Haelim Aravasnofa

Adonnal toed the tiny shards of glass scattered across the stone floor and briefly wondered how they hadn't been reduced to dust long ago. This place was an enigma, a place that persisted despite the cause of its demise and how old it was. He wasn't sure how he was going to explain all this in his report to the Athenaeum.

  A jewel on the shores of Lake Aravasnofa (Mai: "lake-home of the weeping willow trees"), Haelim Aravasnofa (Mai: "manor-home of the weeping willow trees") was once a magnificent estate that sprawled long the rocky and sandy beaches of the remote, mountain-cradled lake. Both a private residence of a noble family now forgotten by time and a lakeside retreat, it now lies in ruins, pulverized by the shockwave of falling star and crushed by a winter that lasted 300 years.   Only a few records of this once-magnificent place remain. King Celcósé, a Mainirri king in the Epoch of Understanding, commissioned a stele be carved and erected in the now-ruined Mainirri capitol that spoke of "Jewels of the Kingdom", listing Haelim Aravasnofa near the top and marking it as being completed and open for visitors as of the stele's carving. This gives an approximate date range for when the estate was established, but doesn't clear up if the estate existed before it was converted into a retreat or if it was built around the same time it was opened as one.   Fragments of information about this place exist in old journals and diaries that have been safely preserved in The Athenaeum, but they only provide brief glimpses of what they did and what the estate looked like. No maps currently exist in any archives.   The ruins' air of utter mystery continues to hang in the air even to this day. Even though this place should have been swallowed by time and the earth long ago, it persists as if it wishes to remain known and present even though most people don't remember what it is anymore.   Scholars from the Athenaeum and many prominent elven scientists have theories about this. They surmise that the impact of the meteor that ended the Epoch of War, destroyed Whisperglass Valley, created The Scar, and brought on the Epoch of Snow, also interacted with the fabric of this world in a strange way that has not been recorded, as of yet, anywhere else.   Ghosts. Or... they seem to be ghosts.   Snapshots of people who were living and staying at Haelim Aravasnofa flicker and "echo" across the area, even underwater where the lake has swallowed some of the ruins. It is almost as if the ruins are not actually there, and that the whole area is nothing more than a "snapshot" of the life and soul of the place that refuses to, and what The Creator didn't allow to, fade away.   This has given rise to many a rumour, tall tale, legend, and myth. Yet, this is not without merit, as travelling merchants sometimes will stop amongst the ruins to rest or sleep—inadvertantly causing them to run into the echoes and be frightened all the way to the edge of death. Those who encounter them at night often end up waking up the entire encampment and they end up moving on with stories of ghosts and monsters that continue to morph and change.