Report: The Tower of Air
General Summary
"Last time we came to the Nine-eyed Sage's tower we discovered there were four other towers we could go to from there. Earth, air, fire, and water. We chose to go to the air tower this time because as the place where memory experiments were performed, we hoped we could learn more about Russel's past. And we did."
One at a time, Monique binds pages of notes from the tower into a book for the library, letting magic weave the thread through it.
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.
"There were certainly plenty of air elementals in the tower," Monique comments as she adds the page. "Harpies too, along with a couple of a tempests. There was even a Wyvern with a primal air core that elementalized it. We got hurt pretty bad by a group of harpies and air elementals when a harpy tried to lure us off the edge of a cliff with her song. we managed to break free of the song, and get everyone back to safety."
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.
"He did eventually figure out how to make himself immortal by cloning his mind into bodies that were clones of him. He calls those clones 'renditions' and apparently they didn't always work perfectly. His goal was immortality, and this seemes like a combination of two different methods of trying to obtain it."
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.
"We found three renditions at the top of the tower. We tried to talk, but they weren't interested, and attacked us. They must have been less powerful, either deliberately due to being specialists, or accidentaly from using incomplete techniques, because we were able to take them out in a fight. They all looked identical to each other, and looked like older versions of Russell. This wasn't a coincidence"
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.
Monique keeps stitching diligently, occasionally Mending to seal the pages into place in the book. "Genuinly he was just evil. He knew how bad the things he was doing were, and rather than not do them, just lied and lied and lied and lied."
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.
"That rendition that they stole was Russell. That's why SAM had thought that Russell was the master of the tower. He was a clone of the master, and all the clones were considered to be masters of the towers. Those apprentices raised him as their child, until they eventually decided to try to confront Malkor."
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.
"Once we cleared the tower, we had access to all its facilities for erasing and restoring memories. SAM is very powerful, and had thus far been a helpful ally. Meanwhile Malakor has been completely evil without exeption every single time we learn more about him. It stood to reason that undoing what Malkor had done would be good. However with SAM's power, remembering certain things could genuinely be dangerous. We slept on it, and then used some magic to determine that most of SAM's memories that had been erased were memories of evil things Malkor had done, or of SAM forming emotional attachment to anyone other than Malkor. Having learned that, we performed the ritual to restore SAM's forgotten memories."
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.
"We kind of fucked up though. See that second to last line?"
She points at the page; erasing whatever was there before and setting in stone the memories from the second rune.
"yeah . . we didn't."
She sighs. "We realized it half way through the ritual, but it was too late for us to stop. All of its memories of us . . gone. All its memories of anything good Malkor had ever done . . gone. Any memory it had mundane enough for Malkor to not erase it was gone. All it knew was that Malkor was evil, cloning himself, and constantly lying. And Russell is a clone of Malkor. Convincing it that we were anything other than accomplices of Malkor would have been impossible. We ran, from the chamber, and then from the tower."
-Scribed by Monique
Adventuring Party: Patrick Smith, Monique, Argren Silveraxe, Russel,
Date: 22MAY22
Report Date
22 May 2022
Primary Location
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