The Tower of Rodogroth
The Tower of Rodogroth is the ruin of a gigantic tower in the Northern parts of the Heavenly Kingdom. It is at the heart of the ruins of Malidhras, the capital of the ancient empire of giants.
For centuries, it was the centre of religion and magical sciences in the giants' empire and many important inventions were created there, only to later be destroyed by outside invaders.
The towers' fall was long and bloody for the giants would never build anything other than with the strongest materials, especially an important centre of magic and religion. This led to the tower being a formidable fortress despite it being designed as anything but and so the surviving populace and troops fled to the tower after the final battle of Malidhras. What followed was an extensive siege of the tower, starving all inhabitants to death, and a subsequent looting and desecration of the tower. Now the tower tells a story long forgotten of a great civilization crushed by a wrathful god and his minions.
Those that look upon it in this age are almost always descendants of the aforementioned minions or their servants, which leads to this ruin being a great symbol of victory against all odds thanks to the power of the god, although they are still struck with awe when they realize its full extent. The details and specific events of the war have been forgotten over two millenia and even the knowledge of this ancient war has long since faded. All the other ruins have been eroded or covered in dirt.
Purpose / Function
The final purpose of the Tower of Rodogroth was to be a last stand against the oncoming hordes of the minions of the wrathful god. Before that, though, the tower had served as the central temple of the giants' religion and as a centre of research in the arcane studies for centuries. Much of the giants' scientific and magical advances that set them apart from the other races stemmed from this tower.
Architecture
To this day, the architecture of the tower is of unparalleled beauty, elegance and venerability, despite the two thousand years that have passed since its destruction.
The tower consists of a large spire reaching five hundred meters in height with six mighty, fifty meter tall buildings, formed like arrowheads, attached to it and pointing outward. Once, those were home to ministries and other bureaucratic complexes but in the late stages of the war against the wrathful god, they were converted into forward bastions protecting the innermost sanctum of the tower.
The architecture of the Tower of Rodogroth is a mixture of centuries of renovation, reimagination and reconstruction of one and the same building. Surprisingly, this lead to a quite beautiful albeit unusual aesthetic. Gothic arches and spires from the tower's time as a temple and magical research institute combined with opulent baroque adornments from the time it was a palace and a more modern style with steel and glas, all complementing each other to create a wonder of unparalleled beauty.
History
The Tower of Rodogroth has a long and venerable history, changing outward appearance and purpose several times, but its beginnings were as a humble palace to a local lord of the giants.
This king called Rodogroth, the namesake of the tower, was eventually to become the first high king of the giants, uniting them all under his banner and forging a centralist kingdom with himself at the centre. Here, the Tower experienced its first remodeling, as Rodogroth felt that his palace had to reflect his unique position as high king and thus massively expanded his palace both in floor space and in height, laying the foundations of the modern version of the tower.
Today's appearance of the tower, though, only became cemented when a revolution violently overthrew the monarchy and instituted an oligarchic high council. This high council took residence in the very same tower as the king did but massively expanded the base level by building six large buildings in the form of triangles pointing away from the tower in a circle around it and additionally heightening the central spire of the tower.
This arrangement was to prove short-lived, however, as the caste of mage-priests, powerful in the society of the giants, demanded to use the tower as the main temple of the giants' religion and centre of scientific and magical research, not changing the building to any large extent but adding lots of religious and magic-based adornments and decorations.
The last and biggest challenge of the Tower of Rodogroth was the final battle of Malidhras and the subsequent influx of refugees from the burning capital. The tower was laid siege to and every last inhabitant starved to death before the tower was stormed, looted and desecrated by the invaders. After stealing what they could and burning what they couldn't, the invaders left and let the tower fall to ruin like all the other ruins of the former empire of giants.
The Tower of Rodogroth alone stands now, the pinnacle of giant engineering and architecture amidst long eroded ruins and uncaring wastelands. Only this tower, the mightiest building ever to stand on this continent, still does not give way, heralding of an older time, when giants built cities that reached into the skies and waged war against the minions of a god maddened by anger.
RUINED STRUCTURE
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