Hailaiga

East of Ildritz, on the west hang of the Vogelbergen, an ancient wood puts a lot of effort in it to hide its secrets from the world. It is to believed to be one of the oldest woods of Daleth, it's dark paths since long covered by entangling plants, it's lightings overgrown with younger trees, only hundreds of years old.
But the wood is not as impassable as it might seem to be at first sight. Hunters have gone in there as long as men remember, lovers roam the borders of the wood, looking for a bit of privacy. Picnics are held on its glades, and the farmer families go into the wood to gather its fruits.

However, one place in the wood is a holy place that scares most people away. Hailaiga it is called, a remote spot in the wood, high up the hang of the mountains. It is free of trees, surrounded by trees, bushes, and plants that somehow don't dare to come any nearer. Lichen and mosses cover the ground, like the herbs that seem to be out of place on the barren, stony surface.
And from the bare rocks in the middle grow enormous stones, rising up to the sky. The pattern shows a rough circle, with gaps and irregularities, almost like a templetree. More than the height of men the stones are, motionless in there silent dance, some having faces painted by the shadows of the dawn, some have eyes watching Fon falling behind the horizon.
But there is no temple here, and there has never been one. People and priests know the stories and believe them to be true. Stories of living beings appearing and disappearing in the stone circle, insane and naked upon arrival, never to be seen again by departure. And those who think these are just old legends are confronted by the disappearance of Count Yzabrân of Ciniz, who walked into the stone circle and suddenly disappeared with hundreds of witnesses surrounding the place.

Hailaiga is a a portal, a portal to other worlds. It has not always been one, other, older portals are known to be in Isauls, and probably Ciniz, maybe in other places as well. The Keepers of Doravor come here occasionally to do their experiments and rituals, but they, too, don't dare to come close to the stone circle.
There are scientists who think the stone circle is, with the other, now dried up portals, a natural source of aether, or maybe it's negative counterpart. The negative aether wraps around the things in the circle, first keeping the light from falling upon the victim, thus keeping it out of sight, then transporting the victim to another dimension. The conclusion of this place emitting negative aether, maybe to equalise the power of normal aether, led to the hypothesis the four evil gods might be behind this place, a portal leading to a negative dream dimension, although no one is able to imagine what that might be.

The New Poorters War

In the late 1830's, a lot of new humans arrived in Daleth via the Hailaiga portal. There were so much of them they got the name "New Poorters". They did not arrive insane and naked, but dressed, armed and with, as soon turned out, plans for extreme revolution in Daleth and probably the rest of the world. As soon as the plans of these New Poorters and their allies (the Emperor and his noblemen) were discovered, the leaders from the other countries gathered and started the war against the New Poorters. The Count of Ciniz, Moriz Roemerszoon, led the war with his husband, Edelhart Kyran–iz–Taht, and the former Count of Ciniz, Yzabrân Ceveryns, who was suspected to have died some months earlier.
The final battle took place near Hailaiga. Just after the end of that terrible battle, Count Yzabrân walked in the stone circle, expecting to be taken to the world the New Poorters had come from. He, as he said, had already died, so no one should worry about his health, but he was willing to go into the unexpected and be a diplomat there, desperate to try to avoid further wars of this kind, in Daleth, or elsewhere. He was never seen again.