Tower, the Ghoul Titan

Jannis Mayr

The Nine Cities of the Tributary Houses of the Starklands are built on the graves of more glorious republics. Each sits upon a convergence of the Tireless Highway, whose immutable tiles were first laid in the forgotten past by the Empyreans who created the mega-constructs that still walk the world. All along icy coasts, boreal forests, and sulphur pits of the Starklands travelers can follow the Tireless Highway and unfailingly find their way to one of the Nine Cities. 

Before the Heritor came with their shining fleet and subjugated the Nine Cities, the Starklanders were known for their unique funerary customs. Young or old, man or woman, the dead were garbed in fine armor and equipped with blades and other weapons before being placed along the Tireless Highway for the coming of the Tower. 

As certain as the phases of the moons, with the coming of the first thaws of spring the Tower will descend along the ring road of the Tireless Highway and make his circuit, trudging past each of the cities before ascending once more to the Battle Peaks as Winter's grip sets in. With him comes his army of the dead, and his approach causes the dead to rise once more and join their ranks. Like a natural disaster for those not prepared, the undead swarms that attend the Tower flood over the lands as he passes by. At the core of the army, in rank and file at the feet of the Tower, dead kings and generals preside over the assemblage and shepherd the slavering ranks forward. 

Jonah Lobe

The Tower is a 300 foot tall Titan. His endless journey is heralded first by the approaching swarms of feral dead, and then by the stench and march of the army proper. When he begins the trek in Spring, his skin is pale and tinged blue, his figure gaunt and eyes black. As the year progresses, he steadily rots and chunks of skin and meat fall to the ground along the highway, attracting clouds of flies as well as adventurous adherents to the Tower or Exiled Sorcerers.

For the people of the Starklands, his legend is well known. The Tower was a great hero of the Empyreans and won many a battle against the enemies of civilization when the world was young and in its spring. When Winter first cursed the seasons, the Tower set forth with his armies into the Battle Peaks to break Winter and its curse. His battle was mighty and shook the foundations of the world, but in the end he broke Winter. However Winter's curse was laid, and as the seasons turn it grows in strength and inevitably overtakes Autumn. The Tower swore to defeat Winter, twining their fates and setting the Tower on his eternal path along the Tireless Highway to gather his armies once more and break Winter each year. Starklanders remember this legend and their heritage, and thus they set their honored dead along the roadside to join the Tower in eternal struggle to break Winter and rescue the land from its frozen grip each year. 

When the Heritor came and subjugated the Starklanders, his governors set the Tributary Houses to expunge this funerary tradition as an abomination and replace it with their standard of cremation, as the Heritor would not tolerate any encouragement of what were seen as necromantic practices. Some of the old folk still tell the tales, however, of how the Heritor's First Failure was when his legions tried to break the Tower. In the end, the Tower's path continued and the Heritor left the Starklands for his next conquests. 

Mika Koskensalmi

The seasons have turned and the curse of Winter has been broken dozens of times since the Heritor enforced cremation amongst the Nine Cities. Each year since then, the Tower has begun to slowly rot more quickly, and his disciplined army of the dead has grown thinner, their weapons broken and armor torn, replacing their numbers only with the slavering corpses of feral dead. Each year, the Tributary Houses hire Ghoulhunters to clean the lands of those that are left behind by this wild horde in the wake of the Tower, and each year the dead that wander the forests grow more numerous. 

Winter comes more quickly now, they say, and its icy tendrils remain longer and longer as the years go by. Cults of the Old Ways have sprung up throughout the Starklands, fueling a secretive worship of the Tower, whose countenance grows darker and more foul each year. The beer-halls grow more rowdy with disquiet and dread, as the elders whisper that the end times are coming. Brushfires of rebels have sprung up and have even blown the sole rail that connects the Starklands to the Heritor States. 

As the Tower finally breaks Winter once more and Spring is returned, the fires of rebellion are stoked around the Starklands.