1103 The Lightless Tower

Sludge-choked pools, sluggish rivulets, and sodden fens with little dry ground. The air feels thick and ailing.

• Terrain: Bog (3), Fever Marsh
• Lost/encounters: 2-in-6

Thorny Scrub

The northern stretches of this hex take on an especially forlorn character. Wiry, black-stemmed bushes covered in vicious thorns carpet the ground up to knee-height, making passage laborious and painful.

Brinemere

At the centre of the thorny region lies the salt-sludge of Brinemere. The surface of the lake is patched with a crust of pure white salt crystals; its grey waters are lifeless and offensively salty.

Chantery Isle

A low, flat island of salty mud can be seen in the middle of Brinemere, formed around a rocky outcropping half a mile from the southern shore. At the centre of the island, where the land rises up slightly, a cluster of cypress trees looms conspicuously. The stand is cloaked with a sinister gloom and a deathly quiet.

The Lightless Tower

Amid the gloomy copse of cypress trees upon Chantery Isle stands a windowless, circular tower of polished, jet-black stone, three storeys tall.

Proof against scrying: The tower and its contents are invisible to all forms of scrying and locating magic.

Entrance: A single portal—a yawning maw of blackness— grants access to its insides.

History: The tower upon Chantery Isle was constructed by the renegade Drune known as the Aubrathon (see p55).

Inside the Tower

Gloom: Both magical and mundane lights dim and falter.

Ground floor: Empty apart from a narrow stairway winding around the wall.

Middle floor: Also empty. The stairway ends at a trapdoor, barring entry to the upper floor.

Trapdoor: Dark wood, hermetically sealed with red wax around its sides, and sealed with a Glyph of Locking (by a Level 12 caster). Magical runes glow faintly on its surface. If deciphered, they read “Sealed by the Will of the Aubrathon. Within lies Death.”

Upper floor: Filled with a deadly, blue vapour that falls out of the trapdoor when opened (Save Versus Doom with a –2 penalty or die). At the edges of the 10′-round chamber, gargoyles carved into ancient beams of black-stained wood peer down. At the centre of the chamber, upon a basalt plinth, stands the Onyx Mirror.

The Onyx Mirror

A dark, scintillating mirror wrought of black onyx. This is one of the long-lost Mirrors of Embala (see p75).

Powers: One who gazes into the onyx mirror alone at night sees an idealised vision of themselves, stripped of all self-criticism or overreaching bravado, at the prime of their power and beauty. The character’s Charisma increases by 3 points for the following 24 hours.

Dreams: After using the mirror, a character’s sleep for 7 nights is wracked with feverish dreams of diving into the unfathomable darkness of the Groaning Loch, drowning in the embrace of a great serpent.