Keleson’s Tor stands on a crag northeast of Endamos Keep, overlooking several farmsteads, a few of them abandoned. Once part of an old keep, it now stands alone amid heaps of rubble and fields of scrub. Nearby homesteaders give the tower a wide berth, fearful of any neglected magics that may lie within.
Legends say that Keleson was a wizard of some note a few centuries ago, a specialist in abjuration, the magic of defense. The bards sing of his battle with Ix’atl’phn in the southern reaches of the Shadesh Waste, a duel of psionics and magic that ended with the Abjurer victorious, but with his mind shredded. He falls out of the tales then, surfacing in fragments of lore as a key-bearing madman, releasing prisoners and heroes in an attempt to find the right lock.
The tower itself is large, with many rooms, including a workshop, alchemical laboratory, several bedrooms for guests, apprentices, and one for the master magus himself. The crypt beneath the tower includes a room lined with lead, proof against scrying and magical detection, and the library has long since fallen to ruins. The ancient book repository is home to a curious feature, though. An immaculately preserved oak door stands in its centre, connected to nothing and leading to nowhere. It is locked.
A person might take possession of the tower, but there are some challenges they would face.
A little hard work never hurt anyone and after years of swabbing decks and being a cleaning grunt on The Wandering Night Saena’s no stranger to working hard. A little use of magic makes removing the bigger pieces of rubble from the tower a breeze, levitate gets them high enough and then she just pushes them over the edge.
Actual roof repairs are a little out of her league, but she offers the neighbouring Kobold farmers a deal. She’ll remove big boulders from their fields if they’ll help her rebuild. The farmers are happy to oblige her if only she would talk to one of their young, a 11-year-old girl named Kisha who has become quite attached to a frustrating rabbit that is plaguing her mother’s garden. Kisha won’t allow them to kill the pest because it is ‘too cute’ and the farmers do not want to ignore the girl’s wishes as she is rather a problem child, but one showing signs of having magical talent. They have asked Saena to mediate the dispute and get Kisha to stop making fusses over rabbits.
Saena would much rather just do physical work for them, but invites the girl to have a meal with her and a talk about magic. The girl finds Saena fascinating and Saena herself finds young Kisha quite smart and funny for a child. After their little supper, Saena reveals that the delicious meal they just ate was actually rabbit and though at first Kisha is horrified, once Saena quite ‘innocently’ mentions that rabbit is her favourite food, Kisha agrees it is very tasty and returns home, suddenly wanting rabbit for dinner as often as they can catch it.
Mission accomplished, the thankful Kobolds help repair the tower roof.
After consulting various texts, Astaria finds that the tower was once occupied by a wizard named Baerol. He died at the hands of a jealous lover, and it is said that his wife, Kate, laid him to rest deep in the crypt. Still in love with him, she preserved his body, lovingly wrapped in bandages, and laid treasures he loved all around him. She sealed him in a coffin ready for cremation to prevent a restless afterlife. She meant to burn it then, but it is said she forgot about the curse her husband laid on their crypt, meant to keep them safe after death. As she placed his coffin on the pyre, the spell activated; the doors sealed and Kate found herself wandering around the crypt, lost and confused, unable to find her way out.
Eventually, she died laying next to the husband. He was to lay forever in his grave, unburied and dishonoured as his wife withered away next to him. According to his old diaries, only he could break the secret of the crypt, his last words being the key. As Astaria makes her way down to the crypt, she notices it is a dark place, greyed with age. The walls are adorned with mosaics of legends long past, but dust and age has left them difficult to see. The floor is covered with mangled rugs, clearly covering the obvious spell trap.
Apparently this wizard was not good at subtlety. There are tables and empty coffins every few feet; empty drawers and shelves lay on the floor from years of looting. Astaria easily avoids the traps through spells and such. Way too easy. No sign of this wizard named Baerol, however. She walked down the long hallway toward the wall at the end of the hallway. She searched the wall for a secret door. Unable to find one, she walks by the dusty walls around the room. A glyph catches her eye. This one is familiar. Malena had told her once of glyphs such as these, popular things ages ago that kept secret things hidden. They had one weakness though: they all unlock the same way, except the code has been long forgotten, except by a few. Malena of course found out the code ages ago and had shared it with Astaria during one of their many nightly conversations. Astaria smiles slightly as she traces the glyph clockwise, then counterclockwise, then waves her hand over the glyph, first up, then down. She taps the left side, then the right. The glyph starts to shine as she finishes the pattern and raises slightly from the wall. She pushes it. A loud click is heard nearby, as a huge wall divets and slides away, revealing a large room, which also has been looted. In the middle of the room lays a coffin, slightly open. She opens the lid, finding a preserved body of a Satyr, still wearing his pointy hat. Astaria uses a spell to speak with the dead.
She doesn’t get much from the corpse who simply repeats “I’m sorry”, spoken in common. “I forgive you”, she says. Nothing happens. Astaria shrugs and calls for Steve, who apparently knew of the young, foolish wizard. Steve tells her he came from an ancient civilzation that used to speak an ancient language of K’elthor. She casts tongues on herself, saying “I forgive you” in the wizard’s ancestor’s native tongue. As the final sound is uttered, the trap in the other room glows and disappears. As she takes the body of the deceased wizard out to bury properly, she finds a small note, tucked into his hand, slightly aged, perhaps by a handful of years. On it was a drawn a sun with a cursive M in the center. Malena’s signature. Astaria smiles. Malena had clearly been here once a long time ago, before she had come to Nafaanra. Apparently Malena has been here before. After looting the crypt, she left it pretty near empty.