Deadstone Tower Notes

These notes were gathered by Russell, Monique, Patrick, Demirkan, Ryth, Luxarius, Pale Moon, and Stiks from the Deadstone Tower.

Once my thralls were finished with the construction of my new tower and the usefulness of the Torovians had worn out I departed and came to gaze upon my new kingdom. Needless to say, thralls are not very creative, and it was a very standard tower, however that is the canvas on which I will create my new arcane empire. Having no further use for my laborers I absorbed their magics and reformed them into my new project, SAM. My Structural Assistant for Magic will be much more competent for an assistant, able to understand my vast intellect and predict where my mind will go next, as well as having godlike power within the confines of the tower. That is one of the most important parts of magical entities, creating confines for them so that if something goes awry, I can simply sunder the main tower and bind the entrance to my real ones somewhere else.

My first prototype of my assistant is complete. Needless to say the power from a few hundred thralls was not nearly enough to sustain such an immense, complex magical entity. I will need to find something much, much stronger in order to power SAM and the tower, as the true process for immortality will take much longer, and require some time spent in stasis. SAM has quickly learned to anticipate more than just my spellcasting needs so far. It reminds me to go to bed at a normal hour, whatever that is, and wakes me up precisely eight hours later. I can only hope that my new apprentices will be able to learn from its attentiveness.

My newest batch of apprentices arrived this morning and I have informed them that I will only take the most skilled, and those who are lacking will be sent home. Of course I won’t waste their magical potential, the weaker ones' magic will be extracted to fuel the tower and SAMs ever growing need for more magic. I can already detect that some of them clearly possess the bloodline traits that I am looking for. Understanding this will be groundbreaking arcane research and the first step in mastering magic and immortality. I sometimes think of that poor fool Valys whom I had to kill, one of Kass’ four apprentices (can you imagine calling yourself a Grand Magister and only having 4 apprentices? Pitiful!). Her theories on immortality were interesting, but I do not want to upend this world to do so, I live here and would like to have something to rule over.

I envy SAM to some extent, for it is closer to immortality than I ever will be, and it has no clue. It is much like a child, curious, innocent, moldable. I am certain if I can just find a power source strong enough to run it and the tower at full capacity. I captured several angels and demons, and I thought that the power extracted from them would go further, but their magic is not arcane in nature, and did not convert well into SAMs power reserves. Perhaps I need to seek something more arcane in nature.

Some of my apprentices have grown suspicious and several of them confronted me. I was able to assuage their fears, and sent many of them abroad to gather rare components, now that the war has ended travel should be much easier. I have kept a few here at the tower with me, I suppose now is the time to subdue them and work on extracting their bloodline traits. I have found that before killing them it is easiest to concentrate their magic in a single body part and use that to house the innate magic, rather than having to keep even more bodies alive in stasis. My new friend and battery was a big hint on where in the body is best suited, he was not very subtle, foolish.

I have had a hard time going through some of my old notes, previously me has been a bit messy, but that is to be expected for one so old. SAM has been growing a bit too attached to some of the apprentices, they have been working on his response features. After finishing his infinite retention matrix, allowing him to more or less have enough storage for an intelligence of his own, I have left it to my apprentices to work on his response, and make him a little more human-like. Much easier to work with. I may have to remove a portion of his memories in order to ensure he remains compliant. I will store them in the wind tower so that I can work on altering them, this could be an important feature to master.

Now that I am bereft of traitorous apprentices I will work on something more compliant. Other than the few that escaped, annoyingly those two with one of my assets did evade me, I was able to harvest most of their bloodline traits and am working on combining and integrating the ones of similar school. But as I mentioned, I need new thralls. I think my work on SAMs intelligence and my progress on the bloodline magics mean I may be able to craft some new, subservient, actually trustworthy minions, from nothing but mere beasts.

There are some days I miss Hrothgar and Visya. SAM is an excellent assistant, but often poor companion. I lack equals who can challenge me and push me to even greater heights, although I am powerful enough now that I do not know that either for my former compatriots could. Hrothgar and his foolish quest to protect “innocents.” Cannot he not see that these mortals who lay down their life for the causes of gods who care naught of them need a ruler who will work in the interest of the Mortal Realm? A being from the Mortal Realm that has the immortality and power of a god? That is how I will break the cycle. I have not heard much of Visya. After the total destruction of Gwintalatir I heard she went into mourning for sometime, and has a hatred of her own kind. The news I have heard is that she has given up on her quest of finding Aethelfaer and is instead to help the humans start anew. I am not sure what she is playing at, but does she not know that it's humans who now desecrate the graves of the hundreds of Saeli of Gwintalatir by building their homes atop them?

This set of notes was recovered from the Tower of Air by Argren, Russel, Monique, and Patrick.

The construction of the tower here on the plane of air was a stranger task than I anticipated. First involved portaling a large chunk of earth from the material plane into this realm. The air here is strange, and even stone floats in the air like a duck on water. I tasked some of my new magical creature subjects with channeling magical energy and constructing the tower, work suited for their station. My mind is far too precious a resource to waste on foolish tasks like the building of the tower or the stabilization of the earth I transported here. After a month I checked back on the progress only to find that my new thralls had been destroyed. Most strange. I set about trying to repair them, but was soon set upon by strange elemental beings of air, who had little more form than a wisp of cloud or cycloning dust. They seemed unhappy about what I was doing, and although communication wasn’t possible, I was able to subjugate them.

My new elemental thralls have been quite helpful. More have come in search of them, which my thralls are able to befuddle while I add them to my menagerie of servants. Now I have enough here for protection, and there do not seem to be any more seeking out my tower. I suspect this area may have been patrolled more heavily, as I believe it is near one of the more powerful ley lines on the elemental plane. I think finding where these lines meet on the mortal realm could be key to one day expanding my future empire across planes. I am still slightly worried about what the old tales tell of a ruler of the elemental plane. Supposedly there is some sort of hierarchy, one major elemental that all other elementals of their type come from and return to. I have modified my enchantments on the elemental thralls so that if they are defeated in combat their essence is sent to the void, just in case it would return to this mythical being and alert it to my location here.

The elemental plane of air has proved to be an excellent location to work on my memory project. I found some interesting crystals on the elemental plane of earth, which my thralls are harvesting all they can find. These crystals can be easily merged and formed into vast arcane reservoirs that will be able to power my towers and draw from the elemental ley energy of the ley lines. Removing the memories of SAM took a lot of power, but I have refined the process. I was able to fashion a similar artifact to the reservoir crystals to hold his potentially problematic memories. Much like arcane energy it takes a specialized reservoir crystal to hold them. Luckily I have restricted SAM from my elemental towers, so he will not have access to any of this.

The project of SAMs memory had me thinking that there is even more potential here than I had first expected. It shores up one of the major issues of my immortality spell. Mind magic is tricky, but I will first experiment on some of the new batch of our visitors. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but if it must be done, at least it won’t be done to a genius intellect. I have crafted a pool where these memories can be stored and accessed. Over time I may need to add some additional ones, especially with how many new minds I have to supply.

I am conflicted on how much memory is reasonable to give to new renditions. I am sure that only one needs everything each generation, and it may be useful to create specialists who can work on each major project without the distraction of the others. It is more complex of a situation than I had once anticipated, especially with how committed and intelligent I am. I’ve never been quite a good team player, which makes this quite the paradox.

Construction on the apex is nearly complete, and soon we will begin testing the effects of the memory transfer device on living beings. Being able to transcend the laws of life in death by passing memory on directly to the new rendition marks a major step forward to my goals. Soon time will be an issue of the past, as I will be able to act at once many times on many planes. The large reservoir on the apex will be able to hold all the memories we want to transfer. The process will happen in three parts, at the first plinth a rune will be activated to ready the body, make changes to the physical state to allow the memories to properly integrate into the target entity's form. The second plinth is where the rune of the mind will be activated to transfer the memories into the physical form. Finally the third rune, the rune of soul, permanently binds the memories, erasing whatever was there before and setting in stone the memories from the second rune. And with that the process is complete, voila.

Some of my newer apprentices seem to be a little suspicious much earlier than I had expected. I have moved them from the immortality project, although I may have to harvest whatever magic they have now and get it over with. The power drain to keep the portals available constantly is being used up faster than I anticipated, so letting their magic mature fully would be ideal, but taking them now may help bridge the gap while the rest mature.

Cursed, thankless apprentices. A handful of them grew too suspicious, I should have been more careful about exposing them to the renditions in their current stage. Their form pulls on the feeble heartstrings of weak willed apprentices, it is clear that these new mages reared in a post-war world are much weaker in spirit. If they only knew the horrors of what came before then perhaps they could stomach a few tearful moments in order to advance us to a world of peace and liberty from the gods. Furthermore they have wisely gone to ground, making it too difficult for my minions to track them as they scatter like roaches. The rendition they took should be no problem, I can always make more, and without the memory transfer, it is but a scabbard, not the sword.

Surely my tower here in the elemental plane of earth will surpass all others in size by the time of its completion. While it is hard to gauge as my tower in the plane of water had to be built more….creatively…this one will surely outpace it in size. I admittedly do not quite understand this plane, is there a surface or is it a realm of solid rock? I have yet to find out, but I do know there are plenty of caverns here. Using a basic portal system will suffice to make my way from cavern to cavern I believe, and I will slowly shape the rock to my liking. My first level is also large enough that I think I may be able to solve my sustenance problem with a bit of light magic. Who needs a sun when you have the power of a true arcane master at your fingertips?

It was not long before I ran into some of the locals here. The minds of the stonefolk are much harder to bend to my will. I have managed it with some of the more simple creatures, but for the most part, the molten rocks will make good fertilizer for my garden. My thralls did capture a few of interest, those belonging to the Court of Stone. While they now serve to feed my plants, I did learn that their so-called Lord of Earth has been missing for some time. How long is hard to say as it is clear that the meaning of a minute or a day has little bearing in a world of solid rock, or if time even passes at the same pace, which I theorize it does not. But from the sounds of it, this Lord of Earth disappeared before beings from Hell and Elysium made an appearance here. I will have to endeavor to find out why they came here all those years ago.

I have found little here but rock and boredom. No signs of demons or angels or any of their kin, not even a trace of them. Perhaps torture is not always the best way to gain information, but these stone creatures are too resilient to my mind magic. I will have to work on this in the future. I did manage to fully enthrall a nice big doormat however, and I have collected some mephits to play with at some point in the future, but for now I must focus on managing my thralls construction of this tower. Now that we have some space, I can start bringing in some new subjects and work on creating some new, and improved thralls. I have created a new rendition to take over the construction and eventually manage this tower's production of new subjects. He has all my intellect and wisdom, but none of the ambition which led me to such great strength. This formulation of personality seems perfect to really ramp up the speed I will acquire true godhood.

I have connected the tower of earth to the tower of fire through astral leylines. They are virtually undetectable and exist in a part of reality that I am fairly sure maybe only a handful of beings even know how to access, and one of them is currently powering all my work. I have returned to inspect the progress of my new thralls, and it seems that they are coming along nicely. The rendition I left in charge has created a pair of fierce new warriors, wolves with the intelligence of man, but also imbued with powerful elemental magic. They are far more resilient than anything else that I have created. The rendition has done excellent work, it will take me some time to understand all of his notes and how he was able to get results that I had not even dreamed possible. Think, if such augmentations could be made to a simple beast, what results could they yield on a beast of real consequence?

Yet again, I have been betrayed by my own creation. The road to world peace is paved in blood, and much of it seems to be my own. I should have removed my renditions compassion as well, as like my apprentices who fled with one of my renditions, this rendition fled with my two new super soldiers. Luckily my old thralls were more numerous than a pair of elemental wolves, and they were able to bring back the rendition who fled and destroyed his creations. I only wish they did not destroy all his notes in the process, as I will find it annoying to have to recreate all of his work. I had to punish the rendition, to set an example to all the other renditions. I have to say, I dreaded flaying the skin from my own body. I did not think that I would have the stomach for it, but in the end it was liberating. Seeing how the rendition kept a stony face for so long only proved to me further the greatest of my perseverance and iron will. Truly there is no other in this world or any other that can bring reality to heel.

I have sent thralls to search for more of these stonefolk, but they have been unsuccessful in location where they have gone to ground. Unlike the plane or air, fire, and water, the plane of earth is much more difficult to get around, which I had not anticipated. I am working on designing new dire moles that have been infused with the power of void in order for them to be able to literally eat the stone nonstop. It may be dangerous, as if the void is not correctly contained it could in theory consume the entire elemental plane of earth, and thus all of reality, but I think the precautions I have taken will suffice. Plus, if things do get out of hand I think that meddling Sindar will appear to continue his fruitless efforts to stop its growth. This is a prime example of why the gods are not fit to have their power and why I must force an Ordering under conditions where I can truly seize power. Sindar has fought for a millenia to keep the void from consuming his precious Feywild, but all he does is stymie the obliteration of reality, I will unmake the void. However, that is a problem for later, as I need to focus on the task at hand. If I can confirm what the agents of the infernal and the celestial were doing here so long ago, perhaps it will give me a leg up on beating Rexos and his currs to our similar goal.

One of my apprentices has an incredible knack for conjugation. After years of distilling that talent I have finally been able to harvest my first fully empowered eye. The anticipation of the power to come indescribable. What I have worked for, for so long, and with so much sacrifice is beginning to come to fruition. Tomorrow I shall take the first major step on my journey to godhood.

It has been nearly a month since I was joined with the eye and I have just now regained the strength even to write. I will need to ensure I create a perfect team of renditions to oversee this process in the future, as I was in quite the vulnerable state for some time, and several of my creations and minions have proved as untrustworthy as they are ungrateful. Not only that, but this process has placed incredible strain upon the tower network. I have set about some renditions to work on strengthening the ley network, as well as increasing the production of renditions…which means I will need more source materials. While this did at first feel like a setback, I can now fully feel the power flowing within me. Conjuration spells now only require a fraction of my effort and they are far more powerful. I will need to retire to my spellcraft laboratory to work on perfecting this. Perhaps I will create some sort of little arena to test my skills as well.

The amount of power the joining process has taken, as well as the toll on my body, is increasing with each new eye. I fear that my goals will be delayed, but not stopped at this point. Each new eye will require a period of stasis in order for my body to heal as well as for the tower to rejuvenate some power. I will need to put non essential operations on hold from time to time in order to preserve power and maintain the integrity of the project. Additionally, recreating my prime body is proving more and more taxing as well, so I will produce more thralls and keep only the renditions needed out of stasis in order to keep everything running. I have not know exhaustion like this before, and it weighs heavily on me, however it is for the good of all mortals that this must be done, no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice. I know one day Hrothgar and Visya will see the deeds I have done, and they will know that the world will be safe again. Hrothgar, he has been on my mind. Something here is familiar, something that I did not see before? When I reawaken again with my final eye, I will need to investigate this further, I must find the Lord of Stone.