[RPG] Is the Sea of Fallen Stars in the Forgotten Realms salt or fresh water

forgotten-realms

In the Forgotten Realms, the Sea of Fallen Stars is a huge inland sea. I'm just wondering if it's saltwater or freshwater?

Best Answer

Seawater is colloquially used to mean saltwater. While there are a few named seas that aren't saltwater and oceanographers do not use sea scientifically - most seas are saltwater. What makes a body of water salt versus fresh water comes down to 3 factors: how big is the body, how old is the body, and how many tributaries enter the body.

The Sea of Fallen Stars has many tributaries, is old, and is very big.

Additionally, while it isn't explicitly stated, much of the material for life in the Sea of Fallen Stars designates if it is fresh or salt water life.

http://www.realmshelps.net/faerun/lore/ecologies/fallenstars2.shtml#top

(Originally from Elminster's Ecologies)

Scrags

Two varieties of this kind of troll threaten the coast: freshwater and saltwater. The freshwater trolls are called scrags (also river trolls), the saltwater are called marine scrags (and sometimes sea trolls)...

Typically when a setting is written, anything out of the ordinary is stated. Often things that aren't stated can reasonably be assumed to conform with the most common versions of those things. We don't describe what legs are when we say a creature is a biped, for example.

So given these 7 pieces of evidence: that people often mean saltwater when they say sea, that none of the material seems to state that it is freshwater, the assumption that most seas are saltwater, that the sea is big, has many tributaries and is very old, and that life is described in the area as being both salt and fresh water - I'd say that it is very likely that the Sea of Fallen Stars is intended to be saltwater.