Dicember 2021 – tower

A terrible number of strange and lonely (or just lonely, or even just lone) towers seem to have wizards in them. If they don’t have a wizard in, they probably used to; if the tower’s a ruin, probably a wizard that ruined it.

What if you want a strange or lonely or lone tower that doesn’t have a wizard?

Got you covered —

01. The inside of the tower doesn’t have any distinct floors; it’s completely hollow, every speck of its walls and domed ceiling coated in slowly turning cobalt and gold, land maps on the walls and starcharts on the dome. No one seems to be present …
02. The tower is built over a fissure to the Scarlet Iron Hell. Its upper floors, attainable by corroded ladders, contain comfortable suites for visitors and a workroom for negotiating sentences; but the first floor is a burning blood-red inferno that matches the molten-lace maw to the hell, guarded by stern heavenly devils alert for those escaping purification.
03. The getaway refuge of a retiring faerie lord, this tower is forged from translucent, glowing ivy and clinging grapevines, faerie glass and compressed starlight. Inside, Jalailah the Twice-Moon Moth Marquis reclines on a bed of velvet fangs and is served by grey-pelted deer-goblins.
04. Shattered, tumbled, its stones scorched black from the heat of the flames that devoured its former inhabitants, the Wry-Falcon’s Keep is a hollow ruin — save for the night of a lunar eclipse, when its walls rise ruddy and ghost-like, and the echoes of heavy-treaded boots ring from its walks …
05. Alas for those searching for a great sorcerer, the tower changed hands when its builder failed in their bid to become a lich. Now the slim marble spire houses a co-operative of beekeepers; ground floor for trade and orders, middle floors for communal living, topmost floors dedicated to the homes of their giant tawny-furred bumblebee companions.
06. They say that Dancing Horse Tower — battered, moss-grown, perpetually changing hands as bandit kinds come and go — was once a motte, and that the long low hill it perches on was a bailey filled with otherworldly folks and their silver-shot village. But the bailey filled in as a barrow, and only the Tower stands proud … though Cesash the Wolf is claiming to hear a whistle from a crack in the earth outside, and …
07. Impeccable, of gleaming white marble — fitted so finely one couldn’t slip a silk thread between the stones — and prism-treated bronze, the Spire Of Wings At Rest has been a refuge and a shrine dedicated to the gentle Roui Of The Soothing Whisper. So why have there been so few pilgrims seen, and the doves are gone, and reports of colourless gargoyles circling the gleaming Spire at night grow and grow?
08. Grown from the earth itself, this nameless (it has been very important that it be nameless) tower spirals gently skyward, entwined limbs of rowan and hazel and pale ghost birch woven immutably together, walls and floor-platforms and handholds and all. The greenwychs who live within and without still offer blessings and balms in return for news and small favours done, despite encroaching villages.
09. One of the few remaining signal arrays left after the Twin Regent War, this hilltop tower is battered granite and oak reinforcement — and reinforcement is what its tired staff would appreciate for at least a little, both for maintenance of the great polished reflector that crowns their post like a metal sun and to herd away the misguided souls who think the gleaming thing somehow means a wizard lairs inside.
10. It sprang up overnight, it did; on the edge of the township, right next to the market gathering-grounds. It looks so quaint and unprepossessing, with its grey cobblestone walls and its rough wooden roof and frames; the greyhair who stepped blinking into the morning light, also unremarkable. A weaver, they said, and an accident of others’ magic. But the greyhair’s shadow speaks of strangeness, the strangeness of wings …
11. There is no tower. Or, at least, nothing that anyone has attempted so far has located a tower. But the shadow of a tower falls across the ground on sunny days, a grand fluted construction crowned with sub-towers, crenellations, and fluttering banners, and none have the answer. And now the shadow shows a door swung wide.
12. The dead are building a tower. The fleshless dead are building a tower from their own bones — three floors already, and rising, rising — and more are clattering, striding, crawling across the land to join them every night. They ignore the living. Their chattering rhythms speak of a great angel, ivory and burnished, awaiting their arrival. The tower rises.