OSR and Towers

For OSR October 15th, let’s look at towers in Appendix N, old school games, and newer games in the old school spirit. 

Up north of TenKeep, rare clouds above the canyonlands rub against the magic user Realto’s tower.

In Howard’s “Tower of the Elephant,” Yara the priest “came not often from his tower of magic, and always to work evil on some man or some nation.” Howard described the tower as follows:

The shimmering shaft of the tower...was round, a slim perfect cylinder, a hundred and fifty feet in height, and its rim glittered in the starlight with the great jewels that crusted it…No lights shone forth; there seemed to be no windows…Only the gems high above sparkled frostily in the starlight.

Perhaps the Tower of the Elephant was an inspiration for Sutherland’s back-cover illustration in the TSR module “B1, In Search of the Unknown.”


The tower signals the remnants in the ruin of Rogahn and Zelligar’s fortune.

One more. Look on page 60 of Glynn Seal’ s mini-setting and bestiary, “The Midderlands." (It wasn't clear whether the painting's by Jim Magnusson, Juan Ochoa, or Glynn Seal.)

 

What cruel and uncertain thing glows in that window near the top? Seal wrote, “No one dares to enter the clearing at the foot of the tower, assuming they even enter the Cairn Chase Forest at all."

I could go on about Saruman in Orthanc, Virgil’s “Turris erat vasto suspectu,” or the “red and rusting” towers along the Iron Road in Ultraviolet Grasslands…

My hope's that these ramblings about towers are an inspiration. Thanks for reading.

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