Lake of the Moon

Lake of the Moon, also called the Moon Lake in short, is a recurring fictional location in the campaigns of Age of Empires III.

Overview[]

Several characters such as the Spanish Conquistador Delgado and the Inca warrior Chilche refer to the lake as the Lago Del Luna^{[note 1]}. The lake is said to be situated somewhere in Florida. It is where the Fountain of Youth can be found, whose waters are said to grant eternal life.

The lake also contains Moon Bass, a special type of fish which are hinted to be immortal due to the Fountain's waters.

Story[]

The location is first mentioned in the outro cinematic of Into the Caves. This is where Morgan Black finds the cave with wall inscriptions made by the Circle of Ossus. The writings are translated by Alain Magnan as he tells of the Lake of the Moon, a place known only to the Aztecs, where lies the secrets of eternal life.

Morgan arrives in the New World in Central America to find the Spanish attacking an Aztec city in Temples of the Aztec. He rescues them and learns that the Aztecs have a map leading to the lake. With this knowledge, he travels north to Florida and reaches the lake in the scenario The Fountain of Youth?, the finale of the first campaign, where he must destroy the namesake Fountain to prevent the Circle from benefiting from it.

At the end, Morgan fills his flask with water from the lake, drinking which allows him to live extremely long. The local Seminoles chronicle that during this time, the Inca took many barrels of the water of the lake with them back to their hidden stronghold in Pacamayo Valley, which explains the long life of Chilche.

The lake is next seen only in the third campaign, in the scenario The Lost Spanish Gold, where the protagonists Amelia Black and Ká:nien find it, its location being passed down as secret knowledge in the Black family, even though Amelia herself believes the Fountain to be a myth. They arrive and see the lake dried up after the Fountain was destroyed and the lake's waters were not replenished. The exposed lake bed is littered with treasure from the Spanish Treasure Fleet which was brought here several centuries before. It still features ruins of the Fixed Gun on the former banks of the lake.