The Tower of Tomes
Standing no longer proud but crumbling is the greatest achievement and the tombstone of the God of Enigmatic Decay. The God had a singular obsession in collecting the knowledge of Thiusland and containing it all in a singular Tower than only they could come and go from with their memories intact. The seekers of this knowledge were tasked with finding whatever tome, runic epitaph, song or story and once collected to cast a spell wiping the mind of the person who last held the knowledge so it became rarer or hopefully lost. The seeker would then take the physical memory or what was in their mind’s eye to be given to a keeper who would add to the relevant tone and lock it away in the shelves.
The tower was six stories, two below ground, the ground floor and three above ground floors. Each floor had a circular winding hallway that ascends in a right-handed spiral that would look inward into rooms with no clear entrance on the floor you were viewing from, the entrance would be a stairway waiting in an alcove next to a seemingly random window, which spiral in a lefthand direction and would lead to the upper or lower floor. One had to be careful to not approach the wrong window or they would fall through the trick grate into the hallway below. If someone made it to the top of the spiral hallway they would be hexed and forget their objective and continue down the spiral assuming their goal lies in that direction. Someone caught in this loop would be escorted out by the stalkers in the halls but it could sometimes take days. The design was purposefully obtuse as the God loved confusion and uncertainty in those around them.
Each floor’s interior chamber was dedicated to a different area of knowledge.
The top most floor was dedicated to the natural world, all things encapsulated in flora and fauna and the natural forces that bind living things. Alongside tomes there are a few specimens pinned or preserved that defied the keepers attempts to merely write about them. The floor’s knowledge is defended like all floors and if someone reads a book without proper care consequences would occur. This happened by way of a magical ward that if not disarmed properly would cause the taker of knowledge to think of themselves as the animal they last witnessed. They would be hypnotised like this until released by greater magic or until they do something frivolously human like eating a meal with utensils.
The fifth floor was dedicated to the cultures of Thiusland, from the north to the south the songs, recipes and the traditions of the people of Thiusland lived in these tomes. Alongside the tomess were a few tapestries and strange boxes that played music endlessly, reserved for instrumental music that demanded to be played.to be understood. The floor’s knowledge is protected from unworthy eyes by a curse that muddles the mind. The unworthy that reads a tome will speak in a language that’s not their own and be convinced they are someone of a different place and profession. The afflicted will only be freed once they taste home cooking in a kitchen of a friend or family member.
There was also the domed atrium to the binding turrets, which stood on the northern crest of the main tower.
The fourth floor was dedicated to the history of Thiusland. While most of the recorded knowledge was from the settlers and some from beyond, the archives boast some of the few and only records of the dwarves of Thiusland when they were still immortal. This floor is the most well persevered and easily accessible after the collapse of the tower of tomes. Most of the tomes have been copied and taken to another archive in Xedoc, the curse is in place that will make a person forget their entire past but well written and numerous signs warn visitors of the curse and how to avoid it’s clutches. On this floor sat the upper floors of the binding turrets, where within the lizardfolk crafts people in servitude would bind the tomes of their God to be placed away for no one to ever read or see them again. The binding materials ranged from - to - and even rarely.
The third floor was dedicated to scientific knowledge of Thiusland. The sciences in terms of Thiusland are all the inescapable rules of the functions of the world, physics of gravity, light and matter being primary among them. Alchemy holds the greatest interest for the east in sciences but the Holy Consortium applies many scientific theories to their forging experiments. This floor is the siren song for many as it’s the room seen from the ground floor entrance of the tower but is rarely visited now as the basement levels of the tower are flooded and so the entrance is difficult to come to. It’s good that many will never visit this floor however for the curse on the level has degraded in the years after the God of Enigmatic Decay’s death and now simply explodes the room in a violent acidic chemical reaction that not only gravely hurts the person inside the room but threatens to destroy many of the tomes themselves. This floor also features the Scriptorium of the tower, where the servants of the God would come out tomes or collected stories and knowledge by hand into the format and form the god requested. The thought was the God would do this to make the knowledge contained in the tower more unified. While this might be true as well, a vital reason the God used their own tomes was when someone tried to steal these books they would flee on their own control to the God and tell them who tried to steal them, a fail-safe placed into the very paper that the tomes were written on.
The second floor was dedicated to the elves and dragons of the continent of Saian. The knowledge stored in these tomes are of a kind that could be dangerous to those with selfish intentions as both the subjects are wielders of great power. Here lies what could be a cautionary tale of unchecked power for some and a blueprint for a ride to greatness at any cost for others. It’s most likely a good thing that this floor is entirely flooded with brackish water, shielding this knowledge from opportunists. Not all tomes are destroyed however, as the invoking of a dragon’s name on mere paper would call the dragon’s attention to your words but the God had their tomes written in skin, a process that diverts the dragon’s attention to the resting place of the person’s skin who is being written on and not the tome it’s written in. These ghastly skin tones still hold their knowledge under the water in the broken tower.
For those brave enough to venture down here they best be prepared as the curse for the uninvited is a bound spirit of the dragon that the God of Enigmatic Decay fell decades past. If the brave are powerful enough to win against the dragon Spirit it will answer 5 questions of their choosing.
The bottom floor was dedicated to ways of magic, it was the God’s private study and area of personal experimentation. This floor may be nothing more than soaked rubble in the present day but if held secrets unlocked in Thiusland that may truly never be seen again. In the powerful and terrifying protection of this knowledge the God focused all that the tower could inflict, if someone takes knowledge from what remains of these tomes they will awaken all the power locked in the tower’s walls, they will awaken the spirits and the constructs waiting on the alcoves as everything activates to secure the knowledge that is kept at this floor. What is interesting is a rumour that the floor is still sealed from ruin due to the powerful protections placed on it but no one has been able to step foot into the deep basement of the tower to confirm this. The creature that once resided in there, the guardian, fled the Tower upon the God of Enigmatic Decay’s death and this has been taken as proof that the room collapsed and the guardian fled for it could no longer live there.