Ebon Spires
Scattered across the wastelands rise the Ebon Spires, obsidian towers that seem less built than remembered into existence. They appear overnight on horizons where no settlement stands, black monoliths veined with pale fire. No one agrees if they are prisons, machines, or living entities - but all agree they dream.
Approaching a Spire is to step into reversed gravity: shadows fall upward, blood hums with static, and words taste like dust. Wanderers often report losing whole hours between steps. Some emerge speaking languages no one has ever heard. Others return hollow-eyed, their Oaths rewritten by whispers no one else perceives.
The Nature of the Spires
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Dreampulse: Every Spire radiates a rhythm, detectable only in silence. Those who sleep nearby risk their own dreams being stolen and replayed as waking visions.
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Ashfall: When a Spire exhales, black snow rains across miles, erasing recent memories from anyone caught beneath.
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Echo-Chambers: Inside, stairways spiral endlessly, leading not upward but inward. Each level reflects a forgotten failure of civilization: rusted markets, drowned palaces, shattered cathedrals.
For the Player
Characters who encounter an Ebon Spire face more than exploration. The tower presses against their Vice and Oath, tempting them to break one and rewrite the other. A Spire may offer a glimpse of what fulfilling the Oath would truly cost - or what betrayal would grant.
For the Storyteller
An Ebon Spire works as both setting and adversary. It does not fight, but it responds. Use it as a shifting dungeon, a temporal labyrinth, or even as a sentient force that bargains with the party. Most importantly, let the Spire challenge identity itself - what remains of a character when their past is edited by stone?