Mundraghs leave the nest as soon as they hatch and sneak away to go off on adventures while their parents aren’t looking. Nine times out of ten these adventures are going to get them killed and devoured, but fortunately mundraghs lay large numbers of eggs. They’re not likely to die off anytime soon.

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	Ivoro Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Oaitla Salt Marsh

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This article is written by Xerxes Worldweaver. Copyright 2026 Xerxes Worldweaver. All rights reserved.