The Charb Marshes
There is an area, large almost as one of the Four Realms, south of the Haram Plateau, where no one lives or passes. It is the place where many of the rivers and rivulets of the Plateau get swamped, in an endless plain covered in dark-green gigantic grass clumps, sparse twisted and blackened sallows and marsh-oaks and slow streams bordered by thick reeds. A variety of monsters are said to live in this area, and there is a specific, quite unbelievable legend about the spawn of a "death gazer"; more realistically, groups of murderous underlings are said to ambush the few travellers, and shoals and inland gusts threaten the ships that come close to the tawny-coloured shores south of it. An ancient imperial castle should still lie in the centre of the swamp, and is said to be inhabited by an inhuman evil sorcerer. There are no reports of such a building in recent years; another legend says that pirate ships once wrecked on the coast, and that large hoards of treasure still lie at the behest of anyone brave, or insane, enough to go take them.
The Stone Belt
Collectively, the name defines a line of First Empire watchtowers, mostly fallen down or crumbling, in the central part of the northern Haram Plateau, a bit south-east of Castrovalva, in the middle of the hottest zone of the mercenary wars by which the Empire, the Four Realms and Zender dispute their influence on the area. A well-set rumour among the soldiers has that they are haunted at night by malignant spirits, and that their presence puts one's health and life at stake. True or not, even the most valiant fighter prefers to spend sleep out, unsafe, cold and rained upon, to being in one of the grim buildings before dawn.
Castrovalva
Once a middle-sized town, theatre, in year 1751, of the bloodiest slaughter in the known history of the Arvarii, it has decayed extremely quickly afterwards, and by the beginning of the next century nothing but abandoned buildings were there, including a Neder monastery. During particular times of the year, depending on much argued-upon appearances of comets and constellations, the two armies are said to rise from the ground and resume fighting until no man is left, as the myth of the battle tells, except for a nameless troubadour, who became blind and forgot who he was for the horror of what he had seen, and went on singing his horrible tale to the townsmen until his early death. Aside from these likely fables, Castrovalva, with human bones and arms surfacing from under the peat and the clumps of sword-grass already miles far from the walls, is certainly a disturbing place, and any mercenary captain pretending to take hold of the place would almost certainly undergo mutiny.