The Advocate Towers

This article from originally posted on the Zone. It was one of The Mysterious Portals entries.



 The Advocate Towers 

The strange pyramidal structures known as Advocate Towers are actually ancient Empyrean artifacts, though their name derives from the members of a famous philanthropic order. The advocates occasionally set up headquarters in those towers where portal-space travelers arrive from Ispar. With the perpetual magic glow suffusing the area between its spires, a tower serves as a beacon to those in search of the advocates' help.

The original purpose of the towers is unknown. One found in the Direlands actually levitates, and purportedly others are crushed into the ground as if they'd fallen from the sky. Maybe all the towers have some latent power of flight. If so, it may be connected with the mystery of why so many are located near portal-space landing areas. Asaina al-Arqis, an expert on ambient magic, states that hotspots of magical energy exist within the earth near the starting towns and that this energy may have been used both to create portals between worlds and to levitate the towers. She surmises that most towers were on the ground for recharging when the Empyrean fled the Olthoi, but a few were abandoned in mid-air and plummeted when their power ran out. Someday, Asaina predicts, the tower in the Direlands will come crashing down too.

Asaina even has an idea of what the towers were for, though it has met with little support. An Empyrean legend once shared by Elysa Strathelar holds that primordial gods struggled with evil shadow creatures. After a long contest that exhausted their powers, the gods banished the shadows into the earth by creating the sun and stars. Asaina believes that shadowy demons do exist within Dereth, and that the towers patrolled the land to keep them at bay. If so, by using the towers to serve and protect the people, the advocates may be using them very much according to their original design.