Creaking Chasm

Creaking Chasm is a location in the dead centre of the Mirror Lakes. The climate is the most extreme of any inhabited region. Because of the geographical conditions of the Mirror Lakes, the middle of the world is the coldest part. However the Creaking Chasm is one of a number of locations which don't stick to that rule all the time, because of underground firewater streams.   The Creaking Chasm gets its name because, at the centrepoint, it is possible to hear the landscape creaking as it changes direction on the Zenith. Creaking is also often heard from the glaciers as the ice shifts.   The change of seasons brings drastic change to Creaking Chasm, but the seasons themselves are very different to the rest of the Mirror Lakes due to the position. Whereas most of the rest of the world is closer to/less shadowed from the Allfire, and subsequently warmer, during a convex year, Creaking Chasm receives equal amounts of heat and light at the year's midpoint, giving it an annual warmer season. However, during concave years, firewater from all the underground streams pool beneath the chasm, causing a surge in heat from below. This period is their summer.   Inhabitants of Creaking Chasm have to deal with, depending on the time of year, polar temperatures and weather conditions, avalanches, melting ice causing flooding, boiling geysers, heat and humidity and soaring temperatures. During the height of summer, Creaking Chasm is briefly one of the hottest regions within the Mirror Edge.   Creaking Chasm is considered inhabitable by most, but in the Age of Blood and Bone, Allshadow sent a large workforce of otans there on a mission, the purpose of which has been lost to history. He famously miscalculated, as they realised that the chasm's natural features put them beyond his reach, and refused to return, instead starting a new society in the Chasm. In the Age of Renewal, their descendents were approached and offered a place in the new post-Allshadow age where otans finally had equal rights, but they chose to remain.