The White Spire

a tall white tower in the Lasumh Wood north of Niqamui and the town near it. 
Tower levels in the year 49,594: 
2: Gymnasium. Diogenes Frye: (male, French accent) Selkie, a seal that can turn into a human. Sent the raven. He’s secretly dating Eriene Dwivedi, which is why he wants to leave the tower. They met on one of Diogenes’ days off. 
Theory: She quit. 
Monday: 4 serving platters
Description: This room is three hundred feet long and six hundred feet wide. The floor is shiny and squishy. A thirty foot wide track parallels the walls. The interior of the room is packed with exercise equipment. Fantasy treadmills, stair climbers, stationary bicycles. You hear a clank and an “ugh!” as within the jungle of bars, someone is lifting weights. (wait) You come upon a human man lifting weights. He stops lifting when he sees you, fits the weight back into its holder, sits up, and demands. (French accent) “Where is she?”
Things Diogenes says: (French accent)
* “Where	is she?” 
* “She	quit, didn’t she? Decided she did not need us, and abandoned us.”
* “I	wouldn’t be surprised if she was on a cruise right now, far away,	laughing at us stuck here.”
* “I	sent that raven because we need you adventurers to bring her back. 	Find that traitor. Without her, we’re doomed.” Diogenes	reaches a hand up to straighten his hair, and you see a green	braided bracelet on his wrist. 
* (If	they ask, he won’t admit he’s dating Eriene Dwivedi, but he is	wearing a green braided bracelet on his wrist just like Eriene is.)
3: Vegetable garden. Xenophanes Frye: (male, snake accent so many esses) Drakkar, a human with dragon wings. 
Theory: Diogenes killed her so he could become King. 
Tuesday: 8 glasses
Description: This room is three hundred feet long and six hundred feet wide. The floor is earth and the ceiling is magically lit with light as bright as the noon sun. Light green, dark green, light green, purple, rows upon rows of vegetables stretch across the ground parallel to ceramic piping. A drakkar, a human with dragon wings, is bent over picking romanesco. (wait)
Things Xenophanes says: (snake accent so many esses)
* “Did	you find Tullia?” 
* “If	I had to guesssss, and I would hate to guessss, I think Diogenes had	her killed.”
* “Only	one of ussss can be Queen or King at a time. Diogenes thinks it	should be him. He wants to make our… family decisionsssss.”
4: Orchard. Hegesias Frye: (male, Italian accent) a human with two pairs of arms. 
Theory: She’s lost and hurt somewhere. 
Wednesday: 15 spoons
Description: This room is three hundred feet long and six hundred feet wide. The ground is orange earth and the sky is a blue magical light. With the green of leaves and the brown of the branches, it’s a bit of a color overload at first. Your eyes adjust enough to pick out red and orange peaches in the branches closest to the entrance. The trees of the orchard fill this space. (wait) A human with two pairs of arms is picking fruit while also holding a basket. (wait)
Things Hegesias says: (Italian accent)
* “I’m	Hegesias, and you?” He reaches out one of his free hands to shake	yours. 
* “Is	Tullia okay?” 
* “I	worry that she’s lost and hurt somewhere.” 
5: Kitchen and food storage. Apollonius Frye: (male, Australian accent) a slender man with insect style fairy wings. 
Theory: Xenophanes killed her so he could become King. 
Thursday: 16 forks
Description: This room is three hundred feet long and six hundred feet wide. The ground is hardwood. Sturdy metal shelves form hallways in the vast majority of this space, like a warehouse, off into the distance. But in the space closest to the door, you are standing in the most luxurious kitchen you have ever seen. A slender man with insect style fairy wings is humming to himself then startles when you walk in, clutching a hand to his chest. (wait)
Things Apollonius says: 
* “Is	Tullia okay?” 
* “Come,	sit.” He offers you peach pastries and vegetable lasagna. 
* “When	we were children, she gave away a toy of Xenophanes. He never	forgave the slight and has always been distant from her. I never	really thought much of it, but since she hasn’t returned, I can’t	help but wonder… Did he do something? I can’t get the thought	out of my head.” 
6: Movie theatre. Peregrinus Frye: (male, whispered words accent) a short, scrawny man with rat-like features. 
Theory: She’s in jail. 
Friday: 23 bread rolls
Description: This room is a three hundred feet long hallway with doors and rooms presumably behind them. (wait) You open the door and sound hits you. Illusion magic projects an image onto a screen and you hear the “Clippity clop!” as a stage coach chases another across the screen. The light from the opened door makes the image on the screen less distinct. Someone from inside whisper shouts: (Whispered voice) “Come in, come in, and close the door!”
Things Peregrinus says: 
* “Is	Tullia okay?” 
* “Is	she in jail?”
* “No	she’s not particularly reckless. She’s actually very	responsible. But you never know what kinds of intrigue and	adventure can happen out there. Just imagine! I bet she’s wound	up falsely accused of a crime, or she jaywalked, or trespassed, and	has wound herself up in jail!”
7: Individual rooms, bedrooms and offices. Calanus Frye: (male, Southern accent) has a wolf’s ears, mane, and legs and human hands, face, and torso. 
Theory: She doesn’t know how much time has passed. 
Saturday: 42 napkins
Description: This room is a three hundred feet long hallway with doors and rooms presumably behind them. (wait) A man with wolf’s ears, mane, and legs and human hands, face, and torso sits at a writing desk in a room whose walls whose every square inch is a shelf that hold books. He looks up, startled, when the door opens and his wolf ears turn toward you. He sets his pen down. 
Things Calanus says: 
* “Is	Tullia okay?” 
* “There’s	a town at the base of this tower. It’s grown up around us, done	trade with us for years. I reckon Tullia has simply been swept away	by the excitement of the great life outdoors and doesn’t realize	how much time has passed. Were she to have returned at this time	yesterday, she would still be entirely on time.” 
8: Swimming pool. Chrysippus Frye: (male, nasal accent) waddles like a penguin and has antlers like a moose. 
Theory: Diogenes killed her so he could become King. 
Sunday: 4 serving platters again
Description: This room is a three hundred feet long and six hundred feet wide. The floor is teal water, like the Caribbean, in a three hundred foot long strip to a far wall that is full floor to ceiling windows. The pool ends in an infinity edge, making the illusion that the water ends without interrupting the sky, mountains, and rolling green beyond. Outside. This room feels like it is outside. The sound of wicker creaking as someone shifts their weight. Raising sunglasses above his brows, a penguin with moose antlers sits up from a white wicker lounge chair on the smooth beige stone floor and examines you with surprise. (wait) 
Things Chrysippus says: (nasal accent)
* “Is	Tullia okay?” 
* “I	really do hope nothing bad has happened to her. Or no-one bad has	happened to her. Not all of us are as willing to stay here as I am,	and I fear…” (wait) “You are adventurers summoned by	our raven, yes?” (wait) “I think this is a great life,	so a few more years like this is no big harm. But Diogenes…	something has gotten into him lately. He wants to leave the White	Spire. But the only way for any of us to leave here is to train our	replacements.” The penguin nods his moose antler topped head	sagely. “And the only way for us to do that is for our Queen to	recruit some new orphans so we can train them up and one day pass on	our roles to them. Then we would be free to leave without the world	ending. Yes, that would be the only way… Unless someone were to	kill the Queen. Then their role would automatically shuffled to	someone else who possesses a white light.”
Q&A: 
Q: What is the setting? 
A: The White Spire and the town around it. This tower has eight ravens because it needs seven. Their Queen has been missing for one week. 
Q: What is a raven? 
A: A person who tends and is tended by The White Spire. 
Q: What is the Queen / King of the ravens?
A: The person who decides when and who they recruit new trainees. If the Queen / King isn’t recruiting new trainees fast enough, theoretically one of the others could coup them and recruit more. It is tradition to recruit replacement ravens from people who have nowhere else to go, such as orphans living on the streets. 
Q: How are new tower residents recruited? 
A: They initially are free to come and go as they please. It is only through a dinner ceremony in which the Queen / King introduces them to the tower with a family dinner at the altar that they become ravens themselves. Either they take over the title from an existing raven or, if there are less than eight, they become one of the eight. 
Q: Who are the Fry and what do the Frye do in The White Spire? 
A: They are the current generation of ravens who were recruited all together as children by Leela Frye. Frye is their adopted last name, since people often need a last name and young street orphans don’t always know theirs. The Frye live in the tower. The White Spire has got a farm, a library, housing areas, etc. There are spell lights that grow plants. Indoor farming. All active members of the White Spire have a white light they can summon when they cup their hands. It’s inside them, a part of them, and can’t be destroyed, only passed on or stored in waiting in the Spire itself (in no one specific place). 
Q: Who puts things on the altar?
A: One person is in charge of it every eight days, so they don’t get bored. Rotation system: one day off every eight days. Tullia didn’t come back this time and hasn’t been home for a week. The others are speculating whether she abandoned them, whether she died, whether one of the other seven may have coup’d her. 
Q: Why do the residents of the White Spire put things on the altar every day? 
A: Leela Frye told them to. 
Q: How long have they been putting things on the altar? 
A: They were raised there, ever since their adoptive mother, Leela Frye, took them in off of the streets as orphans. 
Q: What convinces the Frye to keep placing things on the altar? Why haven’t they stopped? 
A: Shaking, alarm if the deadline is missed, or if there are only seven people in the tower. 
Q: Why hasn’t the Queen yet started training the next generation? 
A: It means the end of her comfortable life with her siblings. She fears they’ll abandon her the moment they’re able to leave. It’s a bit subconscious on her part. It’s also true. The majority of the Frye genreation are only staying there because they have to. 
Q: What happened to Tullia? 
A: A creepy boy, Ankit Hagengruber, is “saving” her. He thinks he’s the hero. He does’t know anything about the tower. If she tells him, he thinks she’s brainwashed and he has to show her she’s wrong and that her cult is wrong and that he’s saving her. He saw her start her day happy and then frown as the day goes on, and stalked her a bit, and thinks she’s a prison of the tower (which isn’t untrue, I guess). 
Q: How do our heroes find out where Tullia is (and remember, they might not. There are enough sub-plots in the town to keep them happy without finding Tullia)? 
Story's climax: A beautiful golem, her delicate features carved by a master artisan,	is rocking on a chair on the front porch. Seeing you, she holds up	a tray of glasses of lemonade and smiles. (Kind	voice)	 “Travelers? You must be weary. Have some lemonade.” The	door of the cabin swing open and a man, part fly, part human, roars	at you, “What are you	doing here? This is my cabin. Leave!” Things Ankit says: “This poor golem was brainwashed by a cult! She was a	prisoner, only let out of that white tower once a week. I would see	how sad she would get at the end of the day when she had to go back	there. I’m reprogramming her. I’m saving her.” If they	ask Tullia how she feels: “A fake smile plasters her face and as	if upon command she says, “I am happy. I am happy.” Her head	twitches. Twitches. Twitches. If they make Ankit drop the	mind control on Tullia: The fake smile drops from her beautiful	clay face. 	She frowns. She looks left, then right, like a person waking up. 	“Where am I? How?” She sees Ankit, the fly man. Her eyes widen	as she remembers. She backs away from him hurriedly, tripping over	her own feet and landing in a heap on the ground, then scooting	backwards to get further from him, all the while screaming. (wait.)	 If they don’t intervene: Done screaming, she scrambles up off of	the ground and tears off into the woods, back in the direction of	white tower, which you can see in the distance. 
Epilogue:	 Tullia returned to the white spire and was greeted joyously by her	white spire family, even by Diogenes. She immediately commanded	that on their days off, the family begin recruitment of eight	willing orphans who had been starving on the streets of Jishoap and	Niqamui. To the Firebreathing Kittens who saved her, she send a	pouch of 5,000 gold each. Please add 5,000 gold to your character	sheets. The training of the next generation of the white spire then	commenced. They fed the children, raised them in their ways, taught	them the daily rituals and asked if they would be willing to take	over their places when they grew. Ten years later, Tullia	transferred the white lights from her generation to the next. To the	horror of the babirusa demon lords who love chaos and despise order,	the daily rituals continued, every day, every day, for years. A	dinner table set for a family. After transferring the light,	Hegesias and Apollonius spent two years traveling the world. 	Chrysippus stayed in the tower, content there. Diogenes moved in	with Erienes and they got married. The end. 
Adventures:
Have Your Goat and Eat It
Three Adventurers And A Baby
Category:Lasumh Wood
Category:Locations