Burgenhole

This ancient city was built in and around a giant gall that formed on a twig near the crown of Arboreus. The insect occupant had left or died before the city was founded, providing a hollow structure that the settlers were able to use to escape the elements. Hidden from predators and wind, the people carved homes on the inside of the growth, forming a village that became a town, and eventually grew into a city.   Legends about the city say that the people, using the gall to hide from the moon, were able to create strange magic and devices. Some tales held that the abnormal growth of the gall was revived as the people moved in, twisting the dark energies that had warped the tree to their own ends. Stories of Burgenhole are usually myths about the origins of dark or evil creatures: the first witches, slipworms, escaped eye-snatchers, and the like. For modern people of Arboreus, Burgenhole is mostly thought of as a way to add gravitas or mystery to a story. Legends say that the sun struck it down from its twig after seeing something evil slip out of the gall, or that the moon tracked some dark creature back to the city and tore it from the tree. Other more pragmatic believers said that wind or age or beast broke the structure, and it tumbled to the roots like any other old and broken leaf or twig.   A dwarfen amber cutting expedition recently uncovered the ancient city. However it had fallen, the ancient gall had landed in a sapslide. The sap caught on a lower branch, flooding and preserving Burgenhole as it hardened into amber. Initial cuts into the city revealed bits of its ancient past. Strange sigils were carved into the domed ceiling of the city, as well as the entrance and exit hole. These sigils were visibly older than most of the buildings, and had been reinforced with silver, poured into the channels of the deep cuts. Through the yellow filter of the amber, the miners could see that similar sigils spread across the buildings, and reported an uneasy sense that the carvings had grown on the structures, rather than having been cut by the inhabitants. Many of the of the miners on the expedition quit after claiming they could see people trapped in the amber. After enough of the dwarfs abandoned their claims to the site, work ground to a halt.