The Fool's Tower

Like this, but a little taller. Credit Maksym Harahulin

When you see it come over the horizon, you can't help but rub your eyes. It's a little like having an eyelash slowly drop down into your eye, but no matter what you do, it doesn't go away. It stretches up to the clouds and beyond, a flaw in the sky, an error in reality, an impossible structure that should collapse like a castle made of needles stacked point-to-point.

But it endures. Cannon has been brought to bear against it, once. Just once.

The nobility hate it. Peasants will drop tools and wander over from a town across, and flood in through whichever snarling visage the gate presents itself as that day. A couple come out bearing obscure trinkets or bizarre pieces of furniture. Some come out scarred and torn, missing limbs, missing memories. Most don't come out at all.

The rules:

• Each room contains a small golden key and a wooden door
• Touching the key to the door causes both to be destroyed
• They key is immune to all spells, and breaking the door reveals only solid rock
• The first floor has one obstacle (a pair of elements) the tower adds an additional obstacle every three floors
• The key will usually be visible, but not always. The door will usually be visible, but not always. The room will usually be well-lit, but not always. Enemies will usually stay on their floor, but not always
• No floor is a puzzle, there is not a hard-coded solution, merely things that are in the way of you getting the key and getting to the door
• The Tower and everything in it resets each visit
• A few items are specifically "loot" items, you will be told if this is the case
• Everything else is "furniture", and will crumble to ash when removed from the tower
• "Furniture" especially includes trap components, enemies, recruited allies, corpses and chunks of wall
• Each entrant is permitted to bring a single item of "furniture" out of the Tower without it being destroyed
• Speaking your true name has greater magnitude equivalent to the highest floor you have reached

Gallery

Tower Der-Nin. Mark Makovey

Kévin Barbot

The Babel Project. Leon Tukker