Haunted places

The Catacombs at Aulenor
A series of oddly-angled narrow corridors that run under most of the town, they were the burial place of courtiers of the town before the Imperial conquest, when all the aristocracy is said to have taken shelter there with their best soldiers and most precious treasures, and to have tried to wage war against the invader through nightly assaults and murders, until Athorion walled all the entrances and the occupants slowly died of hunger. Only a legend for many centuries, recently abated buildings, cracked roads and countermines have revealed in the recent years more and more accesses to the dire passages. The nature of the terror they strike into the citizens' heart is not precisely known, but cave-ins, lost tracks and mysterious violence have claimed the lives of several - and daring one of the entrances is the test to prove the courage of local boisterous youths.

The Ruins of Yatemla
Elves are one of the blind spots of Arvarian history: some assert they are nothing but children's tales, others that they are of the faerie kind, and therefore appear exceptionally in enchanted places and escape the laws of the common mortals, other still they were once a population much like humans, and that they had realms, counties and towns, and just decayed and disappeared out of the dislike of some superior being, or their effeminate habits. Those that believe the last version tell that the greatest elven realm had as a capital Yatemla, located between Gueresquelot and the lost dukedom of Lothenia; mighty ruins would still be there, witnessing the elves' superior taste and craftmanship. Unfortunately, all the forest, hundreds of miles around the alleged location are heavily infested by countless Driops, so that no one has ever had a chance to check it.

The Ogre's Wood
The quite large wooded area between the forlorn hamlet of Atrelocx (literally meaning "dim place") and the small town of Erdals has an extremely bad reputation, as people talk about a "gigantic man with two heads proposing riddles to the travelers and killing them if they do not answer correctly". According to the legend, the only one that ever solved the riddle correctly so far was emperor Rayvin, who had to pass through the forest when pursued by murderous conspirators, before his ascento to the throne.
There are animated discussions about the truth of the tale, and rationalists either dismiss it as superstition, or suppose there must be a grotto somewhere, and a group of cave giants living in it. Whatever the truth, only a few, desperately hasty travelers use the old road, and while most of them reach the other end unharmed, and report nothing strange, several disappear forever. Only a few groups of Zenderite outcasts use it regularly, claiming their talismans protect them; these talismans are for sale, for quite a high price.

The Loathed Mound
The Loathed Mound (picture) is a large earthen hillock located some ten miles east of Lundze.
No vegetation but greyish, thorny bushes grow for over a mile around it, a foul smell lingers on the place, and sometimes the ground itself seems to be smouldering with fumes. The Mound has a single, old and extremely corroded iron gate, closed with an ancient, rusty lock. A passage can be seen going down under the earth.
Nothing specific has ever happened, but is a known fact that nobody who entered the small gate has ever found anything worth any attention. The passage leads down some thirty feet in a circular vault, about forty feet in diameter.
Nonetheless, everybody approaching the mound feels uncomfortable, and anybody daring enough to enter the vault feels the irresistible urge to run outside. The sensation is that of being sure something terrible, enormous, and completely horrible is ready to jump on you from behind.
Nobody is known to have ever entered the mound by night; the townsmen of Lundze keep well away from it, even if this means adding several miles to a trip, and blame on it everything that goes wrong.

The Shunning Monolith
An old legend tells that somewhere in the Yatemla forest the Shunning Monolith has its dwelling. This would be an extremely ancient magic stone, upon which ancient sorcerers engraved sayings of great wisdom, magical signs of great effect and obscure pointers to hidden treasures.
Some scholars surmise that over time the stone must have acquired a certain degree of sentience, as if it were a living creature. If this is the case, it must be very shy, if not an utter craven, since it disappears by some unknown mean every time somebody sees it, and there is no way of knowing where it goes. Rumors have that for a certain period of time it remained in the centre of a driop village, venerated like it were some divine power. For years the Adventurer's guild and those barons whose domains boder the forest have sent brave men in search of this clearly sorcerous artifact, apparently with the intent of destroying it, but, up to now nobody has succeeded. The luckier expeditions came back without a hint as about its location, while the others simply disappeared, swallowed by the forest (or, more literally, by some hungry beast).