Gloamhold: The Ghost Tower

The Shard is one of the most well known parts of Gloamhold. Visible from Languard’s battlemented walls, the great ruin soars high above Greystone’s ruins huddling far below. Neophyte adventurers—not ready for the terrors lurking in Gloamhold’s outer halls—often dare the Shard’s ruins in search of easy victories and gold.

However, persistent rumours speak of otherworldly portions of the tower that defy rationale explanation or description. They speak of a so-called Ghost Tower accessible by adventurers clever enough to decipher a fiendishly complex puzzle buried far below the Shard’s ruins in a hidden, savagely trapped cellar.

The puzzles scattered throughout the Shard’s cellars granting access to the Ghost Tower take many different forms. Old adventurer’s lore, though, speaks of a band of adventurers who claimed to have discovered and deciphered one of the puzzles—an incredibly complicated and breathtakingly detailed mosaic of stars—in a cavernous vaulted chamber protected by merciless sentient magical traps. Since their discovery decades ago, no one is known to have replicated their feat and the survivors of the expedition seemed reticent to discuss what they discovered within the Ghost Tower.

For those who cannot find or decipher the means of entering the tower, all is not lost. Sometimes the tower’s fuzzy, transparent outline, overlaid over (and soaring high above) the Shard, is visible at the height of the savage annual winter storms that lash the Mottled Spire. What otherworldly terrors lurk within the tower is a matter of wild conjecture. However, local legends whisper that at the height of the fiercest winter storms, when vicious winds tear at the ruins, bolts of lightning blast the surrounding rock and driving rain buffets the tower the barriers between this world and the other weaken. At this time, brave adventurers can enter the tower, but they must explore quickly for when the storm dies, the barriers warding the tower strengthen trapping any who yet linger within.

The Ghost Tower has other colourful names including the Tower Unseen, the Ephemeral Spire and the Citadel of the Wraith Kings. The last of these names perhaps hints at what lurks within…