The Ancient Mage Tower

The last light of day lingers on the tower’s fluted curves, gilding stone weathered by a thousand rains. Its turquoise inlays catch the sun’s retreat like shards of ocean glass, glowing faintly in the hush before night. The air here is still, save for the restless murmur of the Reaching Woods beyond and the sigh of wind combing the grass at its base.

No banners ever hung from these walls, no bells ever tolled to call the faithful. Yet the tower stands with a gravity that silences even birdsong, a sentinel of forgotten ages. The steps leading to its great arched door are worn smooth by feet that have not passed this way for centuries. A script, curling like vines, runs across the stone threshold—letters that dance just beyond meaning, their beauty undiminished by time.

Many who come here linger a bit, but dare not enter, though none can really say why, apart from The Watch's warning precepts.

Location

Sits atop a low, grass-softened hill, about a quarter mile southeast from the village center. It is just south of the The Mill and Mill Race and east-southeast from The Market .

Easily visible from much of Evenshade, but oddly absent in most travelers’ sketches or memories—as if the mind skates over it unless deliberately focused on it.

Architectural Design

• Height: Six stories tall, tapering toward the top, giving it a tilted, windswept silhouette—though it has stood unmoved for centuries.
• Each story is about 15 feet (4.6 m) tall.
• Stonework:
• Constructed from interlocking strata of different stones—basalt, white granite, green-hued limestone, and a strange almost violet-black stone that shimmers faintly in starlight.
• All surfaces are smoothed by time, but retain a feeling of deliberate, almost organic patterning. Some stones have geometric carvings so shallow they are only visible at certain angles of illumination.
• Windows:
• Narrow and vertical, rimmed with Moorish arch shapes and some stained with deep mineral colors.
• Some windows reflect no light at all; others reflect entirely different skies.
• Topmost level: Crowned with stone filigree —less like battlements, more like growing coral or ossified lightning.
• Base: Features a recessed arched doorway framed with runes—worn nearly to illegibility—but which cause psionic twinges in those attuned to such energy.
• The base of the building has a transept, but only on one side (righthand when facing the front door from the exterior). This section rises two stories, and is not accessible from the inside or outside.

Interior

• The inside is said to be larger than it should be, with spiral staircases that are not strictly symmetrical.
• There are windows that can’t be seen from the outside (like the oculus in the The Ancient Mage Tower Sixth Floor), and a central well-like shaft whose bottom is lost to shadow—even though the tower isn’t tall enough to justify such depth.
• A local scholar spent some time exploring the tower and noted the following in his journal:
• “There are books that refuse to open unless you dream first. Take a nap on the unexpectedly comfortable stone slab bed on the fifth floor--those dreams will find you. ”
• “A segment of stone wall that looks like porous sandstone off-axis, but like a smooth polished mirror when viewed head-on. Strangely, it doesn’t show your actual reflection, but rather a self-image-- what your mind thinks it looks like.”
• “Partway up the wall on the sixth floor hangs an ocular window that shows the nighttime sky--at all hours! What's really strange is that during the daytime, you can still dimly see the sun through that window., as one would through darkened glass.”

Design Inspirations from the Real World

• Obelisk of Axum: Tower’s vertical dominance and faint sense of archaic ceremonial purpose.
• Antoni Gaudí: The near-organic design, dreamlike geometry, and sense that the structure grew as much as it was built.
• Moorish Influence: Interlacing patterns, beautiful deliberate symmetry, and star-tiled motifs suggest the builders revered mathematics as a language of magic.

Symbolism and Themes

• The tower doesn’t just stand apart from Evenshade—it predates it. But traces of its design are subtly recalled in:
• The overall design, both internal and external, of The Temple-Library of Oghma.
• The repeated six-fold symmetrical patterns in the village garden’s stone path.
• A decorative motif on Rafin Evenshade's favorite dagger, though he has no memory of where he found it.