Towers Gate
The Towers Gate is a ruined structure on the eastern approach to the Necropolis of Teboba. It is a legendary site for adventurers and treasure hunters as it is reported to be the entrance to a labyrinthine system of tunnels and chambers that extend deep under the Necropolis where vast amounts of precious metals and rare gems are heaped in great piles.
Little is known or understood about the original purpose of the Towers Gate, but what is known is that there are several entrances located within the complex that offer access to a system of passages, vaults and tunnels deep under the Necropolis. Adventurers that have explored the depths in the past have returned with significant amounts of gold, silver and precious items... if they returned at all. The nearest towns and villages know that less than half of the treasure seekers and adventurers that ever come back, and less than half of those that do return come back with anything more than their lives. The small number that do succeed, however, do so on a grand scale.
One of the more recent success stories belongs to a party of six adventurers that left the Town of Bend in the Duchy of Grenwich in the summer of 230 AF. After an absence of 65 days, three of the original six party members returned on foot leading a donkey and cart that was weighed down with 600 lbs of bullion and nearly 2,500 guilders ($1,000,000) worth of rare magical items recovered from the Towers Gate. All three were wounded and near dead from exhaustion, but all three were wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations.
Purpose / Function
The original purpose of these several towers and the paths and stairs that lead through them is utterly unknown. They certainly do not seem defensive in design, and there is no actual "gate" or road leading through them.
Design
All five towers are square built with large arched openings centered on each wall of every story of the building's faces. The exterior facade was originally very ornately carved and decorated, and all five of the towers are built of the same rose granite that is universally found in the oldest structures of the Necropolis. The roofs of all five towers are of stone beams spanning the space between walls and all seem intact from the most recent reports.
The three outer towers (numbered One, Two and Five) are all 60' square at the base and stand 40' tall with two stories. The two larger towers (numbered Three and Four, also called the Gate) are three story structures rising 65' high and having a base of (roughly) 80' deep and 60' across. These two larger towers are also connected by a span of granite that resembles a lintel of a gate or door, but shows no evidence of ever supporting one. Nor is it a bridge, as it does not allow entrance to or exit from either tower.
Entries
All five towers have four openings on each story, each arched and roughly 20' wide and 18' high, and each opening is centered on one of the four wals of the tower. None of these openings have any indication that they were ever intended to be secured in any way.
Special Properties
Towers Three and Four (the Gate) each have an opening in the center of the first story that gives access to a steep and narrow stairwell that circles down into the earth for more than 70', where both end at a landing on each end of a long, arched tunnel that connects to the two towers and gives access to a vast and mostly unmapped labyrinth of passages and tunnels that go on for hundreds of yards into the darkness. No verifiable estimate has yet been made as to how far the tunnels extend under the earth.
Architecture
The Towers Gate is actually five square towers built in a straight line extending some 600' that runs southwest to northeast along a ruined and half-buried section of some of the oldest road surface in the entire Necropolis. Historiographers have numbered the towers one through five, beginning with the southern-most tower. Towers Three and Four are connected by a decorated stone lintel that spans the 60' between the two square towers (which are also the largest of the five structures). It is this lintel that has given the site its name as a "gate" but there is no evidence that this was, in fact, used as a gate. The function of the lintel is still unknown.
Defenses
Nothing about the Towers Gate indicates it was ever intended to act as a defensive structure. Openings are large with no evidence of ever being designed to be closed or secured and there is no substantial evidence of a wall between the towers being part of the original design (although there are sections of the spaces between the towers that have rough, unmortared walls built of rubble from the immediate area in subsequent centuries from the original construction period).
Founding Date
Unknown
Parent Location
Environmental Effects
One peculiar feature of the underground portion of the Tower Gates is the universally reported fact that there is a constant, steady breeze of cold, very dry air that blows through the tunnels. This breeze can be problematic if the light source utilized by explorers is via torches, since the constant breeze effects the light produced and the length of time a torch can be expected to burn. Sealed lamps are the recommended light source for exploring below the Towers Gate.
