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Qaidam Nor, The Lake of Bones
The waters of Qaidam Nor are bitter and far saltier than those of the sea. Neither fish nor weeds can survive in its depths, and even brine shrimp die in its shallows. Water drawn out of the lake soon dries into a cracked maze of salt crystals, flecked with odd grains of black. Larger pebbles of the black substance are sometimes said to seep up from the depths of the lake, and occasionally very large pieces have been seen, two or three times the size of a man.
Local superstition holds that these odd pebbles and boulders are the discarded hearts of demons and evil spirits, shed when their sins overfill the hearts, just as snakes shed the skins they can no longer fit. The stones are greatly feared and are cast back into the lake when they roll to its shores. Possession of them is punishable by death in some of the tribes, while in others it is merely a cause for exile -- the same result, less swiftly reached.
Regardless of any truth there may be to the superstition -- and no outside scholar has investigated it, as the surrounding desert is legendarily inhospitable -- there does seem to be some foulness in Qaidam Nor. Most of the bones that litter its shores are the remains of creatures, maddened by thirst, who were so desperate that they drank from the lake and quickly succumbed to salt-hastened dehydration. A few, however, are so violently broken that little is left but splinters -- and the damage seems to have shattered the bones from within. As nothing is known to live in the waters of Qaidam Nor, and the desert tribesmen avoid it with superstitious zeal, the cause of these wounds remains a mystery.
See Also:
The Tribes of Qaidam Nor
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