A Catalogue of Vanished Wonders and Dreamed Returns
The map of Evil Land is riddled with absences — voids where once stood the works of kings, prophets, and dreamers. They were drowned, swallowed, burnt, or erased, and in their loss Evil Land’s people were left with wounds too vast to heal. Yet the names remain, muttered around fires, inked in forbidden scrolls, carved into bones. Every generation produces wanderers, scholars, or lunatics who seek these places, believing that to find one would restore meaning, wealth, or dominion.
Here follows a catalogue of the most longed-for, long-lost locations.
Legend: A valley where trees grew without wind, and fruit fell without sound. To eat of it was to be freed of sorrow for seven years.
Loss: The Orchard withered when the first plague swept the land. Its fruits were said to rot into black stones that whispered regret.
Hope: Mothers still sing lullabies of the Orchard, promising children that someday they will taste joy without burden.
Legend: The greatest archive ever built, with halls carved from obsidian and shelves filled with forbidden histories.
Loss: A fire of unnatural cold devoured it. Witnesses claimed the flames froze words in mid-air and shattered them like glass.
Hope: To rediscover even one surviving vault would grant lost arts of alchemy, weaponry, or resurrection. Whole dynasties sponsor expeditions in secret.
Legend: A titanic bridge spanning a canyon so deep that no echo returned. Each night its lanterns lit themselves with captive stars.
Loss: The bridge collapsed when the canyon itself shifted, swallowing the structure and every caravan upon it.
Hope: If found intact, the Bridge would restore trade routes between warring provinces and open paths thought closed forever.
Legend: A vast celestial garden tended by astronomer-priests, where flowers glowed with the light of moons unseen.
Loss: The priests vanished one eclipse, and the Garden was said to ascend into the sky, leaving only barren dust below.
Hope: Lovers leave offerings on rooftops, praying the Garden will descend again so they may walk among its lunar blossoms.
Legend: A subterranean bakery whose ovens never cooled, producing loaves enough to feed an empire.
Loss: When famine struck, the Vault was sealed by its guardians, who swore only the worthy could reopen it. No one has found the gates since.
Hope: Starving cities whisper of it still. Some claim they smell fresh bread drifting on the wind before sieges break.
Legend: A city built entirely of glass and crystal, said to sing in the wind like a harp. Its towers caught sunlight and bent it into rainbows.
Loss: Shattered during a war of sorcery, its fragments scattered across a desert. To gather them is said to invite madness.
Hope: Some believe the city might be rebuilt, and in its rebuilding the world itself might remember beauty.
Legend: Once the busiest port of Evil Land, its waters were said to glow red at sunset, guiding ships home.
Loss: The sea withdrew overnight, leaving the harbor dry and its ships stranded in mud. The sea never returned.
Hope: Mariners still seek the Crimson Harbor inland, believing that to find it is to find a way back to a sea that heals itself.
Legend: A tower where the gods themselves once listened, said to echo the first words of every prayer spoken beneath it.
Loss: It sank into a mire after its priests were executed for heresy. Now only frogs sing where voices once reached heaven.
Hope: Pilgrims wander swamps in hope of hearing their ancestors’ words rising once again from the Spire’s stones.
Legend: A palace carved from volcanic rock, decorated with jewels melted into the stone itself. Its ruler was said to dine on fire.
Loss: The mountain erupted, swallowing the palace whole. Some say it still stands inside, untouched, waiting for doors to reopen.
Hope: Treasure-seekers hunt its location endlessly, dreaming of halls glittering with crystallized flame.
Legend: A mausoleum said to house not one king, but every ruler who would have reigned had history not betrayed them.
Loss: It drowned beneath a lake conjured by sorcery. The lake remains, but its depths shift unnaturally, denying divers.
Hope: Prophets claim that when the Tomb is found, the rightful line of rulers will rise again to restore balance.
Legend: A traveling market of mirrored wagons, where merchants sold not goods but glimpses of what might have been.
Loss: The Caravan disappeared after a famine year, its wagons said to fold into their own reflections.
Hope: Wanderers swear they have seen the Caravan in storms, and some vanish chasing their own reflections across glassy plains.
Legend: The place where light first rose upon Evil Land, a temple that caught and kept the sun’s earliest fire.
Loss: No one remembers its fall. Some argue it was never lost, only forgotten, hidden in plain sight where eyes cannot see.
Hope: Entire cults devote themselves to finding it, believing it will grant them a day unbroken by night.
Legend: An amphitheater where actors wore masks that spoke truths the actors themselves did not know.
Loss: Its final performance ended in a riot when the masks revealed betrayals too vast to ignore. The theatre was buried in rubble by its own audience.
Hope: Performers pray it will be uncovered, believing its masks could reveal new futures — or new dooms.
Legend: A river that glittered with flecks of gold. To drink its water was to forget sorrow, though never joy.
Loss: The riverbed cracked and dried during a great drought, the gold dust swallowed into the earth.
Hope: Gold-miners hunt its vanished course, believing both wealth and peace of mind may be rediscovered at once.
The people of Evil Land dream of these places not only for their wealth or power, but because they are reminders of what once was — orchards of peace, bridges of trade, cities of light, and temples of hope. Each lost site is a wound upon the land’s spirit, and to find one again would be to feel whole for the first time in generations.
But scholars warn: to recover what was lost is not always to restore what was loved. Evil Land has a way of corrupting rediscovery. Those who find these places may uncover not salvation, but ruin sharpened by memory.