Xonthal's Tower

Xonthal's Tower is legendary among the wizards and tale-spinners of Anauroch for its unusual magical defences, including a magical hedge maze that surrounds it. The cultists avoid the hedge maze by accessing a portal inside the tower that they use to travel in and out.
The wizard Xonthal was an extraordinary figure. He served the Dragon King, King Leviticus Draco, back during the years of the Dragon Cull. His work focused on conjuration and elemental evocation, so he often kept elementals and genies for company.
Xonthal prized solitude, so he designed his tower and its surrounding hedge maze to deter intruders and unwanted visitors. Over a century ago, the wizard kicked his apprentices out and sealed the tower. No one knows what Xonthal has been up to in the intervening decades, or whether he's even still alive. Some think he must have become a lich, while others believe he's just dead. All that's certain is that the hedge maze remains a frustrating barrier, and the spells and wards protecting the tower against entry remain as powerful as ever.

The Village

Spreading out along the edge of the hedge maze is a village, also called Xonthal's Tower. The settlement began as a place where Xonthal's many apprentices established homes of their own. As years passed, more settlers were drawn to the area as word spread that the wizard and his apprentices offered excellent protection against marauding orcs and monsters. The village is smaller now than in the tower's heyday, but about three hundred people still live there.
The locals are friendly enough, but they're wary of strangers who ask too many questions about the tower. Things were quiet there for a long time, but for almost a year now, the villagers have seen lights through the windows at night and heard unearthly sounds. A few claim to have seen a blue dragon lingering in the sky high above. Some villagers scoff at that idea, but everyone agrees that the tower has been reoccupied.
Once the villagers are satisfied that the adventurers haven't come to lay waste to the tower (fearing that an all-out battle would likely destroy the village too), they're interested in talking of little else besides who could be inside. The most popular theories are that Xonthal has returned or has awakened as a lich, or that one of the genies and elementals he once imprisoned finally broke free of its restraints but remains trapped inside the tower.
The villagers warn the characters sternly about the danger of entering the maze. Few who enter it ever come back out, and those who do come out are much worse for wear. Even animals and birds avoid the maze.
The tower and the maze are protected by brilliantly crafted wishes cast by Xonthal. The tower is impervious to all scrying and divination, and invulnerable against all forms of attack and alteration. Approaching through the maze and overcoming the puzzles designed by Xonthal is the only way to get inside.

The Maze

The hedge maze surrounding the central tower is an astounding work of magical construction. In certain regards, it's even more impressive than the tower because of the powerful ways it manipulates space.
A gently curving path leads into the maze from the edge of the village. The villagers built a low fence across the entrance to keep young children and animals from wandering in. Fear of the maze is hammered into all other residents of the village from the time they're old enough to appreciate its dangers, and they shun it diligently.
Seen from above—either by a flying creature or from nearby rooftops—the maze appears to be an overgrown, tangled mess with no discernible paths longer than a dozen yards. It looks exactly like what it is: a hedge maze left untended for more than a century, grown into a nearly solid mass of hedge and thorn.
Seen from ground level, however, the maze appears to be a pleasant, hedge-ringed garden with no resemblance to a maze at all. Villagers are quick to point out this anomaly, to prove the maze is nothing to take lightly. The view from above reveals the maze as it exists in the real world. The view up the path from ground level looks into the extradimensional space that Xonthal crafted as a barrier around his home.
The tower's entrance exists only within this extradimensional space. Entering the maze any other way than walking up the main path quickly leads characters into densely tangled brush that is all but impassable, and that doesn't physically connect to any tower entrance. Characters who cut their way through to the tower, fly across to it, or tunnel beneath the maze to the outside wall find only smooth, unbroken stone that cannot be breached or bypassed by any means. A balcony juts out from the top level of the tower, but it is surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable barrier that deflects all objects and effects. The only way to reach the tower's entrance is through Xonthal's extradimensional maze.

Founding Date

7839

Type

Tower, Mage

Parent Location

Anauroch

Related Professions

• Artificer

Owner

Cassius Stormborn

Owning Organization

Dragon Archivists