Journal #5 - The Wizard Tower

We set out south, with an ultimate destination of the Applewood. Orlando is to meet us there.
 
As I kept watch several days in, a heat storm blew in from the south, and with it later that day came a vast troop of cavalry, a guard force from Grayhaven. They were looking for fugitives, and had some long words with our rogue before ultimately moving on.
 
We continued south, and heard whispers of Strangehaven. It was said that anyone who studies anything would be there. Later that night as we set up camp, we saw a tower in the distance with a strange stone maze. We decided to check it out.
 
It is a maze made out of stone instead of hedges. The stone is unnatural - never touched by a creature’s hands in fashioning it, though now it is covered in moss. In the distance a tower reaches high into the sky, and as we approach there is a statue of a human knight outside, holding a staff that spirals with butterfly wings at the top. There is text written in Giant on the entrance:
 
“Those who enter will become lost. Should you make your way through my warded maze, my door is open.”
 
I illuminate the area with my dancing lights, yet their light is dimmed – it only spreads a foot from the orbs, as if they were a hooded lamp. I enter with my lights spinning on our perimeter, and we advance together.
 
We walked until we came across a statue lying down on wilted flowers, bearing another inscription in the Giant tongue:
 
“May this place be your tomb, like it was mine.”
 
The path branched here, and I could find no difference between left or right. I could see no change in elevation, Lug could smell no difference in the air. Domino pointed out that the statue’s head pointed towards the left, so we went that way. I thought perhaps it was an indicator that doom lay that way - our tomb like the person who went that way before. Perhaps I was overthinking matters.
 
A short while later, a hallway 90 feet long was enchanted to waylay us. Bricks came out of slots in the walls and barraged us as we tried to make our way through, bludgeoning us nearly to death. As the last of us stepped out of the hall, the bricks seamlessly slotted themselves back into the walls, totally undetectable.
 
After a few moments of recovery, we pressed on. In the distance, the mist dissipated somewhat, as we entered a larger chamber. There is a large sundial on the floor, with four statues of forearms and hands holding stone magnifying glasses with real lenses, sprouting from the ground. These were quite large statues, and Mirah exclaimed that the sundial was Giant. Literally, the arms were those of giants, this was made by giants?
 
There were murals on the walls, covered by plants. We uncovered them as best we could, and found sitting directly behind each of the stone arms was its own mural on the wall. There are two light sources depicted across from each other - one painting is of a mountain eclipsing the sun, with rays of light coming from the sides, people moving down the mountain, and houses dwarfed by the size of the people. The second painting on the opposite side is the same picture, without villages or people, and a crescent moon radiating light. Other murals show a coastline, and a great wall with large figures on it.
 
We had a few ideas to shine light through the lenses to operate the sundial – I suggested light itself might not be emitted, maybe it was a clue to a puzzle – if the magnifying glasses could be moved in their design intent, perhaps we had to move them as if they were to focus the light depicted in the painting. Before we tried that though, Tybeerian used his mage hand to carry up one of Ghiravont’s candles that he lit for the purpose, and when it approached the painted sun, it magically lit the painting, and the painting lit the entire room!
 
Ghiravont wasn’t prepared for this, and was blinded, but it revealed a doorway. Lug opened the door, and the fog was dispersed.
 
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Editor’s Note: this notetaker was primarily walking back and forth with various poor performing pizza delivery services during this scene, and some details of the Blinding of Ghirvaont may not be factually accurate.
 
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As we walked through the doorway, we saw glinting light. A large chamber, rising at least 80 feet high before the fog hides it, six inches of fog on the ground, there is some sort of very large overgrown agricultural area - a mixture of courtyard, garden, and greenhouse. There were open treasure chests, mounds of silver coins, six old fountains overgrown and filled with yet more coins, each with a statue of the same human with the butterfly encrusted staff. Each large fountain was overflowing with coins.
 
Across the courtyard is a flight of steps rising 20 feet with decorations, three to a side. About 40 wisps dance in the air, made of pale silver light.
 
Ghiravont, blinded still, felt around what we described as fountains, and picked up a coin not knowing what it was until he clinked it on the edge, hearing its metallic sound. Tybeerian was concerned – it was too good to be true, this amount of unprotected coinage. He found some writing that I hadn’t noticed, again in Giant which only I speak in the party. It read:
 
“On your way be your pockets free.”
 
That settled the conundrum of whether we should load up on the silver. We considered pushing on, but elected to take a short rest and hope that Ghiravont’s vision would return. Unfortunately, after a time our vision dimmed and a voice spoke in Giant:
 
“If you linger, your way forward, backwards, and sideways will be harder.”
 
When our sight returned, everything was different. It was as if we were picked up and placed at random in another area of the maze, losing out progress.
 
Only one way onwards, a door leading to a hallway. This hall had alcoves that looked like bookshelves. Littered every foot were dozens of books on crooked, stony bookshelves. It goes more than 120 feet, and at the end were two large gargoyles. Halfway down were openings on a 90-degree intersection.
 
We walked forward and the books flew off the shelves and the floor, floating and swirling. Lug accidentally touched one, and it ate him. He disappeared. I suggested we burn some books with fire, and Mirah exclaimed concern about destroying the book Lug was in. Until that point I hadn’t considered that Lug would literally be eaten or trapped by the book, I thought it had been a portal or portstone of sorts. Thinking back, I recalled that the book that touched Lug had been dark brown with a curved spine. Tybeerian was able to spot it, and grabbed it with his mage hand. Meanwhile, Mirah destroyed a green book with a bolt of fire.
 
We started using anything we had to advance to the intersection, which was free of books. I magically reduced my size, and was able to make it, dodging around the books. Mirah teleported with several others, one of which was Red. He didn’t dodge well on the way to her though, and he touched a book too. When Tybeerian’s mage hand carried Lug’s book back to him, he opened it and almost fell in – his intuition saved him, telling him to slam it shut again.
 
I saw where Red’s book went, onto a shelf. As I reached out to grasp it, thinking it safe to touch as it already held someone, the book next to it on the shelf leapt out right into my outstretched hand. Everything went dark.
 
I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I had no sensory input whatsoever. It was a strange experience, and deeply frightening. The next thing I knew I was on the floor in another room. I was told that they tried to open a door in the little alcove we were resting in, but it was a trap and led right into a five foot square pit of void nothingness. With no other choices, they captured the three books we were trapped in, and then fireballed the hallway and made a mad dash past the gargoyles at the end of the hall.
 
In this new room, there is a gargantuan portrait painted right onto the wall. It shows the maze and the tower, where we are right now. Ghiravont knocked on the portrait, and a part of it opened up. There was an optical illusion, and two passages are actually open in the wall, one on the left and the right bottom corners of the portrait.
 
Ghiravont entered the left, and he immediately became visible in the painting to those looking at it from the room. Seeing him on the painting, I wondered if we needed to interact somehow, so I stepped into the right side passage, but not too far. Domino and Mirah said they could see me on the right side of the painting, too. All I saw was a hallway. I moved around, and it corresponded with the painting. They told me I needed to move left in the painting, but I saw only one direction to move. I thought maybe it was another illusion, so I turned left to face the wall, and stuck out my arm. It went right through into what seemed to be stone.
 
I couldn’t trust my senses, and simply had to move through the maze of the picture with instructions from those outside. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep hearing them, but there was an enchantment and voices from outside looking at the portrait were as clear as if they were standing right next to me. The guides took a moment and looked at the maze, seeing where we had to go and what we had to do. There seemed to be a drawbridge on the left side that blocked the only entrance to the tower. The right side had no way to reach the tower, but did have a large stone wheel - we thought maybe that controlled the drawbridge. In another direction from the stone wheel, there was an Archway of Horses. Wasn’t really clear on what that was.
 
They guided me to the wheel, and it took all my strength to turn it. Rather than simply lowering a drawbridge though, turning the wheel shifted the perspective of the painting, rotating the two dimensional landscape around the tower axis, effectively showing 360 degrees of the puzzle. First I turned it clockwise, and then counterclockwise back to its starting position and beyond.
 
The guides exclaimed that those on the left must immediately stop! They were mere feet from a pit spiked with spears where they thought the bridge was. Ghiravont and Lug were on the left side, while Red had gone with me on the right, though he didn’t do much but be dazed out of his mind at the craziness.
 
It truly was an out of body experience. I have heard of strange psychedelic mushrooms, and I imagine it must be like this. It could make for an interesting tavern song.
 
The guides deduced I needed to turn the wheel as those on the left moved, changing the terrain in realm time. I moved it back and forth per their instructions. They reached the tower door, and pushed it open, as they did so the painting itself opened as if on hinges towards those outside, revealing us in the wall as the paint was washed away and a doorway opened in the center.
 
We entered a darkened hallway inside a real room - no stone hedges for the first time yet. It widens and we hear rotating metal and machinery noises. Everywhere else has been startlingly quiet. Glowing blue spheres come into the distance, bright blue, glass bubbles giving off 20 feet of light, bumping into walls and each other floating above us like lamps.
 
The room is very large and carpeted in blue. The walls were littered with looms each taking up threads from the floor, streaming the carpet up the walls as far as the eye can see. 150 feet up, there is a balcony and a door. It seemed then we may have made it to the tower.
 
Lug charged ahead and grasped one of the threads past the loom, and holding it he was carried up the wall alongside it. Most of us followed suit, and we jumped onto the balcony as we passed. Domino couldn’t gain a good handhold, the thread was cutting her palm. Those on the balcony put together our lengths of rope, and I was lowered down to the floor. I tied Domino off to the rope, and then carried her as I held onto a thread with one hand. We managed to make it safely.
 
Beyond the balcony door was a large room where all the threads emerged through cracks in the cobblestone wall, infesting the area like vines. At the back of the room, the largest statue of the human figure we had yet seen was gesturing downwards with its hand, and in its hand was a shiny egg of pure sapphire.
 
Ghiravont, Lug, and Tybeerian seemed to be consumed by lust and charged directly towards it, and as they approached the statues’ eyes glowed bright and shot out a beam. The sapphire dropped to the ground, and spilled into a viscous liquid. It grew, and grew, and the bubbling mass took on the shape of a dragon, made of solid sapphire. Its eyes gleamed in a bright light, shedding 90-foot cones to either side. It roared, and everything lit by the light became like a mirror, floor panels, walls, and ceiling became reflective. We were encased in a mirror-room.
 
Battle ensued, and after some opening hits against the construct, before I had yet taken a step, it shot a sapphire spike into Tybeerian’s forehead and he became charmed against us. I approached as near to him as I could, and though he was deafened my drum carried my magic through its reverberations. I calmed his emotions, and those of my friends around me. It broke the magic. After the next time he struck with his daggers, something came over him and Tybeerian retreated outside the range of my control, slipping back into a glassy state, and tried to attack Domino, who blocked him magically.
 
At that point, the statue came to life and walked out among us. It claimed no one had made it this far before, and he offered to let us live if we left now. I exclaimed I hadn’t come this far for nothing, and if it wanted to buy me off it should offer something. Ghiravont seemed to agree. This had all come as a surprise to me – the Giant script at the entrance said if we made it past the maze, which we did, his door would be open. It seemed inviting, yet this was an ambush. Domino did seem to want to take his deal, but before anything could be decided on Lug charged forward and struck both construct and statue with magical eruptions. The fight continued.
 
I was battered nearly to death, not bolstered by my rage as I attempted to concentrate on keeping us free of its control. I was close to death, and had to resort to using Mallistar’s potion which invigorated me. It healed all my wounds and gave me a focus I had not experienced before. I pressed on, and leapt towards the dragon, landing on the far side of its platform. My blows landed, but were not decimating against the sapphire gem. On the other side, Ghiravont fell. Lug was able to bring him up, and Domino healed Mirah who had fallen as well. Ghiravont drank his own potion when he came-to, and using its power and the dragon’s pinned position, smote it down in two strokes.
 
The strange mage exclaimed that no one had been proven worthy before. I thought we might have to fight it, too, but Ghiravont sheathed his sword and walked straight to the creature and shook its hand, thanking it for a good challenge. I don’t think the statue knew what to do, it took a knee and accepted our victory, and then froze solid.
 
Gleaming out of the exposed ribcage of the dragon were four very large sapphires. The creature itself was turned to stone.
 
Beyond the corpse was another room, oval in shape and partially exposed to the elements. It led onto a balcony which was halfway up the tower overlooking the maze, we could see it all. The mist was clearing, dawn had broken. There was a bannister and stone steps leading up, winding around the tower. We walked up the side of the tower, and a door led back inside at the top. The door had a giant’s hand holding a huge knocker ring, and it said “Knock” in giant. I took it with both hands and knocked; the door opened.
 
Inside, there was a stone round table with a huge crescent moon shaped bookshelf against the side of the wall. There were several hanging birdcages filled with bright golden, silver, and bronze feathered canaries, all tweeting. In contrast to the living birds, the rest of the room looked ancient and untouched for countless years. It was strewn with dead leaves and old grass blown in from outside, covered in spiderwebs. A singular balcony gave a full sky view of the maze.
 
Lug tried to piece together the disconnect between the living birds in cages and the apparent abandonment here, and he realized the cages weren’t actually closed, they’d been left open and the birds just flew in and out at will. On the desk near the bookshelf, Ghiravont found puzzle pieces of plain stone with large knobs on them, and a dusty frame for them empty on the desk. He began putting it together. Domino started inspecting books, all of which were written in Giant, and I took a look around the room. Lug was walking out onto the balcony as I noticed an old dusty coat rack on a pole, and I saw strangely there was a handprint in the dust quite clearly. I put my own hand on it, and nothing happened. I decided it might be a lever, and I tried to pull it or rotate it, and steps opened on the balcony outside. I heard Lug exclaim that he’d found the way up.
 
The new stairway goes up into an attic area. Before heading up, Ghiravont finished the puzzle and it exclaimed “Well Done.” The puzzle turns into the top of a chest, and he opens it revealing many immaculate shiny items. It also displays a portrait of the painting we solved before, but this time all of us are inlaid within it, triumphantly walking out of the tower.
 
Domino was searching the bookshelves, and found mostly history tomes. One in particular was green and gem-like, without language in the book at all, with pages lined in gold trim. Written in Giant, it appears to be a spellbook.
 
Up in the attic, a very loud sounding creature was moving. It sounded like a bird of some sort, Lug said it was avian and it was roosting up there. It was very big, and we startled it.
 
At the top of the stairs to the attic, the door had been broken open for some time. Glinting bronze and metallic feathers floated around as canaries left the room. The tower was dilapidated and had a huge hole. All the cages were knocked over, and branches, leaves, wheat, suits of armor torn to pieces and glinting, treasure chests shut, crates with steel rods, a nice pair of gauntlets dangling from the ceiling, and other such items were strewn around. A very large reptilian bird with metallic gold feathers was in the center, and it cawed at us.
 
It was a marvelous creature, it looked like some mixture of a golden dragon and a lion, with a very long neck. Reptilian scales, dragon wings like a cloak of gleaming gold, and mane-like hair. Speaking of gold, behind it was a mount four feet high and five feet wide gleaming of gold. Real gold. On it rested a stone statue lying down. Hauntingly realistic, it was the same figure we’d seen throughout the tower and maze, but this seemed like a real person made stone.
 
The creature was very defensive, and while Lug tried to communicate with it as a druid, I calmed its emotions to try to make it indifferent to us. It calmed down and even let Lug pet it. It revealed a clutch of eggs in its claw. The canaries flew back into the room, briefly landing on us before fluttering into cracks in the walls. On closer inspection, they weren’t canaries at all, but tiny baby versions of this creature. We’d never heard of it before, but I choose now to refer to it as a Liondrake for ease.
 
There was a painted portrait of the man on the wall in his tower, on his shoulder was a cat-sized version of this creature. It seems like the picture was long ago, and this creature would’ve taken an unimaginably long time to mature into the size it is now. The creature reached behind it onto the pile of gold and grasped a staff, spiral and golden, topped with prismatic butterfly wings, and she stuck it into a knot on the ground. It stands vertically in front of her. The statue has a pearlescent broach on his breast, of the Prismatic Alliance.
 
We decided we needed advice, and contacted Mallistar via Sending. Domino described the tower, the maze, the fight and the creature. He responded as follows:
 
“It sounds like you have discovered a remnant of the Prismatic Alliance. When a member is felled, their bond with their familiar and their tower is so strong that the living echo will continue to move their towers of illusion around the realm of Terrinoth. I myself have only discovered the tower of Mulliver the Orange, but there is no doubting the owner of such a staff with an ornate butterfly. Talivar the Topaz. His love for strange creatures and even stranger places was unrivaled. My brother and myself never worked with him personally, he comes from a generation far before ours. To hear that his tower has conjured on the Plains for you to find, is no small feat.
“Every tower hosts a riddle, or many,” he laughed. “But every tower can contain rewards for those who are pure, loyal, and true. Be careful though, with warning however, those towers have long been lost, and the lost gather to such places and are reawakened when such places are found. Stirring within the confines of those magical halls could be spirits long regretting past actions. You will find, dear Domino, that even Wizards have weaknesses.”
 
The staff began to glow, and Domino tried to communicate with the Liondrake magically, while Ghiravont grasped the staff. The staff started projecting an image, a perfect representation of the wizard. It spoke to us:
 
“Hello there, you have ascended my tower. A piece of me trapped in time, a piece of my heart.” He looked off into the distance. “My time in the world has come to an end while a shadow looms, many of us are filled with regrets, a regret hanging over this alliance, shattering it to pieces, as we are connected as one, a single fragment cannot function as a beating heart. Even now I hear my heart slipping, and I never had such a loyal friend in all my life.
 
“I have preserved in this tower all of my historical findings, every last bit of my collection on Malguban. Should never have gone to that horrible land following traces of Sirandi’el. Only he had the answers that we sought. Only he had the secrets, only he knew them. We were too late to reach out and heed his wisdom. And so I leave, leave to the echo in my tower my findings. My heart. My heart is the piece of it. I am dying. And I will soon–” his arm stiffened suddenly. “...even now… The Malgubanian Curse takes me, but I will not turn to what that shadow desires me to. I will not slip down to the darkness that’s there. So I ask to all of you, brave whoever you are, take care of Tibadariel, she is my love, the only good thing I’ve ever done. She will never know that the brood that she clutches are all still. She’s held them for years, she’s bound to a golden purpose. Her eggs will never hatch. I leave to you the things in my desk, a challenge, should you succeed, return to the desk, assemble the puzzle, claim your prize. And when you are ready, I want you to break my staff, last piece of my heart, it will destroy my tower, make things right, force Tibadariel to find a new home, fly off into the sunrise and find a new home where she can take her clutch of eggs forever.”
 
We debated what to do for some time. Ultimately, we apologized to the bird that this had to happen, and for what happened to its master. I wondered if the little ones were actually hers, if the Wizard knew something when he referenced her unborn clutch - as it has been some time and yet there were young ones here. Looking around, I saw egg fragments strewn around. It seems that she has hatched eggs in the past, it seems she was pouring her energy into them.
 
The Liondrake shed a tear onto the floorboards, and it sprouted and took root, starting to grow little buds of leaves. We prepared to take action. Mirah held the staff and was to break it on the count of five. The rest of us tried to take what treasures we could, grabbing them just as the staff would break to avoid the reaction of the creature if it turned hostile. This whole time, it has been defensive only of the pile behind it where it had the staff, where its master’s body lay, with the pile of gold. I went to a crate locked with a pole, Lug grabbed a chest, Ghiravont grabbed the hanging gauntlets, all of these things he had detected were magical. Domino grabbed the portrait of the wizard in addition to the tomes she carried and which we loaded into the bag of holding earlier. Red exclaimed the creature was beautiful, and Mirah snapped the staff. As her hand began its motion, the creature lunged at her, and the tower shattered. Everything falls, and we realize we are looking up from the grass as the tower is imploding. A giant puff of smoke that crumbles down, fog brushes over us.
 
We stand, and Mirah is holding the shattered staff remnants. The rest of us are carrying our burdens, and the portrait now shows the same person, without the tower in the background. Mirah cast the staff into the grass, and we headed back to camp.