The Secrets of Aetius

[Era]

The Secrets of Aetius

Scattered like weeds in wild grass, the Floors of Aetius are. 

What was once an ascending climb towards a hundred levels has since become a river of uncertainty. But perhaps that is fortunate, for their method is not to climb, no. Whether it's the first runegate, or the tenth, even the fiftieth. The only aim is a world not this one.

And so, with a months worth of supplies, a group of magi take a dive into the intersecting runegates. 



Their initial lead is the dark god Misfortune, adversary to Joseph Aetius and occupant of the Tower for over a millennia.

"Ah, the goal isn't a secret. It's knowledge of the Tower of Aetius. The rune gates, the creation, all that, y'know? Climbing the floors doesn't matter. Easiest to find what Misfortune knew. Thousands of years there, always telling people to climb. He was a warlock and old, so he's sloppy. He'd unintentionally leave a time capsule behind."

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Rewards: Artifact related to the tower's spatial inner-workings. To control the rune gates, perhaps like the maps of Misfortune held, hinted at here. Obviously none of these maps are known IC, so the characters aren't going into this with that 'goal'. You'll make something cool, I trust you!

Genre: Dark/High Fantasy; explored with a dive through space and time, revisiting the manmade structure of Aetius and the heights of Meranthe's greatest mortal magi.

DM: Oyster.

References:

The Runegates of Aetius are gone or scattered. But a few remain in the Tower of Aetius. These have appeared as unusual, outward constructs across the continent; warping the regions where they dwell, as points of convergence between Meranthe and the cosmos

Tower of Aetius.

The tower obeys not the laws of physics and it stands to reason that time itself is more or less malleable in its walls. Your journey may take days or years or a lifetime and when you leave you'll find yourself unaged. More than that- the tower can intersect with events of the past, or even the future. In cataclysmic circumstances like this, adventurers are deftly guided by unknown gods to avoid messing with reality as much as possible. These unanswered pasts and potential futures are unlikely to impact Eternia itself- but their mere existence hints at a darker truth.

Descendants.
These guys are the original creators of the Tower but nobody liked playing them.