Desert Spire
The Spire is the common name for the best-protected sacred site in the Red Desert. Although it has a Draconic name, this isn’t widely shared by its Guardian.
Physical description / Structure
The Spire is a reddish-orange tower of stone reaching dizzying heights. Starting quite wide at the base, it becomes ever narrower as it reaches into the sky, resembling an awl or a long spear.
A single pathway of stairs carved into the base winds around the Spire and stops at the first platform, revealing a shaded interior and a water spring where one might rest. From there, further steps guide one up, level after level, some with rooms, windows, and balconies, none of which are visible from the outside. No visitor has offered a specific count of levels within the Spire, but a lingering legend says that, from the very top, one can see the ocean. No one has been able to determine for certain which ocean the observers meant.History
The Desert Spire resides in a narrow, nameless valley whose location is legendary in its difficulty for archivists and storytellers to pinpoint.
Throughout its history, no two maps which have claimed to have recorded its location indicate the same place. Those who have gone searching for it often end up lost in subdued wilderness, with no such signature landmark to be seen from any distance. During the era of the Zauyrian Sorcerer Kings, written claims so often led to travelers going missing that scholars discouraged copying descriptions of the valley itself from one tome to the next, skeptical that any were accurate. In comparison, the oldest stories from the Davrin Queendom have long suggested that this valley cannot be found without some nebulous welcome from or connection to the Dragon who claimed it. The essential nature of the area is disorienting to sentients. As described by those rare individuals who have walked through it, it seemed just out of step with the rest of the world despite being stable enough to sustain a full spectrum of Desert life. The old Queen archives described the effects as a mystical quality of the Ley Lines enhanced by the presence of the To'vah himself.
